Since 2010, I have been making music mashups of the top songs of the year. Every year since 2012, my mashups have gone viral all over the world (my Pop Danthology 2012 has over 70 million views).
Pop Danthologies are crowd-pleasing mashups that are mixed in a style that closely resembles our popular music that you hear on the radio. It is clean and simple. I try to hold back on giving my listeners too many different sounds all at once. I want my listeners to be able to easily follow and sing along to the lead vocal or instrumental melody (like a concerto). My Danthologies are the “pop” of the mashup genre.
This style can be a bit limiting. I cannot use such complex chord progressions, I cannot use tempos that are “too slow,” I don’t have much room to add in my own instrumentation, and I need to hold back on the different lead instruments so that they do not crowd out the vocals.
This year, I decided to break out of these limits and try my hand at “Symphony of Pop 2015.” This mashup focuses much more on the instruments. The chord progressions are also more reflective of the complex minor key music that comes from my heart.
Other Credits: Scratching outro by DJ Wax DMC Canadian champion from Vancouver http://www.fusiondj.com http://www.instagram.com/fusiondjentertainment
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Slightly different YouTube version:
Posted by Daniel Kim on Tuesday, November 10, 2015
Since 2010, I have been making music mashups of the top songs of the year. My Pop Danthology 2012 went viral all over the world, reaching 10 million views in just three days (the original YouTube video currently stands at more than 70 million views). Every year now my Danthologies go viral.
For the first time, I am releasing two Danthologies at once. With music from all over the world becoming more and more accessible, it has become increasingly more challenging to satisfy my fans and fit in all of their many favourite songs in my year-end mashup. I found myself cutting down so much of the original musical pieces just to “jam” in as many songs as I could. Not only was the work process not as enjoyable this way but the resulting sound was more choppy. Although making two Danthologies took a lot more time (watch this video to see the breakdown of the time I put into the making of one Danthology), I enjoyed the work much more and I feel like each Danthology has much better flow than Danthologies from previous years.
My favourite and proudest moment of Pop Danthology 2015 is one of the last choruses of Part 1 (here’s an instagram video loop of that part). In this part of my mashup, I arranged different songs in a way to make the original artists sing the line,
“I want you to know, soon as you came in the door, you stole my heart because you’re beautiful. I want you know I ain’t never letting go. So darling hold my hand. Don’t let me go.”
The word “beautiful” in this section is sung by Jon Bellion in Zedd’s song “Beautiful Now.” I didn’t think any of the video footage from the original music video really fit with the new heartfelt lyrics that I came up with so I replaced that part with a clip of my fiancé, Kimberley-Rae.
(selfie with Kim from the day of the proposal – August 11, 2015)
Another thing that people may notice about this year’s Danthologies is that the mashups uploaded onto YouTube are missing some songs (full versions are available on my facebook and soundcloud). I did this with select songs only as an attempt to lower the chances of my mashups getting blocked in different countries around the world – I want all of you to be able to enjoy Pop Danthology 2015.
SONG LIST
Below is the song list for the full versions of Pop Danthology 2015 Part 1 and 2. As mentioned above, the versions on YouTube will not have all of the songs that are listed below.
Pop Danthology 2015 – Part 1
Songs:
99 Souls – The Girl Is Mine
Adam Lambert – Ghost Town
Afrojack – SummerThing (feat. Mike Taylor)
Alesso – Cool (feat. Roy English)
Ariana Grande – One Last Time
AronChupa – I’m an Albatraoz
Carly Rae Jepson – Run Away With Me
Cazzette – Together (feat. Newtimers)
Charlie Puth – Marvin Gaye (feat. Meghan Trainor)
Chedda Da Connect – Flicka Da Wrist (feat. Boston George)
Daniel Kim – Hoover Swing
Daniel Kim – Different Target
Daniel Kim – On My Own
Demi Lovato – Cool For The Summer
Deorro & Chris Brown – Five More Hours
Drake – Know Yourself
Ellie Goulding – Love Me Like You Do
Fetty Wap – My Way (feat. Monty)
Fetty Wap – Trap Queen
Flo Rida – I Don’t Like It, I Love It (feat. Robin Thicke)
