the passenger seat

This post is going to be a video post. I suggest you watch every single one of them; I only choose videos to post that I think are worth posting/watching.

I’ve liked Norwegian Recycling ever since I first heard his first mash-up, “How Six Songs Collide”. Norwegian Recycling is Peter Bull, an amateur music producer from Norway who, interestingly enough, currently lives in Byron Bay studing audio engineering. Norwegian Recycling is famous for his mash-ups, where he takes a bunch of popular songs and sticks then together to make one song. He does this by choosing songs with the same chord progression (it’s amazing how many popular songs use the same four chords) and then takes samples of each to make the track. He also mashes the videos of each song together to match up with the lyrics. It’s kind of hard to explain and I’ve done a terrible job explaining it, so you’ll just have to watch and listen for yourself. Below is the aforementioned “How Six Songs Collide”, which includes “I’m Yours” (Jason Mraz), “Collide” (Howie Day), “Superman” (Five For Fighting), “Always Getting Over You” (Angela Ammons), “All That I Need” (Boyzone) and “Here Without You” (3 Doors Down).

This next one is “8 Become 1”, the eight songs being: “Where Is The Love” (Black Eyed Peas), “Crash And Burn” (Savage Garden), “She Will Be Loved” (Maroon 5), “You’re Beautiful” (James Blunt), “It’s OK!” (Atomic Kitten), “With Or Without You” (U2), “Summercat” (Billie The Vision & The Dancers) and “Fair” (Remy Zero).

His most recent mash-up is “Viva La Viral”. I’m sure you can guess what the main song in this one is. It also includes “When You Were Young” (The Killers), “Because Of You” (Kelly Clarkson), “Livin’ On A Prayer” (Bon Jovi), “Walking On A Dream” (Empire Of The Sun), “Starlight” (Muse), “All Of Your Love” (Hellogoodbye).

Many of these have been dubbed “4-Chord Songs”, since each component song uses the same four chords throughout, making the mash-up possible. The Axis Of Awesome, an Australian musical comedy trio, did their own of this on The Footy Show. I really love this one because they use like a million songs. They’re not bad singers for a comedy trio, either.

One of the songs in “Viva La Viral” was “Walking On A Dream” by Empire Of The Sun. I’ve taken a liking to this band recently after hearing them on the radio then downloading their album. The first song I heard of theirs was “We Are The People”, from their first and only album Walking On A Dream, and I really liked it. Empire Of The Sun is an Australian electronic music duo and their style could be described as MGMT-esque; the two bands are very, very similar. They also have a sort of costume theme that could be described as quirky, to say the least, but I actually like their weirdness, even though it’s reminiscent of drag queens and Mardi Gras.

Hmm, I noticed that all three artists I mentioned in this blog are Australian. It seems that we do have some talent, after all. And I mean real talent, not the kind that originates from Neighbours or Australian Idol. No disrespect to those two shows (I used to watch Idol every week, before it got boring), but I’m kind of sick of Natalie Bassingthwaighte and Jessica Mauboy constantly playing on the radio.

But I’ll stop there, before I go into a rant about mainstream music. Maybe another day.

I hope I didn’t overload you with song titles in this blog, but here’s another one:

“Title Track” is from We Have The Facts And We’re Voting Yes by Death Cab For Cutie.

Wow, it’s 2:30am and I don’t feel even the slightest bit tired. I woke up at noon today, so that might be the reason. I’m used to spending about seventeen hours awake each day (8am to 1am), so that’s probably why I don’t feel tired right now since I’ve only been awake for fourteen hours. But then this is pretty normal for a weekend, catching up on sleep by staying up and sleeping in.