2009: Looking Back

2009, as it turned out, was quite a roller coaster ride of a year in the world of music. We thought it’s also time for us to share some useless trivial behind some of the mixes.

For a start, some of the mixes actually started out as casual mentions, jokes, or challenges. In Jan, ExMen thought that there was too much focus on boy bands, and proceeded to do the "Girls Girls Girls mix". In Feb, after the Rihanna-Chris Brown incident happened, I challenged ExMen to do a "duet" mix between the two artistes as a snide pop reference. The last mix of the year, Madonna’s "Celebration", was also a response to ExMen’s challenge for me to "put in a blender all the 18 songs in Celebration’s CD1", a feat to which ExMen will follow up on in the new year :)

There is also a fair amount of word play in some of the titles. The Janet Jackson 2010 Mix was a reference to the title of her breakthrough album "Rhythm Nation 1814", while the Coldplay Winter Solstice MMXII was a reference to the 2012 doomsday conspiracists. The Gwen Stefani/No Doubt’s Mix title carried references to the L.A.M.B. acronym and the place that inspired Gwen’s cos play dress ups. We also attempted to describe the tone and sound of some of the mixes in their titles (which sometimes also condensed the message that each artiste stands for), such as Sinead O’ Conner’s "Grave Lullabies", George Michael’s "Faith Without Prejudice", Sarah McLaughlin’s "Mirrorballs and Ectasy" and PSB’s "Che Guevara and Debussy to a Disco Beat".

In 2009 we also went retro in a major way, churning out mixes of Expose, Rick Astley, Laura Branigan, Debbie Gibson, Belinda Carlisle, Cathy Dennis, Tiffany, Roxette and Elton John (oops!). I attempted to do a "Seasonal" series to capture the mood and flavour of each season ("Spring Serenades" to capture semester orientation speeches, "Summer" caught in raggerton swing, and "Winter Wonderland" enhanced with the cold and robotic synthesizer sound captured by some current hits and the 80s). The arrangement of some mixes were also tributes to each artiste’s musical and personal style, from Gwen/ No Doubt’s insipration from musical refrains ("Sound of Music", "Fiddler on the Roof"), to Madonna’s "Celebration", which effectively summarised her musical career between the in-your-face "F*ck Me" refrain opener to the "Whatcha gonna do?" confession/ contrition closer.

ExMen also started a location-specific series of mixes to reflect the favour of music played by usually the most well know club in each locality - Bangkok’s DJ Station, Singapore’s Zirca and Hong Kong’s Volume. He also attempted to go international with a Bollywood mix and a BoA mix, and went "niche" with "Strictly for Fans Only" (SFFO) mixes for Sinead O’ Connor and Sarah McLaughlin. His colour-colour-coded mixes and "Divalicious" also remain hugely popular downloads.

In June 2009 something interesting and exceptional happened. Within hours upon hearing about MJ’s untimely demise, ExMen sat down and stitched together 23 of his best known ballads at one go, with no additional remix loops or instrumentals. He did it literally overnight. At the end of it, he was exhausted, but teary eyed. When I listened to it for the first time, I teared up at least 3 times during the mix, while many of our fans reported responses from quiet tears to uncontrollably sobbing upon hearing the mix. The "Remembering..." series initiated by MJ’s demise, sadly, was reprised later for Patrick Swayze (Sept) and Stephen Gately (Oct). It would become, sadly again, one of our permanent features on our blog.

Thanks to your support, our blog currently has a daily average "clickership" of 300 plus, and we have "fans" and "followers" from over 150 countries, and from as far away as Bermuda, Kyrgystan, Seychelles, Grenada and Uganda. We have 121 mixes, containing a mind boggling 144 hours of music. In 2009 we featured individual "fans" from all over the world as an interesting "profile" of who our music is really reaching out to, and we hope to hear from more of you from more places in the coming year.

We promise there will definitely be more exciting mixes coming your way!
Happy 2010!

Hugs
DJ Ryan