Contextual incongruity, musical quotations and comedy records

What is a mash-up, first of all? Michael D. Ayers describes a mash-up as a musical production ‘in which the creator takes two or more songs and blends them together’ (Ayers Reference Ayers and Ayers2006, p. 128). Such definitions of mash-ups suggest that the term describes a juxtaposed form, similar to terms like montage and collage. This may mirror the way in which it is used in fields such as film and other forms of visual media to describe art that brings distinct prefabricated sources together.Footnote ² According to this all-inclusive understanding and use of the term, hip-hop music, remixes and other sample-based music productions are all mash-ups. Within the field of music, the term is usually used more narrowly, referring to productions in which two recognisable recordings are synchronised; the vocal tracks of one are combined with the instrumental version of another and no other musical material is added. John Shiga calls this construction ‘the standard “acapella [sic] + instrumental = mash-up” formula’ (Shiga Reference Shiga2007, p. 110), or it might be referred to as the typical A + B form of mash-up. The more pragmatic use of the term mash-up, in other words, points to a particular form of juxtaposition. This definition, though, is also problematic because it is not inclusive enough, since mash-ups have developed into a variety of styles where some producers mash more than two tracks and add their own musical material. Many also associate mash-ups with illegality, since the majority of mash-ups do not seek permission to use the sampled material, which is why ‘mash-up’ is sometimes used synonymously with other terms such as ‘bootleg’ and ‘bastard pop’. Several productions that are not part of this context and employ authorised samples are, however, also referred to as mash-ups and this makes it difficult to reserve the term solely for bootleg art. Instead of signifying illegality or a particular form of juxtaposition, we suggest that the term refers to a distinct musical style characterised by two key elements: musical congruity and contextual incongruity between juxtaposed samples.

It was at the turn of the 21st century that mash-ups began to mushroom into a milieu and the term became identifiable with a particular musical style. This was partly due to the decreasing price of powerful computer hardware and software, as well as the development of specialised music editing sequencer programs such as Sony Acid, which simplified the process of producing mash-ups. Another fundamental factor was the increasing availability of high-speed Internet connections, which made it easier to share and distribute musical files through peer-to-peer (P2P) networks and find a cappella and instrumental versions of songs. Producers like Soulwax (2 Many DJs) from Belgium, and Mark Vidler (Go Home Productions), Richard X (Girls on Top) and Roy Kerr (The Freelance Hellraiser) from the UK ensured that mash-ups became a pop phenomenon. By 2005 MTV had launched the US series Ultimate Mash-Ups, and trend-setting radio stations such as New York's K-Rock, San Francisco's Live 105 and LA's Indie 103 started to broadcast mash-ups (Orlov Reference Orlov2005), which increased the popularity of making and listening to them. Digital technology facilitated the production, distribution and consumption of this aesthetic, but we will argue that blends such as ECC's ‘The Whipped Cream Mixes’ are also examples of mash-ups. Moreover, we will show that the musical style has important roots in comedy records, which also emphasise the contextual incongruity of juxtaposed material.

The incongruity in mash-ups is not only that two individually pre-existing songs are combined and moved from their original contexts; it is also between social conventions. Mash-ups often blend samples from what might be perceived to be resolute categories, such as high and low, serious and playful, black and white, rock and pop. The mash-up producers Mark Vidler and Jeremy Johnson both state that they always try to look for and combine music from very different styles (Preve Reference Preve2006), and Cruger argues, ‘The more disparate the genre-blending is, the better; the best mash-ups blend punk with funk or Top 40 with heavy metal, boosting the tension between slick and raw’ (Cruger Reference Cruger2003). Strictly Kev is known for mash-up mixes such as Raiding the 20th Century (2004) and sees the ability to find incongruous samples as part of what characterises talent among mash-up producers: ‘You put two things together from two different times that would never, ever go together. That, to me, is talent’ (quoted in Sinnreich Reference Sinnreich2010, p. 114). Another mash-up producer, who uses the pseudonym Tony Montana (Al Pacino's character in the 1983 film Scarface), echoes this sentiment: ‘A good mash up/bootleg is a culture clash … 2 styles that shouldnt work together but do [sic]’ (quoted in Sinnreich Reference Sinnreich2010, p. 165). Mash-ups, we will argue, are often intended to violate the genre conventions of musical categories, usually to create a humorous effect. The stronger the experience of incongruity between the original contexts is – the more humorous the effect is likely to be.

