This week I stumbled upon an archive of mash-ups from 2002-2004 made by a guy known simply as Gordyboy. He was relatively famous in the UK mash-up scene at the beginning of the 2000s. His work is not on Youtube, so you’ll have to follow a nice link on Internet Archive for this one…

And it’s not any mash-up; it’s the 90’s hit “This Is Hardcore” by Pulp mixed with another hit, “Driving” by Everything But The Girl.

---

Oh, lover boy I know you too well
And all of my lonely secrets
To you I tell
The highest of highs, the lowest of lows
I’ll come driving, I’ll come driving

Now listen to the original Driving; the melody is light-hearted, it’s jazzy, it’s groovy, it’s romantic, and nothing sinister is going on. But mixed with the dramatic strings of This Is Hardcore, a very sinister song, Tracey Thorn’s slowed down voice transforms the words spoken and the romance is overturned by something else.

Mash-ups are fascinating to me; something can become something else so easily, and a word can change meaning. It’s almost alchemy, sorry for the strong word.

Anyway, I won’t give you a specific writing prompt this time but I’d like to know: what do you think this mash-up does to the original song? What do you think of mash-ups ? What songs would you like to mash-up ?