All the year's top radio hits in one mashup

The spectacular DJ Earworm has published his annual mashup of the year's top-40 hits, combining them into a single, synthesized earworm, with visual accompaniment.

DJ Earworm Mashup - United State of Pop 2012 (Shine Brighter) (Thanks, Rob!)

• [Flugfrei Jones]

  oof.. and that is all i need to know.

• [Cornan]

  What’s funny is that since I’ve never seen any of these videos or heard these songs this really just seems like a really huge group music video production. The song and video both seem completely plausible as a real stand alone thing.

  • [Seamus Sparticus Jamicus]

    I find it hard to believe that you have never heard of Psy. ;) But I suppose that’s not the point you were making. I was actually thinking that this would make a good stand alone thing too, but the flow of the song wasn’t quite right for my liking.

• [grs]

  That was cool. I liked it. Must have taken a good chunk of time to compile the audio and then splice the video.

  My spoiler, Ellie Goulding’s “Lights” came out in early 2011 (maybe even the end of 2010?).

  • [James Kimbell]

     February 2010, actually.

  • [David Deutsch]

    Gotye’s Somebody That I Used To Know was also released in 2011 – However, both songs only hit mainstream in the states in 2012, so it’s justified.

• [Trig Discipline]

  What a scathing indictment of 2012′s year in music.

  • [Ken Breadner]

    How so? I’m betting that if someone put the effort in, they could do one of these for every year back to 1955.

• [Antinous / Moderator]

  I only recognized a couple of people in that whole thing.  Hold on a minute, my onion’s loose.

• [robcat2075]

  I didn’t need further convincing that hit songs all sound pretty much the same but now i have no doubt.

  • [spejic]

    But something like wouldn’t be possible if songs were all different. So it’s not all bad.

    • [robcat2075]

      That this was possible was good?

  • [David Deutsch]

    It’s called pitch shifting. Also various other technologies. This was a lot of work – the kids on your lawn really do not sound all the same.

  • [Jim Schmidt]

    But that’s the thing – they don’t. Goyte does’t sound anything like One Direction, who doesn’t sound anything like PSY, who doesn’t sound anything like Adele. It’s all in the mixing and editing. (For example: that Taylor Swift “ooh ooh” at the vey beginning of the video was deliberately slowed down and re-pitched to match the “yeah yeah” of the guy that came in next.)

    Sure, there’s some very base things that sound similar, since they’re all digitally mastered music designed to sound good on tiny little earbuds. But each of those performers still has a very different style lyrically and musically.To say that http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJO3ROT-A4E sounds the same as http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UVNT4wvIGY – I just can’t accept that.

    • [bluest_one]

       There is something very similar in the tone of the voice, particularly in the chorus. A certain type of processing which is used an awful lot at the moment.

    • [tubacat]

       One difference is that, even though I’d never listened to either before, I made it through all of the Gotye one (though without a strong desire to ever hear it again), and maybe 10 seconds of the other one (One Direction?)

      I do wonder sometimes how much of my a(nti)pathy toward current music is just because we all like what we heard when we were young and hormonal, or whether at least some of the music from then really was better…

      • [BillStewart2012]

        No, 90% of the music back then was crap, just like 90% of the music today is crap.  But it was our crappy music, and we’ve had the opportunity to keep the better stuff, as well as the stuff that wasn’t very good but we were having a good time when it was playing anyway.

  • [Andrew Whitacre]

    Indeed, and not limited to pop. It’s basically any music intended for people to join into — pop, blues, Irish. The “Four Chord Song” comedy bit is a great primer. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I

• [coweatyou]

  Partial to the Pop Danthology myself (also, it has awesome annotations):  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If5MF4wm1T8

  • [Ken Breadner]

    That was impressive.

• [orangedesperado]

  This is giving me a panic attack. I feel like I am at the mall..

• [EarthtoGeoff]

  Miami’s Club Mansion actually meant to book DJ Earworm, not DJ Shadow. Easy enough mistake to make.

• [Asep Komarudin]

  I think it is an extraordinary progress …

• [euansmith]

  Very much the sum of its parts.

  Can someone please write a virus that destroys every copy of autotuner on the planet and mindwipes its creators?

  PS: Well done to DJ Earworm. Its good to see someone trying to do something creative and ironic with today’s oatmeal pap.

  • [Bryce Anderson]

    Autotuning seems to be the biggest difference between the music I grew up with and the music these damned kids these days listen to.  It sounds terrible to me, and I honestly shudder at the not-talentedness of today’s pop stars if the autotuning is making them sound better.

    • [hugh crawford]

      So what’s the difference between autotuning and vocoders, other than the fact that autotuning seems to only have a chipmunk patch?

      • [euansmith]

        Vocoder was terrible too (outside of about one ELO track). However Vocoder was a novelty where as Autotune appears to be all pervasive. It is the musical equivalent of Reality TV. :D

    • [euansmith]

      It may just be the producers who are at fault. I’ve heard a number of (modern) R&B singers working a capella and thought they sounded excellent, only to then hear the over produced drivel released in their names’ by their record companies and shudder.

      Kids, eh…

• [tw1515tw]

  They forgot the Russian Grannies http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKNRGc71hjc

• [quantize]

  ouch had to press stop, it was like hearing a big mac having the components taken out and put back in again. It’s shit with or without pickles.

  • [euansmith]

    Just like the current Tory Government.

• [giantasterisk]

  I didn’t know until I’d watched this that Janelle Monae had a radio hit this year. Good for her. I really only know one of her songs (Tightrope) but the video for it leads me to believe she’s that rare female pop star — kind of a geeky badass who isn’t relying on her sexiness to make her interesting. Like a female Andre 3000.

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    You don’t think that Andre 3000 is relying on sexiness?

    • [euansmith]

      “You know, it doesn’t make you gay if you think Andre’s hot. We all think he’s hot.” 

• [Madeline Ashby]

  I shamelessly adore Earworm’s year-end mashups. They’re like a Cliff’s Notes of pop. You get all of the hooks without having to seriously listen.

  That said, I think the dates aren’t necessarily cheats — Earworm selects songs based on the Billboard Top 100 for the year. So even if a song was released earlier, it might chart later, and he’ll add it for that “year in pop” effect. He’s done it since 2007, and it gets better every year. This one actually works well lyrically. And I still listen to 2009 on a regular basis.

• [Professor59]

  This was amazing.  Even the crappy songs sounded better.

  • [David Deutsch]

    I was amazed to find, after numerous relistens, that Ke$ha kinda made sense. In context at least.

    (Although I still maintain that her early stuff isn’t bad at all.)

• [Andrew P. Bridges]

  40 songs?  That’s a $6,000,000 statutory damages bet on fair use under copyright law….  Just sayin’….. ;-)

  • [Bryce Anderson]

    …per download, I would assume.  /grump

• [anthony626]

  Individually, I despise every single one of these songs but by mashing them all up to one 4 minute medley they become tolerable.

• [bill_mcgonigle]

  neat.  One caught my attention.  I just sent my daughter an e-mail:

  “this is what music videos were like when I was a kid:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0BWlvnBmIE ”

  Moral of the story: MTV is dead.  Love live YouTube.

• [Taylor Jesenick]

  I feel like most of this mix is drowned out by Ke$ha’s song…