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Who was it: Stefani Germanotta or Jerrica Benton? These singers are better known as pop star Lady Gaga and ’80s cartoon rock star Jem. In today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss, you’ll be given twelve statements, and you decide which diva it applies to. Believe it or not, I scored 75% without knowing anything about either of them! How did you do? Link
DJ Earworm’s annual mashup of the biggest hit songs of the year is appropriately called “World Go Booom.” You can download the tune at his site. Link
Sam Tsui and Kurt Schneider perform a medley of the pop songs of summer 2011. If you didn’t know the individual songs, you’d think this all belonged together. The mp3 is a free download. Link -via The Daily What
If you can dance while wearing a marching band uniform with a drum strapped to your belly, then the world is pretty much your oyster. In this video, the Ohio University Marching 110 perform “Party Rock Anthem” by LMFAO. -via The Daily What
A few years ago I was charged with the task of introducing The Turtles at a concert. They had a Hammond organ on stage with a Leslie speaker; just the sight of them brought back memories of the music they made. There are quite a few iconic sounds that made a mark in pop music and stay with us forever.
Almost every sound in rock and pop history that’s caused your ears to prick up, or your eyebrows to raise, has been sampled or digitally reconstructed for our music-making convenience. But these sounds all started somewhere; a musician or a producer made a noise – often by mistake – and someone in the studio piped up and said, “Hey! Actually, that sounds quite good!” And so the palette of rock and pop music was formed – a series of happy accidents, developed, refined and combined, mixed down and presented to us. Here are some of the most distinctive and, in no particular order, the records that best showcase them.
The Word magazine has a list of 40 of those sounds, with the story behind each and samples for you to hear. Link -via the Presurfer
Paul Dateh sings his own harmonies and accompanies himself on the violin. This performance is a medley of recent Top 40 hits from Lady Gaga, Ke$ha, Rhihanna, and Usher. -via I Am Bored
The Axis of Awesome analyzed all the pop music hits, and came to the conclusion that you only need to know 4 simple chords to make a good song! Sounds easy enough… check out the medley.
From the Upcoming Queue, submitted by squarepixel.
