“Smells Like Adele,” the latest mashup from DJ Cummerbund, starts off feeling like a pretty straight-ahead combination of Adele’s colossal megahit “Hello” and the now classic rock radio-eligible “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” The combination works admirably. Both songs have the word “hello” in them a bunch, and when you slow down Kurt Cobain’s vocals and put them over Adele’s instrumental, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” gets really torchy and sad. Conversely, Adele sounds a little angrier about this breakup with a little Nirvana guitar underneath her.
Midway through, though, there’s a sudden twist when he drops in a few bars of Alice In Chain’s “Would,” although it still blends together nicely. Then, another layer of complexity when Stone Temple Pilot’s “Sex Type Thing” gets thrown over top. So now it’s some sort of Adele-meets-fallen-grunge-icons mix, which is kind of a neat idea.
But Cummerbund isn’t done. He adds to this already rich stew by dropping in a few bars from Randy “Macho Man” Savage’s brief, inglorious rap career before letting the whole thing build to glorious crescendo. (Sticking Macho Man into everything is kind of DJ Cummerbund’s thing.) The end result is kind of nonsensical, and Macho Man is one of the worst rappers ever, but it’s also weirdly addictive listening.