World Go Boom
December 26, 2011 11:03 AM   Subscribe

DJ Earworm's United States Of Pop 2011, entitled World Go Boom, mashes up the 25 most popular songs from the past year into one infectious song, just like we've come to expect from his previous efforts.

Full list of videos/songs sampled, plus lyrics, are on that YouTube page.

The mp3 can be downloaded here.
posted by hippybear (52 comments total) 19 users marked this as a favorite
 
yessssss
posted by The Whelk at 11:08 AM on December 26, 2011 [2 favorites]


One of those cases in which the whole is even worse than the sum of its parts.
posted by falameufilho at 11:20 AM on December 26, 2011 [2 favorites]


Yay! Love! (Still love 2009 most of all though.)
posted by yellowbinder at 11:21 AM on December 26, 2011


I think it's fun and better than his previous efforts.
posted by robstercraw at 11:21 AM on December 26, 2011


One of those cases in which the whole is even worse than the sum of its parts.

What was awesome is how Hippybear held you down and made you listen to something you knew you were going to dislike.
posted by beaucoupkevin at 11:24 AM on December 26, 2011 [13 favorites]


The skills required to seamlessly stitch the samples into a new, pretty good, song - I admire them.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 11:30 AM on December 26, 2011 [2 favorites]


beaucoupkevin: "What was awesome is how Hippybear held you down and made you listen to something you knew you were going to dislike."

No, I actually had high hopes that someone would mash up a bunch of shitty songs into something brilliant. Alas, it wasn't the case. I think people really enjoy autotune now, maybe it's an acquired taste, like fisting.
posted by falameufilho at 11:32 AM on December 26, 2011 [5 favorites]


I guess I basically didn't hear the top 25 hits of this year. Also, to me it sounded less like the mashups I am used to and more like dropping a bunch of vocal samples while the background music doesn't change much. Since I didn't know this year's songs, I listened to the one from 2009, which seemed to me like a bunch of vocal samples pasted over the chords from "I gotta feeling." I guess this approach achieves something that sounds more like a regular song, but it doesn't seem to really reflect the different sounds that well. I think for me something more evenly weighted would be more revealing about the current state of pop music.
posted by snofoam at 11:39 AM on December 26, 2011


actually this is quite lovely.
posted by PinkMoose at 11:39 AM on December 26, 2011


Better in my opinion than the 2010 effort (based on the slightly better music this year) but nowhere near the absolute awesomeness that fell in his lap in 2009.
posted by deezil at 11:45 AM on December 26, 2011


This is the year I rediscovered my love of pop music. There have been a lot of great songs this past year and I've found myself singing along in the car or on humming on the bus or just breaking out into a smile whenever a favorite catchy tune comes on. It's infectious, it's fun.

It's also interesting to note the rise of Ke$ha, LMFAO and the Decentralized Dance Party (DDP) and the rise of partying as an ethos. You saw a bit of this at the various Occupy movements and sites throughout the year too. My cultural analysis skills are weak, but I can only think it's a reaction to the current economic and political climate throughout the world.
posted by formless at 11:46 AM on December 26, 2011 [2 favorites]


I'm more impressed these last two years with his skill in mashing up the various videos than with the song itself. He's still my favorite mashup guy though.
posted by PapaLobo at 12:21 PM on December 26, 2011


In terms of musicality, I really enjoyed Madeon's Pop Culture. Especially since he ostensibly "performed" it live via a Launchpad in Ableton. Which is pretty awesome. (The music video mashup for it is awesome too.)
posted by disillusioned at 12:34 PM on December 26, 2011 [1 favorite]


He's a gifted man.
posted by hermitosis at 12:55 PM on December 26, 2011


Wow. I didn't recognize anything until Adele. Having a toddler has really affected my ability to passively absorb culture. Or maybe it's just from living in Canada....
posted by showmethecalvino at 1:03 PM on December 26, 2011 [1 favorite]


I liked it.

As it is every year though, it's really the Stargate/Dr Luke/Max Martin/Red:One/Smeezingtons mashup, because 90% of the song is from their productions with a little bit of the other tracks mixed in. The advantage of doing it that way is that their tracks are all essentially interchangeable -- straight 4 to the floor beats, and every one of them in the same key with the same chord changes, almost.

