Following the publication of the Billboard 100 for 2010 (USA music chart), DJ Earworm has been “working feverishly” to complete his famed “United State of Pop” mashup track, which seamlessly blends the top 25 tracks of the year.
Already famous for completing the feat each of the last three years, the top mashup artist, real name Jordan Roseman, is currently cleaning up audio files and searching for a unifying theme in the following 25 tracks:
- Tik Tok ————————– Ke$ha
- Need You Now —————- Lady Antebellum
- Hey Soul Sister —————- Train
- California Gurls ————— Katy Perry ft. Snoop Dogg
- OMG —————————– Usher ft. will.i.am
- Airplanes ———————– B.o.B ft. Hayley Williams
- Love the Way You Lie ——– Eminem ft. Rihanna
- Bad Romance —————— Lady Gaga
- Dynamite ———————– Taio Cruz
- Break Your Heart ————- Taio Cruz ft. Ludacris
- Nothin’ on You —————– B.o.B. ft. Bruno Mars
- I Like It ————————– Enrique Iglesias ft. Pitbull
- Bedrock ————————– Young Money ft. Lloyd
- In My Head ———————- Jason Derulo
- Rude Boy ————————- Rihanna
- Telephone ———————— Lady Gaga ft. Beyonce
- Teenage Dream —————– Katy Perry
- Just the Way You Are ———- Bruno Mars
- Cooler Than Me —————— Mike Posner
- Imma Be ————————– The Black Eyed Peas
- Empire State of Mind ———– Jay-Z & Alicia Keys
- DJ Got Us Fallin’ In Love ——- Usher ft. Pitbull
- Billionaire ———————— Travie McCoy ft. Bruno Mars
- Not Afraid ———————— Eminem
- Reply —————————— Iyaz
Asked about the biggest challenges facing him with the United State of Pop 2010 end-of-year anthem DJ Earworm told The Global Herald:
There seem to be fewer acapellas of the most popular songs floating around the internet. Sometimes I can find studio quality vocals without instruments. Sometimes I have to create my own or clean up other people’s attempts at vocal extraction. This affects sound quality.
The other challenge is the diversity of material and themes…I’m trying to create something that comes together as a single message, and there’s so many different messages in the music.
He says that record companies do not generally make the stem files available, complicating the task of creating a monument to the year’s top tracks. Stem files simplify the task of a mashup DJ by separating out each layer of audio in a song. The task of separating a finished track means that DJ Earworm will spend around two weeks finishing up the “United State of Pop 2010”. Ideally he would like to have the track finished for Christmas, “but I’d rather it be done right than done on time. It definitely needs to come out before New Year’s, since it’s a year-end look back.”
Another challenge facing DJ’s on the remix and mashup scenes is the notoriously intractable issue of copyright. In an age where anyone can rip and modify an audio file, genuinely creative and entertaining versions of a track can appear which are arguably an improvement on the original and can sometimes be demonstrably more popular. In this context, DJ Earworm explains his way around the issue: “I never sell my mashups and I only post them online, so I don’t run into problems generally.”
Instead of selling downloads, DJ Earworm alternates music production with DJ sets around the world. New Year’s Eve will see him perform at the Paradise Resort in the Bahamas, and in 2011 he will perform at a private function in Moscow before jetting off to the Landstreffet I Stavenger in Norway, which takes place in May. There he will perform alongside Laidback Luke, Ludacris and Karpe Diem.
In 2010, DJ Earworm started VJ-ing a concept which is increasingly popular with musical DJ’s such as DJ Yoda who create their own work. Rather than simply smoothing one record into another, this new brand of musicians blend video, records and their own sounds into an original piece of entertainment. DJ Earworm says that his Audio-Visual work is “less clubby” though he alters the music depending on the audience.
Asked about other people’s work, Roseman says:
I was first inspired by 2 Many DJs, but that was a while ago, and my concept of mashup has changed a lot since then. But there’s a whole school of more complex mashup artists coming up. Norwegian Recycling comes to mind. In all honesty, I hardly listen to mashups at all. I try to model my mashups after non-mashup music.
Roseman majored in music theory and computer science at the University of Illinois, which accounts for his talented ear for detail and technical prowess. He still plays the piano and has a large black Yamaha grand at his house in San Francisco which sounds “loud and bright”. He is assisted by two friends from high school who do his management and website. The group met at Evanston Township High School, in Evanston, Illinois – a suburb of Chicago – which Roseman describes as “not so distant from the city energy of Chicago”.
The United State of Pop 2010 will be made available on Youtube before 31st December 2010.