First music mash-up of 2023

The video above is “DIE FOR 2023 | A Year-End Megamix (Mashup)” by Adamusic, the first of the annual year-ed mash-ups I share on this blog. This mashup was released yesterday, and I happened to be on YouTube not long afterward (I’d forgotten it was being released yesterday), so, for what I’m pretty sure was the first time ever, I was among the first people to watch the video—awwww!

This year, I felt my familiarity with the songs was the lowest ever: While I recognised many artists, I was unfamiliar with the songs themselves—apart from Luke Combs’ cover of “Fast Car”, and that was only because I know the original.

I could take this as further evidence of my advancing age, however, a more accurate cause is that I don’t listen to pop radio, and we don’t have the pop video music channels anymore. The one channel we have that sometimes broadcasts music videos is all over the show—some pop, some alternative, some New Zealand music, and some perhaps not easily classified. This matters because I just don’t have time to “discover” new music on YouTube, and I’m usually not able to listen to new music playlists on Spotify (usually due to a combination of a lack of time and my inability to sit still long enough to pay attention).

The only connection to my age is that I came to love pop music through the power of pop radio, then music videos, and that sort of curated and broadcast presentation of new music doesn’t really exist anymore, and I haven’t yet adapted to that reality. Maybe next year—though probably not.

All of this is against the backdrop of the fact that I actually quite like Adam Wright (Adamusic) and his work. Over the past year or two, I watched more of his mashups, and especially his more vlog-style videos, in which he’s talked about making his mashups and his videos, as well as a bit about his sensibility. I really like his vibe, for lack of a better word, and I think he does interesting work. My inability to connect with songs I don’t know has nothing to do with him or his work—in fact, I found the mash-up as a piece on its own got and held my attention. Talking specifically about structure, I like particularly like the sort of chapters he uses, rather than trying to force all the songs to have the same tempo and feel, something that allows a wider variety of songs.

I guess I just need to do some work studying new pop music each year.