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I feel like mashups are perceived as these shallow "meme joke" pieces, but I do want to show that a lot of effort and thought goes into these things… so like the gimmick behind this one is that it's supposed to be like, a bait-and-switch. It’s posing as an Ariana Grande “leak” from the latest album when in reality it isn’t, but I honestly think this track could stand on its own by itself called “fake smile" because it embodies it so well (and it SLAPS anyway).

So, some backstory: this channel is actually one of those Siivagunner-type song mashup channels, but the guy who posted it, duuzu, has a soundcloud account where he uploads tracks like these (he recently hit 1000 followers, and his celebratory track is amazing too) and this guy in particular is very good at handling a multitude of different songs. This is definitely exemplified here.

The song starts out with some Ariana Grande vocals to trick the listener initially. When it goes into the Bazzi “Mine” vocals is when you realize it's a mashup, and the thing is, the "Mine" vocals start on the line "You so, fuckin', precious, when you, smile". Already, the motif of a smile is present. The track then carries on with the “Mine” sample until the line "I'm so, fuckin', happy, you're a-live".

THEN (here's where things get Genius) the man puts on XXXTentacion's “SAD!” starting with the line "suicide" – this is directly contrasting the line before, which is in essence, the whole deal about a fake smile, right, it's a juxtaposition between emotions you show and the emotion you really feel. So this transition emphasizes the contrast between these two emotions (and I mean the song is literally called “SAD!” how much more blatant can you get).

Then WHILE the XXXTentacion sample is playing, we get these snippets from “Feel Good Inc.” going "feel good" - another contrast of emotions, and when the track fully transitions into the Gorillaz vocals GUESS WHAT LINE IT REPEATS!!

“On melancholy hill where we never smile"

WOW!! DIRECT OPPOSITION TO BAZZI'S LINE FROM EARLIER!! THE FUCK!!!

Then the climax of the song comes on and it's stuff from Kanye's “Ghost Town” and the line is like "Nothing hurts anymore I feel kind of free / we're still the kids we used to be / I put my hand on the stove / to see if I still bleed".

And this is basically the main thesis of the song, that a fake smile hides away feelings of depression and numbness to the world, and this is compounded by the fact that backing these lyrics up is an extremely cheery-sounding instrumental so, another contrast there.

Nothing too special happens after that (except for an amazing culmination of all the vocals heard before plus some more) but the fact that this guy not ONLY pulled from all fairly recent pop songs but ALSO made a coherent thematic link between all the songs on what constitutes a "fake smile" AND MADE IT ALL SOUND GOOD is fucking amazing to me… this guy and clever mashups deserve more credit. Love you duuzu

LATER: WOW okay I just found out the instrumental samples used in this song are BTS's "Fake Love" and Paramore's "Fake Happy", just another really impressive reference that makes the song that much more clever.

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