It’s Christmastime, which means it’s time for re-watching Home Alone, seriously ugly (and also amazing) sweaters, and, of course, enough Christmas music to make one’s ears bleed red and green. Speaking of which, why not mix up your holiday jams this year with some mashups that shouldn’t really work, but do. Like this track here, which combines Radiohead’s “Creep” and Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”
Before poopooing the very idea of mashing up such disparate tracks, listen to about 90 seconds of it and feel your opinion change from “that’s an unforgivable atrocity” to “can we play this on Christmas morning while opening our gifts in absolute darkness?” And if, after about a minute-and-a-half you still find yourself unconvinced that this track deserves to exist, then let us direct you to “Spidey Bells,” which is a mix of the Spider-Man theme song and “Jingle Bells.” It’s not as rockin’, but definitely… jinglier.
For those unfamiliar with either track—which rock have you been living under and how much is rent?—”Creep” is one of Radiohead’s most popular tracks, with a whopping 463 million plays on Spotify. Of course, “All I Want for Christmas Is You” has even more plays at 577 million, ’cause nobody can compete with the juggernaut that is Mariah Carey holiday music. By the by, “All I want for Christmas Is You” also has 593 million plays on YouTube.
Credit for the track, which is literally titled “Creep But It’s All I want for Christmas Is You By Mariah Carey,” goes to self-described “musician/nutjob,” William Maranci. Maranci, a.k.a. “the Massachusetts-based mashup madman,” has been pressing the go button on a blender full of music for a while, delivering such hits (relative term) as “Pumped Up Kicks But It’s the Drake and Josh Theme Song” and “Closer But It’s Ghostbusters By Ray Parker Jr.”
1/6 Important: for any mashup or sample-based music artist on YouTube, here are some artists to beware of mashing up from personal experience (since they can lead to strikes). This does not apply to unaltered re-uploads of an artist’s work, just to transformative edits/mashups.
— ‘Vision’ Out Now (@WilliamMaranci) December 8, 2019
All holiday fun and emo-tinged festivities aside, you’ll probably want to get your fill of this track ASAP, because Maranci has noted on his Twitter account that many artists have been taking down videos on YouTube that violate their copyrights. Which is totally reasonable, of course, although the rules about what can and can’t be done on YouTube are often frustratingly opaque. But we can’t end this post on that note, so here’s Wonderwall.
What do you think about this mashup between Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” and Radiohead’s “Creep”? Is this mix surprisingly dance-tastic, or do you wish you had a couple of squishy ornaments to stuff deep into your ears? Blend up some opinions in the comments, people!
Feature image: Setor VIP (left) Yasuko Otani (right)