If listeners are to understand the combination of two particular tracks as incongruent or inappropriate, it is crucial that we recognise the constituent parts. This is why mash-up DJs and producers mostly blend classic recordings with contemporary mainstream music that is easy to identify, although this may limit the topicality of the mash-up (and its humorous or sarcastic effect). While some producers within sample-based music styles have the same approach as microhouse producer Akufen, who has said: ‘I do everything but quoting other music … I want people to forget about where it comes from’ (quoted in Harkins Reference Harkins and Danielsen2010, p. 183), mash-up producers choose and treat the sampled material so that their sources are obvious. Based on his close study of mash-up culture, Aram Sinnreich sees their celebration of sources, as opposed to the obscuring of them, as one of the key factors that distinguishes mash-ups from other sample-based music forms (Sinnreich Reference Sinnreich2010, p. 132). He refers to mash-up producer DJ Paul V who also sees recognisability as essential to the mash-up style: ‘If I hear a new mash-up of two tracks I've never heard before, I'm less interested’ (Sinnreich Reference Sinnreich2010, p. 132). The plunderphonics producer John Oswald calls such recognisable samples ‘electro-quotations’ (quoted in Toop Reference Toop1995, p. 262) and points out that, although there are no physical quotation marks to put around musical samples, we understand that what we hear are quotes if we are familiar with the sources. As Jeanette Bicknell describes it: ‘A musical quotation is an intentional re-use: one intended to be heard as a reference to other music, and that succeeds, minimally, in being so heard, at least by its intended audience’ (Bicknell Reference Bicknell2001, p. 190). Bicknell goes on to explain that the aim of using musical quotations may range from paying homage, producing irony, making comments, or telling jokes (Bicknell Reference Bicknell2001, p. 190). While many hip-hop producers make use of recognisable samples in order to pay homage to earlier hip-hop productions or to their African-American roots (see Rose Reference Rose1994, p. 79; Schloss Reference Schloss2004, pp. 74–100), musical quotations in mash-ups are mainly used to create incongruity by placing them in an unusual setting.

Arthur Schopenhauer specifies incongruity as being a mismatch between concepts, or the standard way of thinking about things, and the way they are presented (Morreall Reference Morreall1987, pp. 45–64). He and Immanuel Kant were among the first to explain humour by pointing to incongruity or to the violation of our perceptual patterns that results in the understanding of something as odd or unusual. As Pascal has stated: ‘Nothing produces laughter more than a surprising disproportion between that which one expects and that which one sees’ (quoted in Morreall Reference Morreall and Morreall1987 [1982], p. 130). This is why we interpret many mash-ups as musical jokes, although their incongruent juxtapositions of musical quotations may also result in other feelings such as anger, irritation or indifference and, more importantly, one might be amused by incongruity without finding it humorous (see Martin Reference Martin and Morreall1987 [1983] and Clark Reference Clark and Morreall1987 [1970] for a discussion of the difference between humorous amusement and other forms of amusement). Irish mash-up producer Marty Thornton (aka Phil RetroSpector) has been described as the ‘undisputed master of melancholy’ (M. Thornton, pers. commun., November 2010) and his bootlegs and remixes (including ‘Monkey gone to Opera’ which introduces Goldfrapp and Pixies to Puccini) have been described as moody and haunting, proving that not all cases of incongruity are experienced as humorous. Nevertheless, a discussion of incongruous humour seems to be important when trying to understand and examine the aesthetics of mash-ups.

There are several reasons why we interpret the intent of many mash-ups as humorous. First, mash-ups are often given inventive and humorous titles which, by referring to the titles of the mashed songs, may be described as linguistic puns, such as ‘Billie's Alive’ (a combination of Bee-Gees’ ‘Stayin’ Alive’ and Michael Jackson's ‘Billie Jean’), ‘Wicked Superman’ (Chris Isaak's ‘Wicked Game’ blended with Eminem's ‘Superman’) and ‘Rapture Riders’ (Blondie's ‘Rapture’ combined with the Doors’ ‘Riders on the Storm’). Second, the music is often accompanied by video montages and cover art collages of the mashed music, in which the bizarre visual combination of the artists strikes us as intentionally humorous. Finally, the response to mash-ups found on mash-up Internet boards, such as www.mashuptown.com, www.gybo5.com and www.sound-unsound.com demonstrates that many hard-core mash-up fans and producers value the humour of the aesthetics.Footnote ³ In our in-depth analyses of the mash-ups by ECC and Danger Mouse, we will explain at which levels we locate the incongruity and why we consider the incongruity in question humorous. We do not, however, argue that everyone finds these mash-ups funny. The interpretation of musical mash-ups as humorous is dependent on the individual perspective of the listener and the particular contextual setting and, as already emphasised, musical referential knowledge. The fact that humorous amusement is evoked in different ways and for different motives might be one of the reasons why it appears to be a neglected area within the academic literature on mash-ups and of music studies more generally.Footnote ⁴ At the end of the article, we will also give examples of mash-ups that fail to have this particular effect on us, and suggest other ways of interpreting the incongruity found in mash-ups, such as reading them as examples of sarcasm or satire.

