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?