The Internet’s Favourite Mash-Up King, Neil Cicierega, Has Returned With His Wildest Work Yet
From Marilyn Manson to Spongebob to Johnny Cash to Justin Bieber - it's heinous and amazing at the same time.
Comedian and Harry Potter Puppet Pals creator Neil Cicierega has established his place in the canon as the king of mash-ups, thanks to his wildly popular Mouth albums.
After all, Mouth Sounds, his debut under his own name, was a genuine game-changer. Consistently funny and bizarre — the very opening song mashes-up Smash Mouth and famed Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky — the mix is stunningly careful in its composition.
Indeed, the joy comes from the sheer blood, sweat and tears that Cicierega has poured into the joke — anyone else might have dashed off Nirvana and Michael Jackson hybrid, but Cicierega takes it deathly seriously.
And from that debut, he only got better. Mouth Silence and Mouth Moods, released in 2014 and 2017 respectively, only amped up the insanity of the songs thrown into the stew — in one particularly stunning moment, The Beatles’ ‘Revolution Number 9’ meets ‘Mambo No. 5’. The man was untouchable.
But his new masterpiece, Mouth Dreams, released just today, might be even better. Fading from a mash-up of Justin Bieber’s ‘Baby’ and Johnny Cash into ‘Can’t Touch This’ and Talking Heads’ ‘Psycho Killer’, it’s heinous and beautiful in the same measure.
Oh, and that’s not even to mention the moment when the Spongebob Squarepants theme comes crashing into Queen’s ‘We Will Rock You’, or when ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World’ morphs into that viral song about babyback ribs and then again into Marilyn Manson and then again into ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’.
There are many more pleasures still, but I don’t want to ruin them. Just clear an hour out of your day, and sink right into it: