Medleys/Mashups - Results and New Ideas

[guitarguy19]

I know there are some other threads on these...but I figured I'd chime in with a few ideas that we're planning to work on, and results from a few we've tried out.

Ones we've tried:

1. Get Lucky / Suit & Tie - Fell flat. HARD. We were surprised...we thought people were going to dig this...it was pretty cool. I think (at least around here) Get Lucky has pretty much fell to the wayside...and maybe Suit & Tie isn't a big enough song to throw into a mashup...? I dunno.

2. Santeria / Billionaire - pretty much can't miss. It works well.

3. Billie Jean / Nirvana - we do a cool thing a la Bruno Mars that blends Smells Like Teen Spirit into Billie Jean at the end...it's pretty fun. Rowdy crowds are going nuts for it. Older dance crowds look a bit confused. We'll probably play (at least the ending part) selectively going forward...but most of the crowds we play to are pretty fun so it'll more than likely make the cut to stick around.

Ones we're thinking about:

1. Moves Like Jagger / Pumped Up Kicks - work perfectly together...and might add a bit of flare to Jagger which on its own is very tired. Not sure if we'll actually do this one or not.

2. Super Freak / Can't Touch This - no brainer to put together. Really excited to add this one! Expecting it to land.

3. ABC / OPP - our bass player is really excited about this one. I think it could work but I've got one toe on the fence. It'll be fun to do...but I wonder how it'll land becuase although OPP is a good singalong, it's kinda slow and not really danceable from what I can tell.

4. Funky Cold Medina / ????? - Anyone mash this up with anything other than Wild Thing?? Trying to think of a good idea for this one...

 

Feel free to post your medley/mashup ideas and results too!

[Vito Corleone]

Finding mashups/medley that work is an art form in and of itself.  We try a lot of ideas that sound great on paper and are fun to play but end up falling flat.   They are magical when they work great.  Most of the time they end up being little more than just 'interesting'.

1) Our gold standard for mashups has been the "Stayin' Alive/Another Brick In The Wall" mashup we do.   Kills.. Every.  Time.   The reason it works so well (I've decided) is that both songs are widely familiar, both songs are from the same era, and while they are nearly identical in many respects they appeal to different audiences who, yet, still know both songs.   Every time we do it we can easily see both the surprise -- and then the joy of discovery-- people have at how well the two songs fit together.  Plus we weave them in-and-out of each other pretty cleverly.   But we'll never hit that magic again, I suspect.

2) We always follow this up by going right into a medley of "Rapper's Delight/Good Times/Get Lucky".   People like this but I suspect it's strength is largely due to it immediately following up the previous mashup (we consider the whole bit one long piece).   You're right that Get Lucky isn't what it was a few months ago, but we still get a nice response with it.  I think people dig how well it flows out of Good Times, which they aren't really expecting.  We've just given them 10 minutes of disco classics and this new piece flows seamlessly.  We only play about half of any of those three.  Everybody loves the first few lines of "Rappers", but nobody much cares about it after that.   And too much of "Good Times" isn't one.

3) We've had good results with mashing up "Good Feelin'/Die Young" along with bits of the guitar solo from "Peace of Mind".   Everyone recognizes that guitar riff and like hearing it.   But once either of those other songs dies out, the medley will be done.  And "Die Young" is dying.

4) "Rock you Like A Hurricane/S&M".   Sounded great in rehearsal but never got more than a 'meh' response on stage. But, in fairness, we didn't work it out enough at enough gigs to really see where we could go with it.   Sometimes these mashups take some revising-as-you-go.   You sense what the audience digs and doesn't dig about it and adjust accordingly.  We didn't do it with this one and just dropped it after a couple of shows.   Right now one of our singers is convinced that a mashup of "S&M" and "Bad Girls" would work.   I'm not so convinced, but we'll probably give that one a try.

5) "That's Not My Name/Mickey".   More a medley than a mashup for us (except at the very end where we sing both chorus on top of each other),  this didn't work that well when we played the songs in that order.   So we reversed them, playing Mickey first--which packs the dance floor better-- and it's been much more successful.

6) "Born This Way/Express Yourself/You Spin Me Round".   Another one that's more a medley than a mashup (except that we reprise the chorus of Born This Way at the end of the other two songs) that's always worked really well for us.   I keep expecting "Born" to die out, but after a period of several months where it was fairly dead, we got a much better response from it in 2013 than we did in 2012.  I think people were sick of it for awhile, and now they're ok with it again.   It also helped that we shortened how much time we spent playing "Born" and going into the next bit quicker.

