I love a good Mash Up, where a new, distinct product is created from the best parts of two or more popular songs. The songs are frequently different in genre: a ballad and heavy metal; rap and classical; pop and country; yet the final product can be a slick, catchy song in its own right. Check out Bootie Blog for some samples. Some of my favourites include:
- Hung Up on Soul (Madonna vs Death Cab for Cutie)
- Foo to the Floor (Foo Fighters vs Starsailor)
- Horny as a Dandy (Mousse T vs The Dandy Warhols)
- Dance Dreams (Lady Gaga vs Eurythmics)
- I Got More Than A Feeling (Black Eyed Peas vs Boston)
- Shut Up and Take Me Out (The Ting Tings vs Franz Ferdinand)
I think high performing teams are like a good Mash Up. Individuals in that team may be good in their own right, but when mixed together they come up with something they could have never been on their own. A musician’s style appeals to a certain audience, but in a good Mash Up they make a final product that takes the best of the contributors to make something potentially more appealing to a wider audience.
One major limitation of my analogy is that in a Mash Up one can still tell the contributing parts of the creators, where in a practical sense we may like to think of a completed project as uniform. In great masterpieces would we not want to see the contributing parts of the artists involved, though one could argue more talented DJs create seamless tracks or choose the songs that work best together (Boulevard of Broken Songs blends Oasis’ Wonderwall and Green Day’s Boulevard of Broken Dreams very well).
A quick listen on Bootie blog may also reveal many horrible ‘Mish mashes’ of songs that don’t fit. These are the ones where you can hear the catchy parts of songs you know, but want to hear more of the originals, not the cacophonous mashed form. I think a lot of university group assignment teams end up like this, where the product of the group is of a lower standard than what individuals would produce. My theory is that like mash ups, less thought is put into what the strengths of each component are and how they can be blended together. Is your team a Mash Up or Mish Mash?