Before analysing the ECC and Danger Mouse mash-ups, we will look to early examples of incongruous musical juxtapositions in order to understand mash-ups in a slightly revised historical context. McLeod traces the roots of mash-ups to the collage techniques of musique concréte and the avant-garde (McLeod Reference McLeod2005, p. 81), while others see similarities with Jamaican dub music and hip-hop practices of remixing and sampling (Howard-Spink Reference Howard-Spink2005; Ayers Reference Ayers and Ayers2006, p. 129). Mash-ups certainly have roots in the DJ culture of hip-hop and it has long been common for rap and R'n’B a cappellas to be mixed with the instrumentals of other tracks for the purposes of mixtapes or radio shows.Footnote ⁵ However, Ayers may go too far when he argues that ‘mash-ups can be thought of as a logical derivation of hip-hop’ (Ayers Reference Ayers and Ayers2006, p. 129, emphasis added). These are only roots of the mash-up form – a juxtaposition of diverse elements – and not the roots of its aesthetics in terms of the principles underlying them or their effects on listeners. It might be more appropriate to locate the roots of mash-ups by studying musical examples that create a feeling of incongruity. The fact that incongruity is often seen as being the most important cause of humour might explain why such early musical examples are often referred to as comedy records. They may not be an obvious source of musical and technological innovation but comedy records might, in fact, have more in common with mash-ups than any other sample-based form, in the sense that they share the desire to use parts of recognisable songs in unusual contexts.

McLeod helpfully identifies the Reference Buchanan and Goodman1956 US hit ‘The Flying Saucer’ by Buchanan and Goodman as an early example of a pop collage (McLeod Reference McLeod2005, p. 81), where a spoof news bulletin about the threat of spacemen landing in an unnamed US city is spliced with short excerpts from recordings by artists such as Little Richard, Elvis Presley and Fats Domino. Also known as a break-in record, the seriousness of the announcer's message – ‘reports of a flying saucer hovering over the city have been confirmed; the flying saucers are real’ – is immediately undercut by a line from ‘The Great Pretender’ by The Platters. The recognition of the original recordings and their incongruity in this more formal context creates a comic effect. While this incongruous juxtaposition unfolds in linear time and anticipates musical medleys, the sound of two songs heard simultaneously can be found on Alan Copeland's Reference Alan1968 arrangement of the Mission: Impossible theme tune with a vocal version of The Beatles’ ‘Norwegian Wood’, performed by his own vocal group The Alan Copeland Singers. Lalo Schifrin's spy signature in 5/8 is interrupted with John Lennon's lyrics about an awkward late-night love affair, originally sung in 6/8 but changed to 5/8 to fit this new TV soundtrack. The listener is likely to realise the words have been removed from the original context of acoustic guitar and sitar, and the contextual incongruity results in a different type of humour from that intended by Lennon and McCartney.Footnote ⁶ The jokes in Lennon's story about a romantic liaison that ends with him sleeping in the bath might be lost in Copeland's new adaptation, which creates a more innocent form of humour by juxtaposing two very well known pieces of music in an unexpected way.

The final example we will mention is two songs from the mid-1960s by the comedian and actor Peter Sellers, produced by George Martin. Prior to working with The Beatles, Martin had become well known for his collaborations with Sellers in producing comedy records. In Reference Peter1965 they recorded and released a version of ‘A Hard Day's Night’, which reached number 14 in the UK singles chart. Reciting The Beatles’ lyrics over a piece of classical music, like Laurence Olivier in his 1955 screen adaptation of Richard III, there is a seriousness to the delivery which satirises Olivier's performance and is in contrast to the effervescent energy of The Beatles. The nuances of the joke may, however, only be perceived by those with knowledge of The Beatles’ songs and this particular dramatisation of Shakespeare's play. Their version of The Beatles’ ‘Help!’ on the B-side may be more immediately funny as there is a less onerous requirement of recognition. After an organ has played the introduction to a traditional psalm, Sellers delivers the lyrics to ‘Help!’ as if preaching and pleading from a pulpit, and some phrases are accompanied by the Mastersingers who sing melodies from the original song in what Martin calls their ‘very good cathedral-plainsong approach’ (Martin Reference Martin1979, p. 189). Although musical examples like these may not have anyone rolling around in the aisles, they are often recognised as containing a subtle form of humour, which is evoked in the imaginations of listeners by the feeling of incongruity between the original context that the music or lyrics refer to and their new context. If these examples are to be described as comedy records and certain mash-ups as musical jokes, there is a crucial difference between these jokes and linguistic ones. In order to function as a successful mash-up, it is not sufficient that their in-jokes are worth retelling; they must also function on a musical level. Put differently, there has to be congruity between the juxtaposed tracks resulting in a strong feeling of musical communication. In mash-ups, the contextual incongruity and the musical congruity are closely connected and affect each other mutually, as we will try to demonstrate in the analyses of ‘The Whipped Cream Mixes’ and The Grey Album.

The strange delights of ‘The Whipped Cream Mixes’

In 1994 a cassette was released by ECC and called Gunderphonic in tribute to John Oswald's controversial copyright-infringing CD Plunderphonic (1989). It contained two influential compositions that became known as ‘The Whipped Cream Mixes’ when they were re-released as a 7” single by the record label Eerie Materials in 1996. The combination of ‘Bittersweet Samba’ and ‘Whipped Cream’ from Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass album Whipped Cream & Other Delights (Reference Herb Alpert's Tijuana1965) with the respective lyrical messages from Public Enemy's ‘Rebel without a Pause’ (Reference Public1988) and ‘By the Time I Get to Arizona’ (1991) differ both in terms of music and context. What follows is a close reading of one of these mixes, namely ‘By the Time I Get to Arizona’. The reason we have chosen this and not ‘Rebel without a Pause’ is that the musical congruity and contextual incongruity are strongest in this mash-up. The musical congruity in the Whipped Cream mix of ‘Rebel without a Pause’ is weakened because the music of Herb Alpert has a shuffled subdivision while Chuck D is rapping to a straight subdivision, which in this instance creates undesirable disjunction rather than rhythmic tension. Also, the lyrics of ‘Rebel without a Pause’ are less political than ‘By the Time I Get to Arizona’, which lowers the level of discrepancy with Herb Alpert's chirpy and cheerful music.

