A couple of weeks ago, my friend and fellow music theorist, Brad Osborn, posted this link on my Facebook wall:
I'd heard it before and giggled, but I'd never given it any serious attention until now. The title of the YouTube video is "Tik Tok and California Gurls are the same song?" The question mark seems superfluous here; I think that DJ Place Boing is claiming that "Tik Tok" by Ke$ha and "California Gurls" by Katy Perry are, in fact, the same song. But what does he mean by that?
Both songs are in the same key, and have essentially the same chord progression for both their verses and choruses: Bb, C, Dm. ("California Gurls" uses an extra A minor chord as an anacrusis at the beginning of each line.) The songs are also at the exact same tempo, and use similar instrumentation/texture. The main accompaniment at the beginning of both tracks is the sound of a rhythmically sparse 8-bit synthesizer and a drum machine, and the texture of both songs gets denser as each approaches the chorus section. All of these similarities allow for DJ Place Boing to construct a rather different type of mashup.
One of the most noticeable aspects of the mashup is the nonsense sentences that result. The lyrics begin, "Don't stop this part, DJ bills we're unforgettable." This is the one "tell" that reveals DJ Place Boing's technique. He cuts off each singer in the middle of her sentences, even in the middle of her words. Could this be commentary on the typically shallow nature of popular song lyrics? And what makes this particular mashup different from a typical one?
A basic, or A + B, mashup usually consists of the vocals from one song and the instrumental track from another. A mashup artist either needs to find isolated tracks to work with (which are often available online, to encourage remixes) or isolate the vocals from the instrumentals herself. DJ Place Boing decided that instead of making this mashup in the more traditional way, he would exploit the extreme similarity of the two songs by jump-cutting between them. This is why the lyrics don't make sense: the track is constantly switching from one song to the other.
So, why are these two songs so similar? They were written within one year of each other ("Tik Tok" in 2009 and "California Gurls" in 2010), they're from the same genre of music...and they were written by the same person! Well, one of the same people. "Tik Tok" is attributed to Ke$ha along with producers Dr. Luke and Benny Blanco. "California Gurls" was written by Katy Perry, Snoop Dogg, songwriter Bonnie McKee, and producers Dr. Luke and Max Martin. All songwriters have styles, and Dr. Luke's signature style might be the reason for the uncanny similarity between these two songs.
Of course, detractors are quick to point out that one of the reasons that any mashup works is due to the modular nature of pop music. However, popular music is not the only music that works this way. Mozart, for example, exploited the modular nature of classical music by creating a composition dice game that interchanged beginnings, middles, and ends of musical phrases. Modularity in music certainly isn't new, and it isn't bad, either. It's something that a clever composer, or mashup artist, can exploit in different, interesting ways.