From Christina Aguilera and The Strokes to The Police and Snow Patrol, DJs are pairing unlikely songs - a technique called a mash-up. Is this art or just techno-geekery, asks Michael Kelly
I remember, a few years ago, being mesmerised by a song I downloaded that mixed Green Day's Boulevard of Broken Dreams, Wonderwall by Oasis, Writing to Reach You by Travis and Eminem's Sing for the Moment (which itself samples Aerosmith's Dream On). I couldn't decide whether I loved or hated it, but I remember thinking: how did they do that? Who did it? What is it? The industry calls it a mash-up. The concept is nothing new. Run DMC's 1986 version of Aerosmith's Walk This Way fused rock and rap so successfully that it was credited with bringing hip hop into the mainstream. What has changed is that many of the best-known mash-ups are done by amateur producers without the permission of the songs' writers. Software such as Sony Acid Pro and Adobe Audition has allowed anyone to knock together combinations and distribute them over the internet in hours. Websites such as Get Your Bootleg On and YouTube give them forums to release the songs.
Lots of mash-ups are terrible, but every now and then a gem breaks through and goes mainstream, landing on iPods the world over and sometimes jumping from the internet to radio. The whole thing has a deliciously illicit, underground feel, with an extra edge coming from the fact that some nerd with a laptop could become the most downloaded artist on the planet overnight. Add the vista of the music industry getting into a flap and we have ourselves a ball game.
Mash-ups are most successful when they mix genres - metal with rap, rap with classical, punk with funk - especially if they force together two songs that would normally cross the street to avoid each other. A mash-up of The Prodigy's Smack My Bitch Up and Enya's Orinoco Flow is the most unlikely of couplings, and part of the fun of listening is wondering what Enya makes of it.
Party Ben, a San Francisco-based DJ, is a leading proponent of the craft. Every Car You Chase, his mash-up of The Police's Every Breath You Take and Snow Patrol's Chasing Cars, has been on heavy rotation on Irish radio lately. He was also behind Boulevard of Broken Songs, the Green-Day-Oasis-Travis-Eminem mash-opus. "It was insane how that took off, bearing in mind I never promoted it," he says. "It was completely organic - people sending e-mails and burning CDs. It's pretty amazing that it can go from basically nowhere to heavy rotation around the world, purely by word of mouth."
Mash-up producers reside in a legal limbo, constantly fearful of cease-and-desist letters from record-label lawyers. "Generally, the reaction from artists is universally positive, and if you're lucky the label will ignore it. I mashed an entire Green Day album, and the label got involved and said: 'This is too much.' But with individual tracks I think they are secretly pleased."
As mash-up producers lack access to master tapes, a degree of technical wizardry is involved. So is this art or just techno-geekery? "It's both. Sometimes it's a flash of inspiration. The Police v Snow Patrol was like that: I was out on my motorbike and it came to me in completed form. Other times you set yourself a specific technical goal to take two tracks and put them together."
Rick O'Shea, the RTÉ 2FM DJ, has championed mash-ups, giving the genre a slot on his afternoon show. "When we first played The Police v Snow Patrol the text reaction was huge. It was our most-requested track. Over the next few days other 2FM DJs started playing it and then other stations. I think it's a real art form to be able to nudge tracks together like that."
Ian Dempsey of Today FM is also experimenting. "You get a really diverse reaction each time you play one. We get people who text in 'That's brilliant' and others will say: 'Two crap songs together makes one really crap song.' I'm fascinated by the technology behind it and the potential of taking two things and making something else. Look at what happened with Christina Aguilera v The Strokes. She was a Disney teen star and then all of a sudden she was with The Strokes and had cred."
Dempsey has also played Delorector, a mash-up by the Irish producer Paul Brewer that mixes Director's Reconnect with Basis of Everything by Delorentos. "I'd never done a mash-up before and put it together in an hour while sitting on the train with my laptop. It was mainly out of divilment," says Brewer.
Richard McDonagh, who manages Director, says the band are not impressed. "We take it in a light-hearted way, but I don't think it does anything for either song. When we heard it first we laughed. It's a fan mixing two tracks - which is nice, but is it good music? That's another question. Mash-ups can be amazing if they are inventive and fun, but this doesn't display any ingenuity at all." But for O'Shea, mash-ups are fun only if they remain amateur. "The moment the record labels get involved and start releasing compilation CDs, that's the point it gets boring." Given that EMI recently released an album of mash-ups by the DJ and producer Mark Vidler, perhaps we're getting close to that point already.
FIVE TOP MASH-UPS
The Police v Snow Patrol:Every Car You Chase
Peggy Lee v Iggy Pop:Passenger Fever
Kylie Minogue v New Order:Can't Get Blue Monday Out Of My Head
Christina Aguilera v The Strokes:A Stroke of Genius
Destiny's Child v Nirvana:Smells Like Teen Booty