Singled Out: Chip and The Chargeups' Green Day and Poison Mashup

11-01-2018

Chip & The Charge Ups recently released a Green Day/Poison mashup, "Good Riddance, Fallen Angel" and we asked vocalist/guitarist Chip DiMonick to tell us about it. Here is the story:

Chip & The Charge Ups has gotten a lot of attention for our Green Day/Poison mashup, "Good Riddance, Fallen Angel." Though we're primarily an original band, Chip & The Charge Ups has gotten a lot of attention for our Green Day/Poison mashup, "Good Riddance, Fallen Angel."

As with every mashup I've ever composed, people ask me: "What gave you the idea to put those two songs together?" It's hard to put into words. It's like my mind is a humongous playlist of every song I've liked from '70's classic rock to today's pop. And sometimes that playlist gets shuffled and two songs will play themselves back to back in my brain and I subconsciously react like, "Whoa...those songs would make a killer mashup!"

When that happens, I figure out the chords and melodies of both songs and see if they are musically compatible. And "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)" and "Fallen Angel" were seemingly born to be together!

With this particular mashup, I think things get really interesting when talking about how the video came to be. I never really considered doing a video. I was thrilled with how the song turned out.

But, one day - months after the song was recorded - I decided to watch both videos, just to see if anything jumped out as ripe for a visual mashup to accompany to sonic mashup. What I found was gold!

In particular, the Green Day video left so many questions unanswered. Who was Green Day singing about? What did that person decide to do when they reached that "fork stuck in the road?" Who was the woman holding the cat? Who was the man in the car? Who was the kid on the couch? Why were they all so sad?

Then, I realized some things. Like the woman holding the cat had a similar look to the mom in the Poison video. And, there was a definite reason why she was so sad! And, the brother at the dinner table in the Poison video had on a black sweatshirt and black jeans...just like Billie Joe Armstrong in the Green Day video.

As I continued watching the videos, the ideas for marrying the two storylines just kept coming and coming. I started writing notes, taking screenshots, brainstorming. Before I knew it, I had fleshed out the entire concept and even surprised myself.

I think that the more you watch both original videos and our mashup, the more you can appreciate the dozens of subtle details that we sprinkled in to make the song and video what some are calling a masterpiece!

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and see for yourself here and learn more about the band right here!