The protest songs of Public Enemy are well known for expressing a Malcom-X-inspired militancy about racism and other socio-political problems in America,Footnote ⁷ and Chuck D has, according to Robert Walser, ‘been accepted by many people as an important spokesperson for the hip-hop community, and even for African Americans more generally’ (Walser Reference Walser1995, p. 193). ‘By the Time I Get to Arizona’ represents their outrage at the refusal of Arizona's governor, Evan Mecham, to acknowledge and celebrate Martin Luther King's birthday as a federal holiday. Isaac Hayes's song ‘By the Time I Get to Phoenix’ (itself a cover version of a country song) tells a story about migrating in search of love, but Public Enemy travel to the same place as part of a mission to challenge white supremacy. Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass, on the other hand, had no agenda other than entertaining their vast and diverse 1960s audience. Their concerts were arranged like revues where Alpert, as trumpeter and bandleader, performed comic lines between the songs, often written by the American comedian Bill Dana. The cover art of the Whipped Cream album which features the model Dolores Erickson wearing nothing but whipped cream, and the titles of the songs which all contain references to food (‘Green Peppers’, ‘Lemon Tree’, ‘Butterball’), suggest that Alpert's intentions were quite different to Chuck D who feels his ‘job is to write shocking lyrics that will wake people up’ (quoted in Walser Reference Walser1995, p. 193).

The success of such social awakening depends on the integration of words with music; the political thrust of Chuck D's rhymes in the original version of ‘By the Time I Get to Arizona’ is intensified by the music's dense textures and heavy rhythm tracks. When the delivery of Chuck D is separated from the music and imposed on the music of Herb Alpert's ‘Whipped Cream’, he is transformed into a rebel without a cause. Awareness of the song's moral message may invite accusations about the trivialisation of racism, or it might create a more innocent form of humour since, as Jeff Chang writes, ‘Public Enemy's art would always belie easy sociology … Chuck himself would never rap about going to the park or taking a swim’ (Chang Reference Chang2005, pp. 231–32). A news report about the Mecham affair acts as a framing device in Public Enemy's version, but this is lost in the mash-up, and the replacement of sleek funk grooves with the blissful brass of Herb Alpert makes Chuck D sound emasculated. The syncopated danceable rhythm of ‘Whipped Cream’, the regularly accented bass in fifths and the strong brass melodies over a tonal chord-based accompaniment are reminiscent of ragtime music and, as the title might suggest, the music would fit well as the soundtrack to a 1970s TV cookery programme. The combination of carefree brass melodies in Alpert's music and the aggressive authority of Chuck D's delivery is deliberate, and in ‘A Love Song to Bastard Pop’, Salon journalist Charles Taylor describes the result as ‘hilarious’: ‘Every time Chuck D lights into some new target of his righteous rage you hear those horns saying, “Lighten the fuck up!”‘ (Taylor Reference Taylor2003).

If mash-ups are to be listened to more than once, they should, as already argued, also function on a musical level, as in this case. One crucial factor for the success of this match is that the subdivisions of both songs are straight 16th notes and, thus, the varying rhythmic pattern of the rap fits the groove of Herb Alpert's music. Second, the music and the rap are based on the same schema of periodic phrases, which makes the closing of each phrase synchronised. The looped four measure-long sample of the American funk band Mandrill's 1973 hit ‘Two Sisters of Mystery’, which Chuck D originally raps over, contains chromatic descents in the bass-line at every fourth measure (if we count the measures in double tempo in line with Alpert's music). Similarly, Alpert's music has either a chromatic ascent or descent, or a stronger marked break, at the end of each four-measure long phrase. When these tracks are mashed, the result is fitting as they often mark the same gestures and pauses. The sound of the 1960s Alpert recording also suits the rap as hip-hop often uses samples from the same period. Shiga refers to a member of the mash-up website GYBO (Get Your Bootleg On) who points out that talent within a mash-up setting ‘is defined as the capacity to recognise shared properties between different songs, or the capacity to reorganise the musical and aural relations of recordings so that they sound like they are components of the same song’ (Shiga Reference Shiga2007, p. 103). In spite of the diverse expressions of Herb Alpert's music and Chuck D's rap, we get a strong feeling of musical dialogue, which makes this otherwise bizarre juxtaposition work as a coherent piece.

