Mashup (music)
song or composition created by blending two or more pre-recorded songs
A mashup (also mesh, mash up, mash-up, blend, bastard pop or bootleg) is a creative work, usually a song, created by blending two or more pre-recorded songs, typically by superimposing the vocal track of one song seamlessly over the instrumental track of another and changing the tempo and key where necessary. Such works are considered "transformative" of original content and in the United States they may find protection from copyright claims under the "fair use" doctrine of copyright law.
History
The 1967 Harry Nilsson album Pandemonium Shadow Show features what is nominally a cover of the Beatles' "You Can't Do That" but actually introduced the "mashup" to studio-recording. Nilsson's recording of "You Can't Do That" mashes his own vocal recreations of more than a dozen Beatles songs into this track. Nilsson conceived the combining of many overlaying songs into one track after he played a chord on his guitar and realized how many Beatles songs it could apply to. This recording has led some to describe Harry Nilsson as the inventor of the mashup. Other recordings regarded as early examples of, or forerunners to, the mashup include Buchanan and Goodman's "The Flying Saucer" (1956), Marshall McLuhan's The Medium Is the Massage (1967), the John Benson Brooks Trio's Avant Slant (1968), Grandmaster Flash's "The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel" (1981), Paul McCartney's "Tug of Peace" (1983), the "Hip Hop Mix" of Climie Fisher's "Rise to the Occasion" (1987), Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers' Jive Bunny: The Album (1989) and Coldcut's Journeys by DJ: 70 Minutes of Madness (1995).
Although described as a medley in its title, "Do It Again Medley with Billie Jean" by Italian music project Club House could be described as one of the first ever commercially released mashups in 1983. The song combines elements of "Do It Again", a 1973 top 10 hit in the US and Canada by Steely Dan, with Michael Jackson's number one hit from earlier in the year, "Billie Jean". It reached number 11 in the UK, and the top 10 in Belgium, Ireland and the Netherlands.
The public source identifies “Mashup (music)” as song or composition created by blending two or more pre-recorded songs. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Mashup, music and song.
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A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Mashup (music)”, the useful work is to connect “song or composition created by blending two or more pre-recorded songs” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q48445. The Library of Congress control number is sh2006008483. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1967, 1956, 1968 and 1981.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mashup (music)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.