}

Wednesday, December 29, 2021

The 2021 (reduced) mashups

In past years, I’ve done several posts of year-end mashups of pop music videos. This year, everything’s a but truncated, so this post has the only mashups I’m planning to share this year. Both are from remixers I shared last year.

First up, the video above is DJ Earworm’s 2021 year-end mashup, “United State of Pop 2021 (Strawberry Ice Cream)”, and I quite like it. However, watching it, I found myself thinking exactly the same thing I thought last year: “I was also reminded, for the millionth time, that I simply cannot understand (at all) why Billie Eilish is so popular. But, yeah, Arthur’s Law.” I was thinking that because the video clip of hers that’s included is one I actually loathe, and that’s not something I often say about music videos or songs.

Aside from that one song I’d rather forget, I knew most of the artists, even if I didn’t necessarily know the specific song. There were some songs in there that I really liked, even ones I “planned” to share here, but never did. Maybe that’s just as well?

Next up is “A Year-End Megamix (Mashup)” by Adamusic:



When I share his video last year, I noted that “the video included more of the K-Pop songs of 2020 than just the one megahit,” and that trend continued this year: There was a lot of BTS and Blackpink, not so much in DJ Earworm’s video. Adamusic’s video also included more of Lil Nas X, as well as, it appeared to me, Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift, and The Kid Laroi (who I think is exceptionally interesting—which really ought to be the subject of a post), among others.

However, this year I preferred DJ Earworm’s mashup over Adamusic’s. Although I would’ve liked DJ Earworm’s better if it had had a greater breadth of songs/artists, I thought the mashup itself flowed better (and Adamusic’s inclusion of scenes from things like WandaVision struck me as a bit jarring). Which is definitely not meant to suggest that I disliked Adamusic’s mashup: I liked it, just not as much this year as last. That happens all the time.

That’s (apparently) it for this year’s end-of-year music mashups. Still, if I run across one I really like, it’ll end up here, too. Maybe. It’s always an adventure!

2 comments:

Roger Owen Green said...

Ask Arthur Anything: which one is The Kid Laroi?

While I don't know the majority of the artists, I did recognize Olivio Rodrigo (who my daughter turned me on to), BTS, Blackpink, Lil Nas X, Adele, Sheeran, Swifty, Bruno Mars, Billie Eilish, about whom I have no opinion because I really don't know her music at all.

I was watching JEOPARDY (surprise!) this week: MUSICAL 3‑INITIALers $800: The stage name of this rapper & actor gets shortened to MGK. NO ONE got it, but I knew it was Machine Gun Kelly, even though I wouldn't know his music.

Arthur Schenck said...

Well, how about I make The Kid Laroi my first Weekend Diversion in 2022?

You watch JEOPARDY? I had no idea! I’ve seen some videos by MGK,and thought they were… interesting. Wouldn’t say I loved them, but, then, I seldom use that word to talk about particular works by any artists, so not sure that says anything.