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The song starts with a corny whistle, a theme song from a 50s TV show your grandparents might remember — a simple tune that makes you think of a cartoon grandpa asleep under a tree, holding a fishing pole. Then the lyrics come in: Beyonce’s singing “All the single ladies, all the single ladies, all the single ladies…”
This whacky combination is a example of an underground music genre that’s swept the globe. For the past ten years, DJs have been making some of the coolest, and craziest, musical combinations in the form of mashups. Also known as “bootlegs” or “bastard pop” songs, mashups are two or more songs blended together into what Will Schuester of Glee, a show which has popularized mashups recently, called “a richer explosion of musical expression” than regular songs. More than remixes, mashups are completely different songs put together in ear-opening ways that you’d probably never expect.
People have been splicing tracks together since recorded music began, but mash-ups as we know them took off in 2001 when Freelance Hellraiser mixed Christina Aguilera’s “Genie In A Bottle” with the rocking guitar of The Strokes’ “Hard To Explain.” Like most of today’s mashups, the song was only available online and was never released commercially, but still became a contender on many “Best Of” lists. Another classic mashup, “Smells Like Teen Booty,” put Destiny’s Child singing “Bootylicious” over the instrumental track from Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” That same year, the Belgian brothers David and Stephen Dewaele, under the pseudonym 2 Many DJs, released As Heard on Radio Soulwax Pt. 2, a giant mashup album of no less than 45 different tracks by artists ranging from Lords of Acid to Salt ’n Pepa.
Today most mashups follow a more streamlined formula. Some are “Version vs. Version” tracks that mix different versions of the same song together to create a new one. But the foundation of bastard pop is the “A vs. B” song, in which a track from one song, usually just the vocal or ‘a capella’ track, is layered onto another song’s backing or instrumental track to create a completely “new” song. Most mashups are only made up of two different songs, but others can be made up of snippets from as many as six songs.
 LOCAL LEGENDS
DJ Earworm, a San Francisco-based mashup expert who has written a book on mashup construction, follows in the footsteps of the Dewaele brothers when he makes a huge mash-up of Billboard’s Top 25 Hits every year. The latest in this series, United State of Pop (Blame It On The Pop), is his most popular mashup to date, probably because the patched-together lyrics from this year’s Top 25 make sense as completely new lyrics in their own right. The line “can’t you see every move I’m making/every rule I had you breaking/ isn’t this easy feeling love, love love” may be made up from samples from five different songs, but the emotion behind the line is unique. “I'm so proud of United State of Pop 2009 (Blame It on the Pop)” Earworm, whose real name is Jordan Roseman, stated in an e-mail. “I feel like I got to become a songwriter in this one.”
Another local who has made a name for himself on the mashup scene is Ben Gill, better known as Party Ben, whose “Boulevard of Broken Songs” used Green Day's “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” as its base track and became a worldwide sensation. “It's crazy, I get e-mails from all over the world, from people who have heard my mashups on the radio in South Africa, at a club in Singapore, or on a TV morning show in Chicago,” Gill said in an e-mail. “I never set out to get ‘popular’ so it'’s kind of amazing to me.”
Gill also sees the beauty in how mashups bring different genres and tastes together. “The best mash-ups cause you to hear the original songs in a new way, and might even convince you to like an artist you didn't think you liked,” he said. “They also help break down barriers between different genres, which I think is a good thing. And sometimes they just make you laugh, which is fine too.”
With all these local bootlegging legends in our midst, its no surprise that in 2003, DJs Adrian & The Mysterious D started Bootie, the first night club devoted to the mashup, currently operating out of the DNA Lounge at 11th Street and Harrison in San Francisco. Today, Bootie releases an annual “Best of Bootie” mashup CD and has grown enormously. “When Bootie was started, it was just a small monthly party in San Francisco,” DJ Adrian, also known as Adrian Roberts, said. “Now it's a party all over the world.”
Roberts is proud of the way Bootie has championed what can be a very solitary art form. “I think the most important thing is the fact that people tend to make these tracks in isolation,” Roberts said. “It's Internet-based, so people put them up as mp3s on a Web site and hope that people download it. It's much different to see people listening to it on the dance floor and getting that instant gratification. We’ve been able to spread their work to a wider audience, and champion this culture for the past 7 years. We are the torch-bearers.”
COPYRIGHTS
While most mashups are released as free downloads on DJs' websites, a couple of complete mashup albums have popularized the genre. The Grey Album by Danger Mouse, better known as the quiet instrumentalist in Gnarls Barkley, was a revolutionary blend of Jay-Z's The Black Album and The Beatles' White Album. American Edit, released by Party Ben and team9 under the name Dean Gray, is a mashup of Green Day's American Idiot practically in its entirety. “I'm very proud of American Edit,” Gill stated in an e-mail. “‘Dr. Who on Holiday’ and ‘Novocaine Rhapsody’ were incredibly difficult to produce and I'm pleased with the results.”
However, both these albums became the targets of copyright holders who attempted to prevent their distribution. Ten days after it was released, American Edit’s website received a “cease and desist” notice from Green Day’s record label, Reprise. The website was taken down and, when it returned, was music-free. After The Grey Album was released, EMI, the major music company and copyright holder for The Beatles, ordered Danger Mouse and the websites carrying the album to stop distribution.
While U.S. copyright law gives the rights to reproduce and create derivative works exclusively to copyright owners, many mashup artists are protected under the “fair use” doctrine of copyright law. However, “fair use” only protects so much, and for works like The Grey Album, which clearly uses a lot of unlicensed material, the creators of the new material are legally supposed to license the source material from its copyright holders.
However, these attempts to stop people from listening to American Edit and The Grey Album only made them more popular and angered fans. On February 24, 2004, Downhill Battle, an activist group against major record labels, led Grey Tuesday, a day in which certain Web sites posted The Grey Album for free for 24 hours in protest of EMI. Over 100,000 copies of the album were downloaded from around 170 websites. A year later, on December 13, 2005, fans organized Dean Gray Tuesday, during which websites hosted American Edit in a variety of digital formats.
One student DJ can see both side of the issue. “Obviously, as a musical artist, I could see why some people would be offended, but the music industry needs to loosen up,” student DJ and junior at The Bay School Willie Caldwell said.
Some original artists tend to view mashups positively, and even promote them. Scottish musician Annie Lennox asked DJ Earworm to create a mashup that collected her entire solo career into a song (the result, “Annie Lennox: Backwards/Forward,” can be heard on www.djearworm.com), and in 2003, David Bowie, collaborating with auto company Audi, held a contest in which fans could take any song from his latest album, Reality and mash it up with any of his older songs.
MASH IT UP
What if you want to make your own mashup? “Learn as much music theory as possible,” advises Roseman, adding that you should at least know about beats and tempo, key, pitch and scale, and song structure. Caldwell recommends that you find songs with the same BPM (beats per measure) and that compliment each other. Gill, on the other hand, said that an amateur DJ should go for the unexpected. “At this point, simple combinations of similar artists might not get a lot of attention — there are just so many people out there making mashups, bootlegs, and remixes, only the most interesting work stands out,” he said. “But it's like anything — just keep trying and you'll eventually come up with something good.”
Gill makes it clear, however, that with mashups perfection is not the goal. “Obviously lots of amateurs are making mashups and sometimes their production skills are a little rough. But I don't think there's a formula — sometimes a song does everything wrong and it's still great, because the whole point is to break the rules.”
So if you think that Beethoven and Kanye West could never work together, or that combining Rihanna’s pop and Vampire Weekend’s indie rock is a terrible idea, try out a mashup. You never know what rules should be broken. 
SUGGESTED LISTENING
1. “United State of Pop 2009 (Blame It on the Pop)” by DJ Earworm: With smart lyric combinations and a catchy patched-together tune, the latest massive mashup of Billboard’s Top 25 songs by DJ Earworm is his most popular yet.
2. “Single Ladies (In Mayberry) (Beyonce vs. the Andy Griffith Theme) by Party Ben: One of local mashup master Party Ben’s catchiest creations, this mixes modern pop with the 50s TV show jingle to hilarious effect.
3. “It’s My Life/Confessions Pt. II” by The Cast of Glee: This mix of Bon Jovi and Usher was featured on the popular musical/comedy show that has recently popularized mashups.
4. “Beethoven’s Fifth Gold Digger” (Kanye West vs. Beethoven vs. Walter Murphy) by A Plus D: From the cofounders of Bootie, the infamous mashup club in San Francisco, come as expert blending of genres that will blow your mind.
5. “My Life On The Crazy Train Sucks (So What?)” (Kelly Clarkson vs. Ozzy Osbourne vs. Pink vs. Daft Punk) by Dan Mel & Marc Johnce: An offering from Europe that actually makes one of Ozzy Osbourne’s most heavy metal songs part of a fun dance tune.
All illustrations by Karen Chin
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