The Grey Album and individual styles of mash-ups

The most discussed example of a mash-up project in academic literature is Danger Mouse's The Grey Album (Reference Danger2004), which consists of songs created by manipulating music from The White Album (1968) by The Beatles and overlaying rap a cappellas from Jay-Z's The Black Album (Reference Jay-Z2003).Footnote ⁸The Grey Album caused controversy as it began to circulate through cyberspace on illegal file-sharing networks because permission had not been sought from the owners of the songs or the recordings to execute these adaptations. The owners of The Beatles’ sound recordings in the US, Capitol Records, quickly issued Danger Mouse with a demand to cease and desist distribution of The Grey Album, which he did not challenge. He had only pressed three thousand copies of the album and was a bit bemused by its success and notoriety. ‘This wasn't supposed to happen,’ Burton said. ‘I just sent out a few tracks [and] now online stores are selling it and people are downloading it all over the place’ (CNN 2004). Danger Mouse has previously discussed in interviews how sending what he calls ‘straight mash-ups’ (that is, A + B mash-ups containing full-length samples) to Warp Records while living in London in 2001 resulted in a recording contract with their hip-hop subsidiary, Lex Records (O'Connor Reference O'Connor2004), so it is again difficult to know whether he is being slightly disingenuous.Footnote ⁹ Regardless of his motives, Danger Mouse's cause as an innocent victim of corporate harassment was taken up by the copyright activist organisation Downhill Battle, which was determined to start an uphill and online struggle. They organised what Sam Howard-Spink calls ‘an act of civil disobedience against a copyright regime that routinely suppresses musical innovation’ (Howard-Spink Reference Howard-Spink2005). It might be argued that copyright does not necessarily stifle creativity but can prevent the material expression of illegal forms of creativity from being circulated to a mass audience. This was the aim of a day of action dubbed ‘Grey Tuesday’ on 24 February Reference Danger2004, which resulted in The Grey Album being made available as a free download from its website, along with approximately 170 other sites, risking the threat of legal action by enabling over a million copies of the album to be digitally distributed that day. Academic activist McLeod was one of the online hosts who received a threatening letter from lawyers representing Capitol Records and was ready to refer to the fair use defence in US copyright law, but no further legal action was taken and a stalemate ensued (see McLeod Reference McLeod2005). Like the comic superhero from whom he derives his pseudonym, the one person who emerged victorious was the previously obscure and little known hip-hop producer, Danger Mouse, who has since gone on to form one half of neo (schizophrenic) soul act Gnarls Barkley and the indie rock duo Broken Bells with the Shins’ James Mercer. He has also produced albums by several artists such as Beck and The Black Keys, as well as the second album by Damon Albarn's cartoon characters Gorillaz, Demon Days (2005), which was manufactured, marketed and distributed in the UK by EMI – the parent company of Capitol, who the year before had demanded Burton cease and desist distribution of The Grey Album.Footnote ¹⁰

The Grey Album may generate a feeling of incongruity since The Beatles and Jay-Z differ significantly in terms of era, place and genre – British rock of the late 1960s and contemporary African-American hip-hop. This is underlined by The Grey Video (2004), a promotional video for the song ‘Encore’, in which the combination of film clips of The Beatles and Jay-Z make it look like a joint performance. With the help of computer graphics, The Beatles are displayed as Jay-Z's backing band (although Jay-Z only appears on the monitor screen of the sound and vision mixers’ booth). The feeling of incongruity arrives partly because we know that hip-hop's musical practices are quite different to the forms of instrumentation typically used in rock, which makes it funny when Ringo Starr stops playing drums and instead begins to scratch records on a turntable while John Lennon starts to break-dance. The film clips from The Beatles are taken from the 1964 comedy film A Hard Day's Night, which features members of the band with mop-tops and matching suits. This strengthens the associations of The Beatles as a live band performing love songs to their large audience of adoring female fans, even though The White Album was made four years later when both their image and music had changed significantly. One reason for choosing such early film clips might have been to strengthen the contrast with Jay-Z, who is wearing a large t-shirt and jewellery – a typical outfit in hip-hop where materialism and realism reign over the idealism and optimism of the 1960s. The Grey Album and other mash-ups that bring together black and white artists have been interpreted, particularly by US critics (Taylor Reference Taylor2003), as an implicit critique of racial essentialism and segregated marketing in the music and media industries. This is, however, problematic since it implies that genres such as rock and hip-hop can be classified as either black or white. An alternative interpretation might be that Danger Mouse is making a positive statement about the redundancy of racial categories and the pleasures of musical miscegenation, although this is also likely to overstate the case. He has explained in an interview that the title was not his idea and that he ‘did not make The Grey Album for music fans [but] to impress people who were “really into sampling”‘ (Klosterman Reference Klosterman2006). Nevertheless, such oversimplified assumptions about the genres and artists used in mash-ups are encouraged, since important aspects of the pleasure and meaning derived from this music often stem from their very play on such stereotypical contrasts.

