Marvelous fun with song title mashups

SiriusXM recently added a huge number of extra channels (officially called “Xtra Channels”) to its app and online service, which I thought was an exciting development. They didn’t so much add new genres, as themes and blends of genres. There are now channels for your barbeque, for your tailgate party, for your workout, and for your cooldown. My suggestion of a murder ballad channel, or a channel of nothing but bluegrass songs about bluegrass, didn’t make the cut, but I knew it was a long shot.

Among the categories of new channels is one called “Music Mash,” containing various mash-ups of genres. These may be of greatest interest to me, because you can’t possibly combine enough seemingly unrelated genres in one channel to equal the randomness of some of my own playlists, which have been known to range from Red Allen’s Folkways recordings to Madonna’s Essene period. One channel blends current country and pop hits, another offers a ’60s and ’70s country and pop hits mash-up. There’s even a current pop/country/Alt/R&B mash-up.

All this genre-mixing and kneading (just before punching it down and repeating) has given me an idea: we need to come up with bluegrass songs that are mashed up with pop hits of various eras, and the result can be a genre all to itself, with its own channel and possibly an awards show. 

As an example of what I’m talking about, here are some ideas for songs that are mash-ups of ’70s and ’80s pop hits with bluegrass standards:

Dancing in the Dark Hollow

Crocodile Rocky Top

Purple Rain Please Go Away

The Boys of Summer Wages

We Didn’t Start the Fire on the Mountain

Tainted Love Please Come Home

Don’t Bring Me Down in the Willow Garden

Pain in My Heart of Glass

I Will Survive The Flood

I’ve Never Been to Me and the Jukebox

Rocket Man in the Middle

Doin’ My Time After Time

Cold As Ice Covered Birches

The Old Swinging Bridge Over Troubled Water

Every Breath You Take Me in the Lifeboat

Dim Lights, Thick Smoke on the Water

How Will I Know What It Means to Be Lonesome

Straight Up This Hill and Down

Crazy Little Thing Called Love and Wealth

Old Slew Footloose

That Old Time Rock ’n’ Roll in My Sweet Baby’s Arms

These next three may bend the rules slightly, but I thought it was worth it:

When White Doves Cry

Papa Don’t Preach or Whip Little Bennie

Walkin’ In My Sleep Like an Egyptian

Mash away! This also needs to be a Jeopardy category.