Comments on: The Rick Astley / Nirvana Mash-Up: A Not Very Good Attempt To Make Kurt Cobain Rickroll Over In His Grave

By: Maura

Maura — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 20:00:51 +0000

@jjb: eh, i guess. i don’t think my enjoyment of a pop song should be that dependent on context — particularly mashups, which often sound *better* when you don’t know that they’re hybrid creations. (true story: i’d never heard ‘hard to explain’ when i first heard ‘a stroke of genie-us.’)

and i doubt this is going to make people stop saying ‘lol rick astley,’ although hey, if it does, more power to morgoth.

By: jjb

jjb — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 19:51:26 +0000

Complaints about pitchiness or songiness are trees; the forest is that this mashup makes Rick Astley seem like a vocal powerhouse and it makes Nirvana’s song structure look generic. Maybe you already admire Astley’s singing and think Kurt Cobain not much of a composer, but to hundreds of thousands of Internet users, Astley is just a bad joke and Cobain is a musical genius. DJ Morgoth kept his meddling to the barest minimum, left those issues on the table and put thousands of jaws on the floor.

By: Chris Molanphy

Chris Molanphy — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 16:06:15 +0000

Agreed on all counts (including the brilliance of “Smells Like Booty”).

The video I find amusing just for its well-executed juxtapositions, of Astley butt-wiggle with the Anarchy cheerleaders, for example. But you’re right, the mashup is so lazy; it barely qualifies as a song.