The Grey Video generates as much humour as The Grey Album, because the contextual incongruity is not always obvious from the music alone. Danger Mouse's approach to the sampled material differs significantly from mash-ups in which the two mashed tracks are kept in their original form in terms of structure and length (such as the previously mentioned mash-ups of ECC). Whereas Jay-Z's vocals are left untouched, the sampled material from The Beatles is manipulated and rearranged thoroughly, resulting in a musically congruent and impressive piece of work that is sonically marked by the cut-and-paste technique. The sounds of each clip are often recombined into melodies that are not found in either of the original recordings, structured in equally unfamiliar rhythmic patterns. The drum sounds which, according to Danger Mouse, are also extracted from The White Album, are rearranged into hip-hop rhythms that support the rap of Jay-Z. In terms of its production, The Grey Album may have more in common with the glitch and microsamples of some sample-based musics (see Brøvig-Hanssen Reference Brøvig-Hanssen and Danielsen2010; Harkins Reference Harkins and Danielsen2010) than the typical A + B structure of the dominant mash-up form. The album might thus be indicative of mash-up producers developing more distinctive and individualised styles in a genre that continues to evolve and diversify.

The characteristic style of The Grey Album achieves musical congruity but challenges the emphasis on recognisability that is crucial to the contextual incongruity of mash-ups. Whereas many of The Beatles’ samples last several seconds, others are chopped into very short pieces that are not easily identifiable. Listeners might hear the music as samples inserted in a hip-hop production instead of constituting an equal part of a mash-up, or the songs might be mistaken for Jay-Z remixes. The combination of culturally incongruent and recognisable tracks, which we have argued is a trademark of most mash-ups, would likely have been lost were it not for the contextual underlining of how the samples are derived almost solely from the music of Jay-Z and The Beatles. This encourages us to hear it as different from other forms of sample-based music. Downhill Battle's online demonstration, ‘Grey Tuesday’, promoted The Grey Album as a mash-up album, and in interviews Danger Mouse himself has stressed that just about every sound is sampled from one of these two albums. He also posted artwork by the now-famous illustrator Justin Hampton on his website, featuring a group picture of a gold-chained Jay-Z in the forefront with members of The Beatles on either side of a grey background, which also promotes the album as a mash-up project and not a sample-based hip-hop or remix album. So, too, does the aforementioned The Grey Video, which became popular via the Internet and has been seen by millions despite its introductory warning text that it is ‘not meant to be used for commercial purposes’. Although The Grey Album might be considered ‘grey’ in terms of how much it complies with the categories of mash-ups, sample-based collages and remixes, we would rather argue that it demonstrates the stylistic individuality of particular mash-up producers, and how the concept behind a musical production can also be understood from its social and promotional context.

Mashed-up: combining contextual incongruity and musical congruity

In order to emphasise the importance of the combination of contextual incongruity and musical congruity that we have argued characterises a successful mash-up, we will mention some mash-ups which, unlike ‘The Whipped Cream Mixes’ and The Grey Album, lack one of these two qualities. Sugababes’ ‘Freak Like Me’ (Reference Sugababes2002) exists in the grey area around mash-ups and might better be described as a cover version of a mash-up, namely Girls on Top's ‘We Don't Give a Damn About Our Friends’ from Reference Richard2000. In the latter, producer Richard X combines the Moog synthesiser-based sci-fi soundscapes of ‘Are “Friends” Electric?’ (Reference Army1979) by Tubeway Army and the vocal of the American R'n’B artist Adina Howard from her Reference Adina1995 debut single ‘Freak Like Me’. The space-age bedsit music of synth-pop group Tubeway Army is indebted to the sound of David Bowie's albums recorded in Berlin, as is the white alien and androgynous look of the lead vocalist, Gary Numan. The contextual connotations of this song differ significantly from Howard's ‘Freak Like Me’, which might sound similar to the G-funk of Dr Dre but is actually dominated by a P-funk sample from ‘I'd Rather Be With You’ (1976) by Bootsy Collins. We are quickly introduced to a world of independent women cruising in cars in search of sexual satisfaction, dismissive of the kind of men who might not meet strict physical or economic demands. This is a war of the sexes where emasculated black American males find themselves left behind by feisty feminists with little interest in the work of Germaine Greer. The archetype of the bitch is crucial here – a previously derogatory term which became a badge of honour, and runs through African-American music from Millie Jackson to Missy Elliott. The humorous incongruity in the mash-up becomes obvious when Howard sings ‘I want … a freak in the evening just like me/I need a roughneck brother’ to the music of the androgynous Numan, who satisfies her first demand but might not be the type of freak who can fulfil the second. Having circulated as an illegal bootleg, this mash-up was picked up by Universal Records who saw it as the perfect way to launch the second album by the British pop group, Sugababes. The vocals of Keisha Buchanan, Mutya Buena and Heidi Range replaced those of Adina Howard, and the instrumental by Tubeway Army was re-recorded and given a modern shaping stripped of the sci-fi trademarks from the 1980s. If Howard gives a persuasive performance of the kind of strong woman that some men love to fear, Sugababes are, to paraphrase the parlance of an infamous celebrity gossip website, pop bitches: young, sweet, slightly nervous, less sexually experienced and more politically correct. It gave them their first number one single in the UK but, without the humorous incongruity between the weirdness of Numan and the butch bitchiness of Howard and with a largely teenage fan base that might not recognise the sources, it is doubtful whether it is accurate to identify this reinterpretation of a reinterpretation as a mash-up. Sugababes’ ‘Freak Like Me’ demonstrates the importance of samples with audible ‘quotation marks’ to the mash-up aesthetic. If the original contexts of a mash-up's constituent parts are not recognised, which is often the case when they are used as the basis for a cover version or performance, the incongruity is lost and any intended joke is completely missed.

