Try Whistling This



Via friend and frequent blog commenter Dave, I was turned onto the above mash-up clip (originally posted at EW's Popwatch) by BunnyGreenhouse. The whole project is a dazzling act of layering: Greehouse has taken a sonic mash-up by Girl Talk, which itself blends a dozen or so artists' work into one striking aural collage, and spliced together clips from the various songs' videos.

(Greenhouse's page, linked above, has many more such videos for Girl Talk's mash-ups, including this mind-blowing blend of The Police, The Beastie Boys, Busta Rhymes, Paula Cole, Queen and The Jackson 5 that has to be seen and heard to be believed):

The end result is the video-as-footnote, a striking exploration of the relationship between sound, image, and memory: how many of the song samples would we recognize if we couldn't see DeeLite, Nirvana, Salt N Pepa, The Beach Boys, etc? And if BunnyGreenhouse can use the visual as a form of critical exegesis, how might we reverse the equation, and finally find a way to make criticism that feels like a pop song?

Comments

Anonymous said…
Isn't that just fantastic? I watched that top one twice and still couldn't isolate aurally what I did visually, e.g. Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody."

Best use of Deee-Lite, outside of Deee-Lite itself, ever.
Brian Doan said…
I know, I really love it. I've had fun looking at some of the other clips, too-- Greenhouse is really talented.
Anonymous said…
I love your point here about aural v. visual recognition. Part of the fun of the videos for me has been that when I've heard the songs sans visuals, I've frequently been unable to identify the exact origin of a certain musical phrase (but knew it sounded vaguely familiar). In a way, I wonder if that's how most pop music functions anyway--striking a note of familiarity in the listener, but bending that note enough to sound novel and fresh.

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