If music be the food of love, play on

In and around December a man called Daniel Kim (not to be confused with Daniel Dae Kim who played razor-cheekboned Jin in Lost) spends on average 500 hours pouring over all the songs that were released during the year and merges them into a 50+ song mash-up.

This year's effort 'Pop Danthology 2012' has gone online and I just cannot stop listening to it.

The premise is I suppose that all pop and R&B songs sound so similar that with the effort and time you can easily merge them all into one. Well that's what the cynical & multitudes of Youtube commenters say. The cynical may well be right due to the '4 chord' belief but I've been rocking my jollies on this pop fiesta anyways.

I enjoy music. I don't pretend to be an expert because my foray into the world of keyboard playing when I was ten didn't exactly go fantastically well but then when was music played only for the experts?

Personally speaking (though I think many would agree) I like the way music makes me feel. I genuinely don't care whether my favourite song sounds anything like my second favourite song or my third favourite song. They could all be mini-song clones for all I notice, but maybe one has a different beat or a certain lyric and that's what resonates.

Other people listen to music that I hate, in fact the mash up above contains at least 5 songs that I just cannot stand. In return I listen to music that other people hate. When I play certain Regina Spektor songs, especially the ones where she makes strange noises with her lips, I come over all goosepimply while my boyfriend would probably choose death by falling speaker to kill both himself and the music. Doesn't mean she's not good, just that she's not good for him. Doesn't mean (oh this pains me to say) One Direction aren't good. They just aren't good for me.

Problem is that I've come across this 'art snobbery' before. I love Sci-fi and Fantasy. Reading it, writing it, fantasising that I'm a world famous author of some of it. I sat next to an English professor from Santa Barbara on a flight to the States and she said that The Hunger Games was one of the best pieces of fiction she had ever read but because it's not considered 'literature' it will never get taught in any English classes which she considers an awful injustice.

It even happens quite close to home. I'm not involved in the theatre industry but many people I now know are and one person in particular that I have met believes that theatre is only truly theatre if people are gasping, weeping and dying on stage. Anything less is cheap. She speaks passionately about plays where people are dressed in black and say nothing for 40 minutes whereas I quite enjoy the idea of The Lion King.

The average punter (of which I am) with their busy and stressful lives tend to want to take their hard earned money and go do something which makes them happy. So whether that means I want to watch Shakespeare, read Game of Thrones or listen to Flo Rida then so be it. Those things might not necessarily be good for everyone but they sure are good for me.

Except Whistle.

So enjoy (or don't) the Pop Danthology video I have chosen to share this week because I am going to enjoy having it on loud, drinking my Baileys and jumping around singing about having a good time.