Go Home Productions’ mash-up ‘Ray of Gob’ (2001), which combines Madonna's vocal from ‘Ray of Light’ (1998) with the music of the Sex Pistols’ ‘God Save the Queen’ (1977), also fails to succeed in creating a strong feeling of contextual incongruity. It might make us smile since we know the samples are from Madonna and the Sex Pistols and that they belong to different musical genres, but the contextual combination is not, in itself, incongruous. Madonna is an artist who flirts with a wide range of genres and styles, and the musical expression of the mash-up could just as well have been her own. Although ‘Ray of Gob’ does not evoke a strong feeling of contextual incongruity, it does give a strong sense of musical congruity; some might argue that this is more impressive than a mash-up involving a rap vocal because the producer not only has to match the tempo of the different songs but also the melody of the one song with the harmonies of the other. This might be true but, as we have demonstrated in our analysis of ECC's mash-up, Chuck D's rap is also to a large extent integrated with the original music in terms of microrhythmic timing and the accentuations of musical gestures. In ‘Ray of Light’, Madonna sings in the Mixolydian mode, a major scale in which the seventh degree is a semitone lower. The music of the Sex Pistols, which accompanies Madonna in the mash-up, consists of a vamp of two chords that fit well with the Mixolydian melody.Footnote ¹¹ These chords can be used interchangeably with the two chords in the instrumental vamp of ‘Ray of Light’ and ensures that the instrumental version of ‘God Save the Queen’ works very well as a replacement for the original music.

While ‘Ray of Gob’ contains musical congruity but lacks contextual incongruity, ‘Smells Like Teen Booty’ (2001) by 2 Many DJs, which takes the music from Nirvana's ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ (1991) and adds vocals from Destiny's Child's ‘Bootylicious’ (2001), creates contextual incongruity but not musical congruity. Although there are examples of R'n’B acts incorporating elements from rock at the time the mash-up was made – the use of electric guitars on En Vogue's 1992 hit ‘Free Your Mind’, for example – these songs are diverse both musically and contextually. On ‘Bootylicious’ the female trio of Beyoncé, Kelly and Michelle celebrate the voluptuous nature of particular bodily parts and playfully question the ability of potential partners to cope with their corporeal powers on the dance floor or in the bedroom. In contrast to this light-hearted lyrical flirtation and musical fun, ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ is synonymous with the grunge movement and sounds like an angst-ridden anthem of doomed youth. However, the contextual incongruity of this virtual collaboration is weakened by the lack of musical congruity in the mash-up. The music in ‘Smells Like Teen Booty’, which also includes a sung a cappella, functions on one level, because Beyoncé's melody and Nirvana's music are both in Minor mode, structured around repetition and symmetrical phrase division. However, the music often sounds chaotic as too much is happening at the same time; the musical elements are often competing for the listener's attention, which is the case with the vocals of Beyoncé and Kurt Cobain at the bridge. There is neither consensus between the rhythm of the music and the vocal – Beyoncé is early on every beat while the rhythm of Nirvana's music is late on the beat – and this contributes to the feeling of disjunction between the two tracks, or the experience of hearing two separate recordings simultaneously by accident.

Our argument about mash-ups often being musical jokes does not mean that they will not be taken seriously – as we have tried to demonstrate, one must separate between good and bad jokes, between what McLeod describes as mash-up ‘masterpieces’ (McLeod Reference McLeod2005, p. 82) and what DJ Pete Tong calls ‘musical fast food’ (Shiga Reference Shiga2007, p. 104). The art of mash-ups, we have argued, is to juxtapose recognisable samples which result in a coherent piece of music and at the same time generate a feeling of contextual incongruity. ‘Freak Like Me’ by Sugababes shows that the recognition of the music's sources is crucial if a song is to be identified as a mash-up and if it is to succeed in creating an effect of incongruity. However, as Go Home Productions’ mash-up ‘Ray of Gob’ demonstrates, the recognition of the music's sources is not enough to create a strong feeling of contextual incongruity since the incongruity in mash-ups is also about social conventions. The more the mashed sources differ contextually, the stronger the experience of incongruity is. The combination of incongruous sources seems to be one of the characteristic features that distinguishes mash-ups from other sample-based forms and, as mentioned, the ability to find sources that are perceived as belonging to distinctive social categories is part of what is regarded as talent among mash-up producers. However, as 2 Many DJs’ ‘Smells Like Teen Booty’ exemplifies, the combination of incongruous sources does not alone characterise a successful mash-up – it is also crucial that the mash-up functions on a musical level. If mash-ups do not function on a musical level, the aesthetic quality may be reduced to the art of generating humour or other effects through contextual incongruity. However, such effects might be weakened if the juxtaposed tracks do not communicate musically. The effects achieved through contextual incongruity are, in other words, premised on musical congruity between the mashed tracks. It is the combination of contextual incongruity and musical congruity that produces the richness in meaning and the paradoxical effects that we find in successful mash-ups.