Stargate, Dr Luke, Max martin, Red One and the Smeezingtons produced the following tracks this year:

Bruno Mars - Grenade -- The Smeezingtons

Bruno Mars - The Lazy Song -- The Smeezingtons

Britney Spears - Till The World Ends -- Dr Luke, Max Martin

Cee Lo Green - F* You -- The Smeezingtons

Jennifer Lopez - On The Floor -- RedOne


Katy Perry - Firework -- Stargate

Katy Perry - E.T. -- Dr Luke, Max Martin

Katy Perry - Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.) -- Dr Luke, Max Martin

Pink - Raise Your Glass - Max martin


Rihanna - S&M
 - Stargate
posted by empath at 2:07 PM on December 26, 2011 [1 favorite]


2011 is the year my seven-year-old boy discovered FM radio. He's completely unashamed to say he likes "pop," which freaked me out the first time I heard that, because it came on the heels of him telling me the X I was playing at that moment was just too hard for him and that the middle-ground Luna and Shins that used to keep the peace in the car were boring and that Jeff Mangum is just a bad singer. So he didn't mean "pop" even in the slightly expansive sense of "the set of things that includes 'the station for Portland's Party Hits' along with 94.7 ('alternative Portland')." He meant pop like Katy Perry and Britney Spears and Lady Gaga pop. With the dancing and stuff.

So we play more of a pair of Portland's pop stations now, and some of it makes me grind my teeth because it's just so stupid and bad that it upsets me, especially after going for years and years and years with having no idea at all what was going on in (current) pop music. There have been moments where I just sit and fume because I hate what's on at that moment, but it's not always my turn to pick and I remember what it felt like to be forced to listen to "WFRN: Your Easy Listening Christian Friend in Elkhart" and I'm not going to do that even though it's my turn to be boss of the radio: The child has a preference, he's been exposed to some alternatives, and that's all there is to say about it.

I'd think this mashup would make me fume all the more because it's a distillation of all the year's annoyances down to their most essential bits, but it doesn't. It's sort of entertaining, and it'll help me turn the times it's not my turn to control the in-car media into a game: "Will this make it into into United States of Pop 2012? How will it fit in?" That'll be good for the first five or ten repetitions of each song, anyhow.
posted by mph at 3:35 PM on December 26, 2011 [2 favorites]


It sounds like everything I hear over the speakers when I walk into a retail store, so I guess it is a success.

Like a few people above, I admire the skill that went into blending all this together, but it sounds to me like the generic drum-machine-autotune-filtered-vocals that make me uninterested in pop music.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 3:52 PM on December 26, 2011


Great! Thanks for posting.
posted by chinston at 4:17 PM on December 26, 2011


I'm looking forward to listening to this when I get away from the older family who would have no idea what to do with it even without Cee Lo Green.
posted by immlass at 4:22 PM on December 26, 2011


It's nowhere near as great as his earlier attempts. I think it's more the source material he was working with. Even Party on the Floor a few months back ago was still in top form.
posted by Talez at 4:36 PM on December 26, 2011


Awesome. Thanks for posting this, hippybear. I've posted a couple of Earworm fpp's to the Blue before and usually enjoy his work.

I liked this, but prefer some of his older stuff. However, I do suspect this one will grow on me over time.

It was nice to see Pink get more screen and audio time in this mix. He usually gives her short shrift.

One odd note... I found the change in pitch and speed he gave to Britney Spears 'Till the World Ends track a bit jarring. Here's a link to the Spears' track on the Earworm video, and the same clip from the original Spears video. Pretty dramatic difference there.
posted by zarq at 5:51 PM on December 26, 2011


I am sick to death of mashups but this is actually quite an impressive feat. Then again, Earworm always delivers. No One Takes Your Freedom still blows me away.
posted by roger ackroyd at 6:08 PM on December 26, 2011 [3 favorites]


LOL! i've had NO ONE TAKES YOUR FREEDOM in rotation for years and now i find out it's DJ Earworm. thanks roger. i actually love mashups and NOTYF is, as opposed to his latest, the real thing.
posted by liza at 6:23 PM on December 26, 2011


Mmm. I've always been conflicted about Earworm as a mashup artist. On one hand, he was one of the first to do a year-end mashup compilation, and arguably the first to do it really well. He deserves a lot of credit for that. On the other hand, his tracks tend to be extremely hit-or-miss — and when they're misses, they tend to be bad misses. He never seems to have mastered the ability to keep everything in the right key, and even put out a few tracks with bad timing, which really should never happen on a prerecorded mashup. If his book is anything to go by, his production process is somewhat primitive.

