You know why all pop songs sound the same these days? Because they ARE.

Musician Gregory Todd noticed the similarities among these six country hits…

• Sure Be Cool If You Did by Blake Shelton (released January 2013)
• Close Your Eyes by Parmalee (released February 2014)
• This is How We Roll by Florida Georgia Line featuring Luke Bryan (released February 2014)
• Ready Set Roll by Chase Rice (released November 2013)
• Chillin’ It by Cole Swindell (released August 2013)
• Drunk on You by Luke Bryan (released February 2012)

…so he imported them into Pro Tools and mashed them up into a single, pretty cohesive song. If you’re wondering just how cohesive it was, play the video below and hear for yourself:

Yes, he had to speed up or slow down individual songs so they’d all be at the same tempo and pitch-shift them so that they’d be in the same key, but once that was done, he could create a whole new song by simply cutting and pasting. The songs were so similar — all with the same IV – I – V chord pattern — that they might as well have shared guitar solos:

He saves the best for the end of the new mega-song by layering all of their closing choruses over each other, and wow, it works!

In the notes for the video, Todd writes:

I just want to be clear that this Mashup is all in good fun. I am not bashing these songs. I understand and even appreciate why the “formula” continues to dominate the airwaves- not only in country music, but in pop and other genres as well. I simply enjoy mixing and producing on Pro Tools, and when I heard the striking similarities of these particular hits, I thought it would be fun to throw them all in a mix and see what I could come up with. And it looks like people are having fun with it too, so I couldn’t be happier!

He’s right. One of the problems with the music business is that if you’re a songwriter trying to make a living, you’re faced with this paradox:

• People want to hear something new, and
• At the same time, people want to hear something familiar.

And given these incentives, what do songwriters do? As musically-inclined comedian Bo Burnham says: Repeat stuff!

Regular readers of this blog know that I’m getting married in a couple of months. I’ve been chatting with the guy who’s handling the music for our beach ceremony and I’ve already told him that Johann Pachelbel’s Cliche in D is on the “banned” list. Here’s why:

Ever since taking it up, I’ve been letting a lot of people believe that I can play anything on accordion. That’s actually not true. It’s just that there are really only about 7 or 8 pop songs, and once you learn those chord progressions, you’ve got about 80% of all popular music covered.

To borrow a line from Edna St. Vincent Millay: Music, like life, isn’t one thing after another; it’s the same damn thing over and over.