Both ‘The Whipped Cream Mixes’ and The Grey Album integrate sources that draw upon distinctive worlds of association. When these associations are brought together, new bizarre and humorous worlds are imagined and new meanings created. McLeod praises the political consequences of mash-ups and argues that ‘by blurring high and low pop culture (Nirvana representing the high and Destiny's Child, the low), these mash-ups demolish the elitist pop-cultural hierarchy that rock critics and music collecting snobs perpetuate’ (McLeod Reference McLeod2005, p. 84). Although the mashing of diverse records may transcend the high/low dichotomy, as McLeod argues, mash-ups may also reinforce such distinctions since the notion of contextual incongruity, or the feeling that some kind of segregation is being subverted, is needed to achieve the desired effect. If the contextual incongruity of the mashed tracks is not recognised as such, they might lose any intended effect such as humour. The humorous incongruity in ‘The Whipped Cream Mixes’ and The Grey Album is reinforced by the musical congruity between the juxtaposed tracks, which makes us aware that these otherwise completely incongruous tracks may actually have something in common. In successful mash-ups such as the ones by ECC and Danger Mouse, the combination of musical congruity and contextual incongruity results in the paradoxical response: ‘these two songs should definitely not work together … but they do!’.

Afterthoughts: innocent jokes or triumphant sarcasm?

Charles Hiroshi Garrett argues that musical humour often presents intriguing juxtapositions without offering a clear stance toward them (Garrett forthcoming). This is also the case with contextual incongruity in mash-ups and it is therefore difficult to know whether the incongruity of mash-ups is meant as political or social sarcasm or mockery, the bridging of social chasms or if its purpose is merely to create an innocent joke. As mentioned, the title Gunderphonic of ECC's ‘The Whipped Cream Mixes’ is an allusion to John Oswald's Plunderphonic album. Oswald's relationship with pop is parasitic, claiming that ‘listening to pop music isn't a matter of choice. Asked for or not, we're bombarded by it …’ (Holm-Hudson Reference Holm-Hudson1997, p. 23). ECC's Mark Gunderson adopts a similar position: ‘I often feel offended that so many corporations litter my soundspace with so much crap, and I feel entitled to use it against them’ (quoted in Serazio Reference Serazio2008, p. 92). Although it is unclear whether Gunderson feels this way about the music of Herb Alpert and Public Enemy, this contempt reflects the ideas of those mash-up producers who express a frustration with the ubiquity of pop music. There is, of course, not always a consensus between the producers’ intentions and the effect the music has on the listeners and the originators of the sampled material. For those who view Public Enemy as a seminal group in the history of hip-hop and admire their political message, ‘The Whipped Cream Mixes’ might seem disrespectful and cause them to react with discomfort and dismissal, but McLeod received a rather surprising response from Chuck D when asked for his thoughts on the subject:

It is a little unclear whether he is expressing a more general enthusiasm for mash-ups and the illegal remixing of Public Enemy's music or an enthusiasm for the virtual collaboration with Herb Alpert, but if ECC's mash-up is an attack on Chuck D's seriousness he appears to find the musical joke funny and seems willing to laugh at himself.

Downhill Battle regard The Grey Album as ‘one of the most “respectful” and undeniably positive examples of sampling; it honours both The Beatles and Jay-Z’ (Shachtman Reference Shachtman2004), but there are some fans of The Beatles who will argue that Danger Mouse has ruined their enjoyment of The White Album. Matthew Rimmer refers to one critic who presents such a view:

While some may feel that Danger Mouse devalues the music of The Beatles or Jay-Z, he claims in interviews, on the contrary, to be a fan of Jay-Z's music (Reid and Patel Reference Reid and Patel2004) and makes clear that the album was neither made to mock The Beatles: ‘I'm just worried … whether Paul and Ringo will like it. If they say that they hate it, and that I messed up their music, I think I'll put my tail between my legs and go’ (quoted in Shachtman Reference Shachtman2004).Footnote ¹² As Scruton points out, there is a difference between the laugh of triumph at the misfortune of others and the laugh of innocent amusement (Scruton Reference Scruton and Morreall1987 [1982], p. 170). A quick answer to the question raised by Serazio, ‘does the mash-up aesthetic and movement amount to anything more than “in-jokes for music geeks”‘ (Serazio Reference Serazio2008, p. 92) is likely to be no if the joke is not worth retelling. However, as we hopefully have demonstrated, we think there are examples of mash-ups, like ‘The Whipped Cream Mixes’ and The Grey Album, which are worthy of further re-listening and analysis. There will, though, always be those who prefer to hear George Martin's original recording of ‘Revolution 1′ by The Beatles or Rick Rubin's heavy metal magic on the original version of Jay-Z's ‘99 Problems’ to brighten up a grey Tuesday or any other day of the week.