Blame It On The Pop

Today's Song: United State Of Pop 2009 - Blame It On The Pop by DJ Earworm

I've recently gotten into remixes. It all started back when I was walking around the San Francisco Virgin Megastore a couple of years ago and I put on some headphones to listen to The Killers' new B-side-filled album, "Sawdust." I saw on the track listing a remix of Mr. Brightside by Thin White Duke (Stuart Price). I was intrigued, so I checked it out. To this day it's still probably my favorite of any remix I've ever heard, though that's hard to definitively say. 

After that day, I started to listen to more remixes. There are a lot of poorly done remixes out there, but every so often you run into some real treasures: M83's remix of Bloc Party's The Pioneers, Hellogoodbye's Here (In Your Arms) [Club Mix], Enmass's remix of Imogen Heap's Hide And Seek, Owl City's Hello Seattle [self-remix], or Shiny Toy Gun's Don't Cry Out [Teenager's Remix]. 

Then remixes led to mashups: multiple songs re-edited and spliced together into one. Mashups, to me, can be more impressive because of the difficulty of combining songs of different keys, tempos, and forms. They're different from remixes in that mashups don't usually change the original mix of the songs they're splicing, but when they're done right I tend to like them better. Imagine this: Green Day, Oasis, Travis, and Aerosmith (technically Eminem's sampling of Aerosmith; but really, there's not really much Eminem there) all in one song. What do you get? A Wonderwall Of Broken Dreams. And if you think that's impressive, try 2009's top 25 pop hits all combined into one, 4 and a half minute segment of complete sweetness. You can hardly believe it, and you can't not like it.  

NOTE: My brother was the one who originally showed me this song. Just thought I'd give credit where it's due...

Symphonies

Featured Song: Symphonies by Dan Black

Some songs you listen to and they make you cry; some make you laugh; others make you feel alive (to put it simply). But most of the time the beauty comes from how each song we love makes us feel emotions we've felt before, but with a new twist. We feel something that is both familiar and yet unique - no other song can make us feel exactly that way. Thus the music we listen to has the power to engender in us seemingly limitless combinations of emotion. 

Once in a rare while though, I come across a song that is undefinable -- it breaks the mold. It doesn't make me feel like other songs do. I feel instead in a way that's both acutely different from anything I've felt before, and yet the nature of the emotion eludes me. I couldn't tell you if the song made me feel happy, sad, empowered...It isn't something you could put your finger on. And yet I strangely find that when I listen to it, whatever emotion I'm experiencing is somehow poignantly accented. It is as if what I'm feeling right then is suddenly beautiful - something that warrants acknowledgment and appreciation. And I feel for a moment that I see the world through new eyes.


Dan Black's Symphonies is one of those songs.