7)  We do a long medley of "Dynamite/California Gurls/We Found Love/Low/Party Rock Anthem/Good Vibrations" that always kills but is really just a medley.  There's not much "mashing" going on.   I'm not sure how well all these songs would still do as standalones anymore, but in this medley they all do really, really well.  We don't play much more than half of any of the songs. A get-out-and-move-on-to-the-next-one-before-people-get-sick-of-it deal.  15 solid minutes of dancefloor mania.

We've tossed around the idea of ABC/OPP for a long time now but never went for it, so I'm curious to hear how it works out for you.  We'd likely just continue to play "ABC" as is and just throw the "OPP" chorus over the top of it.   I think we'd probably also toss bits of "I Want You Back" in there as well.

[wheresgrant3]

 

The ONLY reason why we play Suit & Tie at all is b/c our singer JD kills it... especially the rap/3rd verse part. Otherwise the song is crickets. It hasn't gotten a ton of airplay on the radio. I'd love to replace this with Holy Grail. 

 

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guitarguy19 wrote:

 

 

I know there are some other threads on these...but I figured I'd chime in with a few ideas that we're planning to work on, and results from a few we've tried out.

 

Ones we've tried:

 

1. Get Lucky / Suit & Tie - Fell flat. HARD. We were surprised...we thought people were going to dig this...it was pretty cool. I think (at least around here) Get Lucky has pretty much fell to the wayside...and maybe Suit & Tie isn't a big enough song to throw into a mashup...? I dunno.

 

2. Santeria / Billionaire - pretty much can't miss. It works well.

 

3. Billie Jean / Nirvana - we do a cool thing a la Bruno Mars that blends Smells Like Teen Spirit into Billie Jean at the end...it's pretty fun. Rowdy crowds are going nuts for it. Older dance crowds look a bit confused. We'll probably play (at least the ending part) selectively going forward...but most of the crowds we play to are pretty fun so it'll more than likely make the cut to stick around.

 

Ones we're thinking about:

 

1. Moves Like Jagger / Pumped Up Kicks - work perfectly together...and might add a bit of flare to Jagger which on its own is very tired. Not sure if we'll actually do this one or not.

 

2. Super Freak / Can't Touch This - no brainer to put together. Really excited to add this one! Expecting it to land.

 

3. ABC / OPP - our bass player is really excited about this one. I think it could work but I've got one toe on the fence. It'll be fun to do...but I wonder how it'll land becuase although OPP is a good singalong, it's kinda slow and not really danceable from what I can tell.

 

4. Funky Cold Medina / ????? - Anyone mash this up with anything other than Wild Thing?? Trying to think of a good idea for this one...

 

 

 

Feel free to post your medley/mashup ideas and results too!

---

 

We just strung together a medley featuring 'Safe & Sound (Cap Cities), The Other Side (Jason Derulo), Tonight Tonight (Hot Chelle Rae), I Like It (Icona Pop). We're late on a bunch of the songs and this is stuffed in our 1 set opener but it's OK filler. All of the songs have been recent radio hits over the last 2 years. 

 

 

[Vito Corleone]

Some of the guys in the band were really hot on the idea of mashing up "Billie Jean" with "Hella Good".   Musically it would work as the drum beats and tempos are nearly identical.   I shot the idea down because "Billie Jean" serves a very specific purpose in our setlist and mashing in "Hella Good" would likely spoil that.

But that might be an idea that would work for another band with a different situation?

[TrickyBoy]

I thought of one at lunch on Saturday (feel free to steal).  The Phil Collins version of You Can't Hurry Love came on and I swore it was the beginning of Jet's Are You Gonna Be My Girl.  They'd go together perfectly.

And a random aside, I don't really consider something like Good Times and Rappers Delight together a "Mashup".  They're the same song.  To me a mashup is taking completely disparate songs and making them work together.  Sweet Home Alabama and Jump Around is one we do.  Tik Tok, Ice Ice Baby and Smells Like Teen Spirit is another.

But we've moved away from doing mashups.  As much fun as they are, we find that many of them go over people's heads.  We're better off with medleys, which we do a ton of.  We Got The Beat -> Hey Mickey goes over well.  Everybody Talks -> I Want You To Want Me -> What I Like About You -> Walking on Sunshine is our opening medley most nights.  Your Love -> Jesse's Girl -> Raise Your Glass -> Teenage Dream is another.

[TrickyBoy]

 

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guido61 wrote:

 

 

Finding mashups/medley that work is an art form in and of itself.  We try a lot of ideas that sound great on paper and are fun to play but end up falling flat.   They are magical when they work great.  Most of the time they end up being little more than just 'interesting'.