The United State of Pop mashups are a lot of fun, but I think I might stop short of calling Earworm a good mashup artist. Others, like Girl Talk and Maedon are much more competent masters of the craft.

I thought this year's mashup was okay, but definitely agree with the complaint that it heavily features the same 5 or 6 songs, while barely getting in full words from any of the others (which made the list of "others" feel a lot shorter). I think I heard about a millisecond of Party Rock Anthem. The editing was way more frenetic than usual.

Also, what's the deal with "late-breaking" 2010 hits featured this year? Cee Lo's Fuck You was pretty darn popular in 2010 (although that may be observational bias, because the chart history seems to indicate that it did indeed one have one of the slowest chart climbs ever, but still.... I don't associate that track with 2011 at all). The mashup's "foundation" track, "Firework," and the other two featured Katy Perry tracks were released way back in August 2010.

Because I have nothing better to do, here's a chronology of when the various tracks featured in this year's mashup first became commercially available:
    2010
  • Cee Lo Green – F* You (Aug 19 2010)
  • Katy Perry – Firework (Aug 24 2010)
  • Katy Perry – E.T. (Aug 24 2010)
  • Katy Perry – Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.) (Aug 24 2010)
  • Foster the People – Pumped Up Kicks (Sept 14 2010)
  • Maroon 5 – Moves Like Jagger (Sep 15 2010)
  • Bruno Mars – Grenade (Sept 28 2010)
  • Bruno Mars – The Lazy Song (Oct 4 2010)
  • Pink – Raise Your Glass (Oct 6 2010)
  • Jeremih feat. 50 cent – Down On Me (Oct 12 2010)
  • Lupe Fiasco – The Show Goes On (Oct 26 2010)
  • Rihanna – S&M (Nov 12 2010)
  • OneRepublic – Good Life (Nov 17 2010)
  • Nicki Minaj – Super Bass (Nov 19 2010)
  • Enrique Iglesias – Tonight (I’m Lovin’ You) (Nov 22 2010)
  • Adele – Rolling In The Deep (Nov 29 2010)
  • Black Eyed Peas – Just Can’t Get Enough (Nov 26 2010)
    2011
  • Adele – Someone Like You (Jan 24 2011)
  • LMFAO – Party Rock Anthem (Jan 25 2011)
  • Jennifer Lopez – On The Floor (Feb 8 2011)
  • Lady Gaga – Born This Way (Feb 11 2011)
  • Britney Spears – Till The World Ends (Mar 4 2011)
  • Pitbull – Give Me Everything (March 18 2011)
  • LMFAO – Sexy and I Know It (Jun 21 2011)
  • Rihanna – We Found Love (Sept 22 2011)
So, basically, this is a compilation of songs from the second half of 2010, the first 3 months of 2011, and 2 other songs.
posted by schmod at 6:36 PM on December 26, 2011


He just uses the billboard top 25.

Don't get me wrong. What he does here isn't easy, and I wouldn't even want to try it-mostly because I don't like most of the songs.

He does rely on the crutch of using dr Luke and max martin tracks as the backbone, because it woul be kind of impossible to do this otherwise.
posted by empath at 6:40 PM on December 26, 2011


Yeah, this has nothing to do with when songs were made commercially available.
It doesn't match Billboard's U.S. year-end list, since I'm basing it off of the weekly lists this year in order to more reflect what was actually popular during 2011. Because of the Billboard's early cut off date and their emphasis on chart longevity, songs that are released after August are either split between the two years or moved to the next year. I also don't want a track appearing two years in a row just because it happened to be peaking right at the cutoff. From my perspective, a song for a year-end mix belongs in the year it will be remembered from, not the year it ended its run. For instance, "We Found Love", which has been #1 for the last 8 weeks of the year, is nowhere to be seen in Billboard's Top 25, and may not make it next year either due to the bias of the cut-off date. As a bonus I am able to spend more time on the mixes and more fully realize them.*
*from the YouTube page

Here is a complete list of all the #1 songs from 2011 according to the Billboard Hot 100 chart. There are only 14 songs listed there, so he's obviously using lower chart positions. (I believe that Fuck You was #2 sometime in February.)

