"Teenage Dream"/"Falling for You"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOa1g58ZUvE

The Songs:

Teenage Dream (Katy Perry): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRCz85wXwzw

Falling For You (Colbie Caillat): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Pgp2azIt-U

The Why:

A couple years ago in my acoustic performance class in college, we were experimenting with arranging covers. Our director put us into small groups and sent us away to put together the same song in our own style. So each group made different arrangements of Teenage Dream

As our group was working, “Falling for You” entered my head as a song with similar chords/song structure/lyric theme to “Teenage Dream.” I suggested, why not a mash-up? So we went for it! We made a rough 2-minute arrangement for class that day that turned out pretty well. Then earlier this year I revisited that mash-up concept, and in my new obsession with Bandhub.com I expanded on it and recorded singing it with myself.

The How:

Like I said, mash-ups usually start for me when I come upon songs that have 1.)similar chord patterns and song structure and/or 2.) similar lyrical themes. In our acoustic class arrangement, we started with the verse of “Teenage Dream” (TD), skipped the pre-chorus and sang the chorus with harmonies. Then we did a solo chorus of “Falling For You” (FFY), and ended the song by layering the two choruses. In my version above, I expanded on the class version by introducing FFY earlier and using some of its verse lines as well. Since the FFY chorus is longer than TD’s chorus, it works to introduce the former, then layer the latter halfway through. These two songs have almost identical structure: Verse, pre-chorus, chorus, verse, pre-chorus, chorus, bridge, chorus+. This made it easy to basically cut and paste sections of either song and interchange them. Then with Bandhub, I had fun recording along with myself with one “me” on each song and one for harmonies.

Hope you enjoy this teenage dream-like, falling for you story!