After more than three years of doing mashups as a majority of our set list, you’d think nothing would surprise me anymore.  Metal and country, pop and show tunes, hip hop and 80s – there are so many reasons why most of these shouldn’t work.  And a lot of times they don’t.  If I’m digging through my “ideas” bookmarks folder that contains a bunch of mashup-related sites, oftentimes it’s hard to find something that stands out.  Either it’s been done before (Childish Gambino has been mashed up with literally every song now), is a joke (reddit is 99% Thomas the Train and Smashmouth mashups), isn’t something that would fit in with Fun DMC (Talon has bene pushing for a Metallica/Stevie Wonder mashup for years) or just isn’t a good mix in general.  This is why more often than not, we just come up with our own.

However, every so often, you come across a diamond in the rough, and in this case, I can’t believe it hadn’t been done before. I’ve been a big fan of Jimmy Eat World for over a decade and will fight you if you hate on my girl, Kelly.  Of course, the fact that these go perfectly together says a lot about popular music and especially this genre, but a good arrangement is a good arrangement and this hasn’t left my running mix for weeks.

Quick aside: It was really, really hard for me not to feature the new DJ Cummerbund mashup this week.

The Middle Heartbeat Song (Jimmy Eat World vs Kelly Clarkson)