 

1) Our gold standard for mashups has been the "Stayin' Alive/Another Brick In The Wall" mashup we do.   Kills.. Every.  Time.   The reason it works so well (I've decided) is that both songs are widely familiar, both songs are from the same era, and while they are nearly identical in many respects they appeal to different audiences who, yet, still know both songs.   Every time we do it we can easily see both the surprise -- and then the joy of discovery-- people have at how well the two songs fit together.  Plus we weave them in-and-out of each other pretty cleverly.   But we'll never hit that magic again, I suspect.

 

2) We always follow this up by going right into a medley of "Rapper's Delight/Good Times/Get Lucky".   People like this but I suspect it's strength is largely due to it immediately following up the previous mashup (we consider the whole bit one long piece).   You're right that Get Lucky isn't what it was a few months ago, but we still get a nice response with it.  I think people dig how well it flows out of Good Times, which they aren't really expecting.  We've just given them 10 minutes of disco classics and this new piece flows seamlessly.  We only play about half of any of those three.  Everybody loves the first few lines of "Rappers", but nobody much cares about it after that.   And too much of "Good Times" isn't one.

 

3) We've had good results with mashing up "Good Feelin'/Die Young" along with bits of the guitar solo from "Peace of Mind".   Everyone recognizes that guitar riff and like hearing it.   But once either of those other songs dies out, the medley will be done.  And "Die Young" is dying.

 

4) "Rock you Like A Hurricane/S&M".   Sounded great in rehearsal but never got more than a 'meh' response on stage. But, in fairness, we didn't work it out enough at enough gigs to really see where we could go with it.   Sometimes these mashups take some revising-as-you-go.   You sense what the audience digs and doesn't dig about it and adjust accordingly.  We didn't do it with this one and just dropped it after a couple of shows.   Right now one of our singers is convinced that a mashup of "S&M" and "Bad Girls" would work.   I'm not so convinced, but we'll probably give that one a try.

 

5) "That's Not My Name/Mickey".   More a medley than a mashup for us (except at the very end where we sing both chorus on top of each other),  this didn't work that well when we played the songs in that order.   So we reversed them, playing Mickey first--which packs the dance floor better-- and it's been much more successful.

 

6) "Born This Way/Express Yourself/You Spin Me Round".   Another one that's more a medley than a mashup (except that we reprise the chorus of Born This Way at the end of the other two songs) that's always worked really well for us.   I keep expecting "Born" to die out, but after a period of several months where it was fairly dead, we got a much better response from it in 2013 than we did in 2012.  I think people were sick of it for awhile, and now they're ok with it again.   It also helped that we shortened how much time we spent playing "Born" and going into the next bit quicker.

 

7)  We do a long medley of "Dynamite/California Gurls/We Found Love/Low/Party Rock Anthem/Good Vibrations" that always kills but is really just a medley.  There's not much "mashing" going on.   I'm not sure how well all these songs would still do as standalones anymore, but in this medley they all do really, really well.  We don't play much more than half of any of the songs. A get-out-and-move-on-to-the-next-one-before-people-get-sick-of-it deal.  15 solid minutes of dancefloor mania.

 

We've tossed around the idea of ABC/OPP for a long time now but never went for it, so I'm curious to hear how it works out for you.  We'd likely just continue to play "ABC" as is and just throw the "OPP" chorus over the top of it.   I think we'd probably also toss bits of 

"I Want You Back"

in there as well.

---

 

I've wanted to do that for a while.  We've done it acoustically a couple times and it went over great.

[Vito Corleone]

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TrickyBoy wrote:

 

And a random aside, I don't really consider something like Good Times and Rappers Delight together a "Mashup".  They're the same song.

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Yep.  That's why I called it a "medley".  

And, like you, we're sticking more towards medley's rather than mashups these days as, like you said, the risk of going over peoples heads with a mashup is more trouble than it's worth.

One thing we've taken to doing is doing a medley and then mashing up the choruses at the end of it to sort of tie it all in together.  A bit "Broadway" perhaps, but we like it. 

[wheresgrant3]

 

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TrickyBoy wrote:

 

 

 

 

But we've moved away from doing mashups.  As much fun as they are, we find that many of them go over people's heads. 

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Yup.... we have the same experience. Nuts In A Blender developed into a medley band... 4-5 stand alone tunes and a bunch of long strung medleys make up our setlist. Some have 11-12 pieces of songs and are 20-25 minutes in length. Personally I think that is too long (people need a break after 20 minutes) but our draw has always been keeping the dance floor filled and the music and energy pumping. Mashups can be insanely clever and if executed well they can be real crowd pleasers. We haven't had a any success mashing one song's lyrics over another songs melody. Pour Some Sugar on Me and I Want Rock & Roll was an early experiment that was clever,.... we took the verse & chorus of I Want Rock N Roll and switched them back and forth with Pour Some Sugar. You hear it once... hurrah. But the 4th time you just want to hear both songs play out.