You can browse the entire year of Hot 100 charts starting here with the Jan 8 2011 chart. (Navigation toward the top of the page.)
posted by hippybear at 7:07 PM on December 26, 2011


This really wasn't that great a year for pop. I mean, there were some bright spots (IE Cee Lo Green, Foster The People, Adele before they overexposed her songs to the point they became unbearable), but they were mostly stuff that was different from the mainstream's tropes (dance songs about going to the club). I think we're going to need some new fad to blow out the cobwebs.

And since I'm the guy who posted too much Gaga, let me just be on the record as stating she's kinda 2009. Her new stuff is generally mediocre, particularly the tracks they went with as singles. And her act isn't shocking anymore, so she doesn't have that much more to go on.
posted by mccarty.tim at 9:51 PM on December 26, 2011


I am totally not going through the list of songs to listen to the ones I don't recognize, so I will know them from this point forward.

It's not like I'm still that kid that felt totally lost in school the day after the VMAs, or anything.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 9:52 PM on December 26, 2011


And this is in terms of songs getting big on the top 40s station I listen to in the car to keep in an ideal state of alertness and non-boredom.

A really interesting story on NPR gets me thinking too much, and that's distracting on long trips or places where I need to navigate more than say, getting to work. And a completely boring station, like, say, one that's in a foreign language or that reads the bible, gets my mind going in odd directions to the point I lose focus. A crappy Top 40s station is the ideal, as the music is just good enough to keep me from thinking too little or too much.
posted by mccarty.tim at 9:56 PM on December 26, 2011


This share was awesome! Always in the mood for new music.

THANKS!
posted by Samizdata at 9:59 PM on December 26, 2011


And since I'm the guy who posted too much Gaga, let me just be on the record as stating she's kinda 2009. Her new stuff is generally mediocre, particularly the tracks they went with as singles. And her act isn't shocking anymore, so she doesn't have that much more to go on.

If Gaga is "the new Madonna", she's got two more albums to go before we get her "Like A Prayer", which IMO was the first real album-length artistic statement which had literary depth beyond being a culture-shocker pop star. I look forward to seeing that from Gaga, because she has real gifts as a song writer. I just don't like some of the choices she's made. (Compare/contrast the solo piano performance of Edge Of Glory she gave on Howard Stern with the single/album track. Something went horribly wrong in the realization of that song, I think.)
posted by hippybear at 10:00 PM on December 26, 2011 [1 favorite]


Gaga's Workshop was kind of amazing.
posted by The Whelk at 10:03 PM on December 26, 2011 [1 favorite]


I think it's the Lucas Effect.

Now that she's prestigious and rich, she's either less receptive to input or people are more afraid to challenge her decisions.
posted by mccarty.tim at 10:03 PM on December 26, 2011


Or maybe she has a crappy choice of producers. I have no idea how hands on she is these days.
posted by mccarty.tim at 10:04 PM on December 26, 2011


The last album has grown on me, Americano in particular, but there is a rushed out of the gate feel- the versions played live seem better thought out.

That sax solo is still stupid however.
posted by The Whelk at 10:11 PM on December 26, 2011


I do have to say, I'm amazed at how many of the videos/songs in this mashup turned up as part of the new episodes of Pop Up Video. Watching that was a joy for me, because it had such a broad range of musical styles and blend of older and newer videos. Made me wish we had an actual music video station available again.

(The video for Bruno Mars' The Lazy Song is hysterical and really entertaining.)
posted by hippybear at 10:17 PM on December 26, 2011


Oops. forgot to link: Bruno Mars - The Lazy Song
posted by hippybear at 10:19 PM on December 26, 2011


Pop Up Video version.
posted by hippybear at 10:21 PM on December 26, 2011


but there is a rushed out of the gate feel- the versions played live seem better thought out.

In some circles, this is known as "The U2 Effect".
posted by hippybear at 10:29 PM on December 26, 2011




In some circles, this is known as "The U2 Effect".

They really are better live.

12 minute "Bad" rendition from Live Aid, "Fuck the Revolution" and the 2002 Halftime performance of Where the Streets Have No Name.

All of which are definitely better than their studio recorded counterparts.

