Mashup

A mashup is a recording created by combining elements of two or more existing songs, most typically the vocal of one track laid over the instrumental of another, into a single new work. Built entirely from sampled material, it depends on the listener recognising the sources, and on the producer matching key, tempo and phrasing so that records from different genres and eras interlock. Emerging from the bastard pop underground of the early 2000s, when affordable audio software made the technique widely accessible, the mashup became a defining folk form of the file-sharing era and of internet music culture.