Jordan Roseman (born March 25, 1982), known professionally as DJ Earworm, is an American mashup artist from San Francisco, California, who has achieved recognition for his technically sophisticated, songwriting oriented music and video mashups. His annual “United State of Pop” mashup features the top 25 songs of the year, based in part on the Billboards Year-End Hot 100 chart, in one mix.
Biography
Roseman was born into a big family of musicians and raised in eastern Iowa and Evanston, Illinois. At the University of Illinois, Roseman started as a physics major, before changing to music theory and computer science.
Roseman started creating mashups in 2003, which he said "was a relatively unexplored art form," with most people doing "A vs. B mashups [that featured] an a cappella of one song and an instrumental of another." He began by using ACID Pro, and after showing them to DJ Adrian at Club Bootie and receiving encouragement from him, Roseman created the moniker DJ Earworm ("earworm" referencing a song that repeats uncontrollably in one's mind) and began releasing his mashups online.
DJ Earworm's style involves gradually layering song samples over each other, which adds texture and builds momentum as a song progresses. In 2006, he published Audio Mashup Construction Kit, a how-to manual for creating mashups. Earworm uses Ableton Live and Adobe Audition to create his mashups and also DJs live with Ableton. For the videos that accompany his mashups, he uses Final Cut Pro X. In 2010, Earworm started VJing in his live sets.
Earworm's "United State of Pop" videos from 2008, 2009 and 2010 were featured in a FACT exhibit titled, The Art of Pop Video, that ran from March–May 2013.
"United State of Pop" series
When creating the yearly mix, Earworm tries to find the top 25 songs from that year that represents the feeling of the year that he will use for the main track(s) in the song. He also takes into consideration if the songs he uses are "mixable" and are able to be transposed without taking away from it originally, to determine the amount of each he uses. Finally, he looks for an instrumental of a song to drive the mashup. To isolate each song for use in the mashup, Earworm looks for unmixed files from the studio on the internet or through connections. If those files are unavailable, he will process the full song with Adobe Audition or Prosoniq sonicWORX Isolate to isolate the vocals.
Earworm's 2007 mashup, "United State of Pop", consisted of the top 25 songs of 2007 according to Billboard. The song was based on the beat from "Umbrella", while using hooks from Fergie's two songs "Glamorous" and "Fergalicious". On December 25, 2008, DJ Earworm released his mix for the year, "Viva la Pop", prominently featuring Coldplay's song "Viva la Vida" as the backing track. The mashup peaked at number 70 on Billboards now defunct Pop 100 Airplay chart.
DJ Earworm continued to release his yearly mashup, "Blame It on the Pop" in 2009, "Don't Stop the Pop" in 2010, "World Go Boom" in 2011. The sixth year-end mashup, titled "Shine Brighter", was released on December 18, 2012. The mashup was finished on December 15, 2012 and premiered on Virgin Radio in Canada. It is the second mashup not to follow the year-end chart, due to the fact that Rihanna's "We Found Love" and LMFAO's "Sexy and I Know It" both appeared on the chart, and they were both featured in last year's mashup. It used a combination of Kesha's "Die Young", Ellie Goulding's "Lights" and some whistles of Flo Rida's "Whistle" as the backing track.
The seventh year-end mashup, titled "Living the Fantasy", was released on December 3, 2013. Earworm stated that this mix is "a little darker-themed" and considered making the mix a "no-frills ballad". He added that "The ballads seem to be a lot more present than they have been in many years, and the dance music is having less strong of a pull. And even the dance music that is there is more gentle, like [Robin Thicke's] "Blurred Lines" and [Daft Punk's] "Get Lucky", and not EDM bangers."