My Top 1000 Songs #905: This Is The Remix

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

This doesn't necessarily count as an actual "song," but it's probably my favorite excerpt from DJ Girl Talk's 2010 album All Day. It's the third (and most polished) of his not-entirely-legitimate mash-up collections, an endless array of mix-and-match raps from hip-hop artists spliced atop snippets of rock songs new and old. This particular 6-minute medley best encapsulates what I love about those records, with some inspired (arguably genius) use of samples as an art form, a mosaic of found sounds both familiar and unexpected.

The use of the Jackson 5's "I Want You Back" and Simon & Garfunkel's "Cecilia" is downright brilliant--damn, why isn't the "Cecilia" percussion used in every rap song ever?--but you also get to spend a few seconds with everything from Bananarama's "Cruel Summer" to 90s alt.rock lost gem "Possum Kingdom" (by the Toadies) to a brief segue courtesy of the Grateful Dead's "Casey Jones," culminating in INXS' "Need You Tonight" (another riff that seems custom-built for sampling). [You can find a list of source material here.]

Here it is as part of the Girl Walk full-length dance video (starting at about 26:23 into the album):