I Want You Back

I'm a big fan of the slowed down, acoustic, soulful covers of upbeat pop, rock and hip-hop songs, while acknowledging that it's an approach which had become overdone well past the point of cliché many years ago.

The unbelievably talented Janelle Monae indeed slows down this unassailably ebullient Jackson 5 hit, but rather than simply go the delightful if well-trod twee route, she takes it in a jazz direction without actually adding any swing rhythms—and yet embuing it with an incredible amount of swing. And the results are simply magical: ethereal and yet thoroughly earthy at the same time.

A Hard Girls' Night

Nope.

Nope nope nope nope nope.

Look. My love of mashups is pure and true and well-documented. (Well...documented.) And, sure, John Lennon's and Paul McCartney's vocals sound great in just about any context, even laid atop an utterly witless piece of half-dimensional macho assdroolery. And yet...just...no. Dammit, no.

It's not like the Beatles are some untouchable artifact. Mash 'em with metal, with bubblegum, with funk, whatever. Just make it worthy and not a mash for mash's sake.

Mash 'em with something old:

(How the hell did they think to put those two songs together?)

Or something new:

(Most bizarrely underrated bassline ever.)

No, if you want to see what happens when this same creator takes a pair of great and almost totally unrelated songs (yeah, I know: Australia), witness the glory that is this:

Now that's how it's done.