Wayyyyyyyy back in February a Pennsylvania elementary and middle school music teacher named Bill McClintock blew up the internet with “I Heard it Round and Round the Grapevine”, his impressive mashup of RATT and Marvin Gaye that got write-ups in pretty much every single digital publication from here to Moscow.
Since then McClintock has been banging out new so-called “odd pairing” mashups — Aerosmith vs. The Temptations, Bill Withers vs. Pantera, Alan Parsons Project vs. Dio — but we’ve been feeling a bit of fatigue from all these musical Frankensteins. We appreciate his skills, but one can only handle so many mashups in 2018.
So naturally, we were a little apprehensive when we caught wind of “Careless Whisper in the Abyss” — Wham’s “Careless Whisper” and Slayer’s “Seasons in the Abyss” — making the rounds. But hey, it’s June, and we can only write about so many fall tour announcements before our eyes start to bleed. So here we are, hyping another spin of musical genius from McClintock.
And as usual, it’s not just the songs that are blended perfectly, but the video syncs up too. Gaye dropping some visual science and dancing over Warren DeMartini’s guitar solo is part of what made “I Heard it Round and Round the Grapevine” so special. And here, seeing and hearing Tom Araya duet with some smooth sax appeal is worth the price of admission.
“Making music mashups came somewhat easily to me, as I have a background in music theory from majoring in music technology and music education at Duquesne University,” McClintock told foreverstatecollege.com a few weeks back. “I was able to find songs that could work together based on key and tempo… Once I have an idea, mixing the audio probably takes on average about five to ten hours. The video part takes about two or three hours. The most time-consuming part is coming up with a really good match. That can take days, if not weeks.”
We’ll let this one soundtrack our Wednesday. Just please don’t send us your own mashups.