That being said the best live performance in history will always belong to Queen at Live Aid. That rendition of Radio Gaga will never be matched.
posted by Talez at 11:07 PM on December 26, 2011


quoting myself verbatim:

"first listen of dj earworm track:

god i know studio acapellas are barely released nowadays, but can’t you do anything to make them sound clearer? (probably not, which makes the constraint of the track (use the top 25 songs on billboard at year’s end, no matter what) harder)

i need to relisten a few more times because I never love them on first listen, but i don’t think he was able to get a single studio acapella this time around :c"

What you're hearing, Metafilter commenters, is not "autotune" but artifacting from separating the vocals from the instrumentals by hand. Which is heavily distracting.

The 2009 one's probably my favorite one he's put out, so I'd recommend giving that a listen if this one's left you cold.
posted by flatluigi at 5:24 AM on December 27, 2011 [1 favorite]


Because I have nothing better to do either:

2010
Cee Lo Green – F* You (Aug 19 2010)
Katy Perry – Firework (Aug 24 2010)
Katy Perry – E.T. (Aug 24 2010)
Katy Perry – Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.) (Aug 24 2010)
Foster the People – Pumped Up Kicks (Sept 14 2010)
Maroon 5 – Moves Like Jagger (Sep 15 2010)
Bruno Mars – Grenade (Sept 28 2010)
Bruno Mars – The Lazy Song (Oct 4 2010)
Pink – Raise Your Glass (Oct 6 2010)
Jeremih feat. 50 cent – Down On Me (Oct 12 2010)
Lupe Fiasco – The Show Goes On (Oct 26 2010)
Rihanna – S&M (Nov 12 2010)
OneRepublic – Good Life (Nov 17 2010)
Nicki Minaj – Super Bass (Nov 19 2010)
Enrique Iglesias – Tonight (I’m Lovin’ You) (Nov 22 2010)
Adele – Rolling In The Deep (Nov 29 2010)
Black Eyed Peas – Just Can’t Get Enough (Nov 26 2010)

2011
Adele – Someone Like You (Jan 24 2011)
LMFAO – Party Rock Anthem (Jan 25 2011)
Jennifer Lopez – On The Floor (Feb 8 2011)
Lady Gaga – Born This Way (Feb 11 2011)
Britney Spears – Till The World Ends (Mar 4 2011)
Pitbull – Give Me Everything (March 18 2011)
LMFAO – Sexy and I Know It (Jun 21 2011)
Rihanna – We Found Love (Sept 22 2011)

And if you start them all at the same time it sounds.... nothing like DJ Earworm.
posted by Happy Dave at 7:32 AM on December 27, 2011 [2 favorites]


Because none of us has anything better to do:

Earworm's United States 2011 of Pop (Deconstructed) on Spotify
posted by roger ackroyd at 9:31 AM on December 27, 2011 [1 favorite]


Thanks for this - I'm always curious what he'll do but I def agree with the people above who said that they liked 2009 better.
posted by brilliantine at 10:01 AM on December 27, 2011


Now the Kleptones just need to release something new.
posted by drezdn at 10:56 AM on December 27, 2011 [1 favorite]


drezdn, you can tell him on twitter; he's clearly watching for tweets about him.

I was disappointed to see that the 2011 Bootie Mashup (which I just downloaded this afternoon and haven't had a chance to listen to) is missing both Earworm and the Kleptones. I did get a chance to listen to the Earworm mashup finally. I liked it pretty well for something I recognized about two or three songs from. I recognized more of the people in the videos than the actual songs.
posted by immlass at 3:34 PM on December 27, 2011


mccarty.tim: "And her act isn't shocking anymore, so she doesn't have that much more to go on."

You know, I thought the same way for a while, until I heard a few of the (*vastly* better) live renditions of tracks from the new album, and she released the epic 14-minute video for Marry the Night, which is arguably her most creative and artistic production to date, and doesn't rely too heavily on shock value.
posted by schmod at 11:22 PM on December 27, 2011


This has become my favorite year end tradition.
posted by midmarch snowman at 10:38 AM on December 28, 2011


Another reference: Clips of the Top 25 in order.

The order always feels curious to me. The only song below 20 or so that I can remember consciously hearing is "Someone Like You" (which is probably ranked artificially low because it's a relatively recent release.) If you'd asked me whether "Just The Way You Are" or "Moves Like Jagger" was more ubiquitous, I'd probably have said the former and been wrong. And it feels like "Fuck You" has been around for years--I would have sworn I heard it in college, even though this list means it must have come out after graduation.
posted by kagredon at 6:57 PM on December 30, 2011


DJ Lobsterdust 2011 review.
posted by drezdn at 7:59 AM on December 31, 2011


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