A Mix From: Freshman Year
featuring a 2011 pop culture time capsule
In honor of back-to-school season, I’m reminiscing.
The year is 2011. You are a college freshman. Four Loko still contains caffeine, Glee is still must-see TV, and (according to my incriminating photos from this period) we’re all wearing cardigans with our going-out outfits. What a time to be alive!
Mashups, remixed tracks where you lay the vocals of one song over the music of another, had their cultural peak around this time: the aforementioned Glee did multiple mashup episodes, DJ Earworm’s year-end mashups went viral, and Pitch Perfect popularized the a cappella mashup medley. During our freshman year, some friends and I went to a frat party that was DJed by the mashup duo, The White Panda. After this party (where I lost my shoe in one room, spent most of the party half-barefoot in a frat basement, then found it in a separate room on the way out, I was a different person in 2011!), my friend group started listening almost exclusively to White Panda mashup mixes at our pregames.
The White Panda, who were doing a Daft-Punk-bit by being 2 guys DJing in panda masks, made a series of continuous mashup mixes that were a little over an hour long AKA ideal for playing power hour. The mix that came out in spring 2011 and made up most of our power hours was called “Pandamonium.” It is not available on streaming services, but you can live the full 2011 experience by playing it on YouTube or downloading it from their website.
As music streaming became more popular and accessible, mashups fell off. Because they were sampling numerous songs, often without explicit permission, groups like White Panda could not post their mashups to streaming services without legal issues. By my senior year, we had a very specific Spotify playlist for our apartment parties (a mix for another day!) and (sadly) mashups were not included.
Today, mashups seem to be having a bit of a renaissance especially on (sorry to say it) TikTok, and I’ve got to admit I’m ready for it. So if anyone wants to have a White Panda Power Hour soon, please let me know. I’ll bring the Pink Lemonade Burnett’s!
Thank you for reading and listening! If you enjoyed this week’s newsletter, please share with a friend!
I have the Flashlight/ Who Run the World song from Pitch Perfect on one of my mixes! Love mashups.