"My Junk"/"Your Love is My Drug"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldO7J8ViFJ8

The Songs:

My Junk (Spring Awakening): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SuNIiPXEM8

Your Love is my Drug (KE$HA): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAQUBpsqEsY

The Why:

Last year in my college acapella group, we performed the song “My Junk” from the show Spring Awakening. It reminded me of “Your Love is My Drug” by KE$HA, and soon I began thinking of how to make the songs fit together musically. Spring Awakening is a musical based on the German play by the same name, that tells how a group of teens experience teenage sexuality in a late 19th-century German community that does not talk about sexuality at all. Kesha’s song is a 21st-century pop song that tells a similar story to that told in “My Junk” and makes for a cool multi-genre mash-up. Basically, both songs compare love to drugs.

The Backstory:

To me, “My Junk” is all about how addicting thinking about love can become. You become infatuated with someone and call it love, when it may or may not really be addiction to feeling wanted or loved, getting attention from someone whose opinion and friendship you care about, trying to create feelings for someone and using that person or relationship as a way to feel “high” and forget about other issues and pain. That kind of love is compared to the rush and cravings of a drug in both songs. Even if you don’t do drugs, there are still a myriad of things and people that you can get infatuated with - things you think you need in order to feel good, to feel complete, and in many cases, to function. But that kind of “love” is only self-seeking; it seeks to consume and will never stop wanting more, and it won’t ever measure up to the very first “high” you got. For other songs that relate to this kind of addictive, malnourished love, see my post on “Skinny Love/Can’t Help Falling in Love with You”.

The How:

I don't know about other solo artists, but if I don’t end up sharing an arrangement or collaborating with anyone else, I don’t physically write it all out. So some of my mash-ups go straight from my head to video or voice memo and never touch paper. “My Junk” is sung in the key of A, and that got to be a little high for my range in “Your Love is my Drug” (YLMD) so I brought it down to Ab (on guitar I capo 1 and play G). Recording on Bandhub.com, I made one track for each song’s melody line, one for each instrument, and two harmony tracks (6 total). The fun thing with Bandhub is it’s so simple to use, and you can use separate recording devices if you have, or use a minimum of whatever sound/video your computer has. I used my Mac’s webcam and a USB Rockband microphone.

I start the song with the acoustic sound of “My Junk” and slowly I layer lines of the first verse of “YLMD.” After the last part of “My Junk”’s chorus (“We’ve all got our junk, and my junk is you”) I build it into the chorus of “YLMD” with 3-part harmonies, then sing part of the second verse of that song. I layer on the second half of “My Junk,” where the background vocals sing a separate part from the melody (“I lie back just driftin’...”). Then it builds to the chorus of “YLMD” again, repeating a few times with layered on “We’ve all got our junk, and my junk is you.” To finish the song, all the voices join in the ending lines of “My Junk.”

For every song that’s written, I feel like there have got to be at least three other songs out there by someone else that say the same thing - in one way or another. With this mash-up I’m not saying these lyrics should be cherished as your metaphor for love and life - I’m saying these two songs go well together musically and lyrically, and they tell a similar story even though they come from different parts of the world and different genres of music. Food for thought. :)

~ If you have suggestions for Mash-up Monday send me a shout out!