Musician Gregory Todd noticed the similarities among these six country hits…
…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:
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.
Tap to see the source. This is yesterday’s daily New Yorker cartoon, created by Brendan…
C’mon, let it not be Asians this time. Last time was pretty bad. Here’s the…
Jon Stewart’s right, and we’ve been here before. Where we are now, I’ve been before…
Poppies thrive in overturned soil, which is why they bloom in battlefields. I’m in the…
In times of high dudgeon, there’s a tendency to throw integrity out the window. One…
A demonstrator at Texas State University in Austin, Texas on Wednesday, November 6, 2024. Photo…