Maybe it’s just morbid curiosity or maybe you just have the worst musical taste imaginable. Whatever the reason, you’re here now. You read that headline and, despite its warning, you clicked. Now you find yourself staring down the barrel of the audio equivalent of a war crime, Lou Bega’s “Mambo No. 5” seamlessly mashed up with Green Day’s “Holiday.” Really, you only have yourself to blame.
Well, a little bit of that blame can be thrown on DJ Cummerbund, the irresponsible sociopath who committed this atrocity. Though, judging by his other videos and the inclusion of fake names like “Pamjela” and “Reanjela,” we can assume Cummerbund is in on the joke here. Some jokes, however, go to far. No one should ever have to hear Lou Bega’s voice auto-tuned over triumphant pop-punk power chords.
Part of what makes “Holiday No. 5” so aggressively bad (despite the surprisingly high-quality production value) is that it bridges a particularly regrettable era in music history. A Little Bit Of Mambo, Lou Bega’s 1999 album, really typifies the wide-eyed idiocy of the late-90s, a time when what is essentially a novelty song recorded by a German guy in a Panama hat could top the charts. Conversely, “Holiday” comes of off Green Day’s 2004 comeback album American Idiot, a pop-punk rock opera about disaffected suburban youth in post-9/11 America. The fact that either song once resonated so strongly with the listening public feels kind of embarrassing in retrospect.
By placing them side-by-side, this mashup forces us to confront our shame head-on, like the audio version of flipping through your middle school year book. Look into the mirror, dear reader. This is who you were. This is who you are.
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