It was only a matter of time before major labels discovered the commercial appeal of mash-ups. After all, the process of mixing the instrumentation of one song with the vocals of another has reached such online saturation that even AOL users have probably come across enough R&B songs featuring Oasis’s “Wonderwall” to fill an 80-minute album. In an obvious attempt to cash in on this ubiquity, EMI presents Mashed!, their as-hopelessly-behind-the-cutting-edge-as-a-dial-up-modem compilation of bastard pop.
    Though Mashed! thankfully eschews the most common fodder for mash ups, it also purposefully avoids some of the genre’s most inspired works. Instead, it aims steadily for the most inoffensive section of the middle of the road. Sure, hearing No Doubt’s “Hella Good” overtop of the Shapeshifter’s “Lola’s Theme” is kind of fun; of course, the melding of Mousse T’s “Horny” and the Dandy Warhols’s “Bohemian Like You” elicits a smile; and yes, putting Blondie’s “Rapture” together with The Doors’s “Riders on the Storm” is, well, actually quite awful, but none of these cuts add anything to their source material, like the best mash-ups do. They’re merely serviceable fun and don’t warrant more than one spin.
    Instead of viewing the mash-up as a musical genre in its own right, Mashed! treats them as little more than novelty and, thus, brings about its own downfall. Fortunately, it’s incredibly easy to find better examples of mash-ups online, even with AOL and a dial-up modem.