Boulevard of Broken Songs

Boulevard of Broken Songs is a popular mash-up mixed by San Francisco, California, DJ and producer Party Ben in late 2004. The mix consisted of elements from Green Day's "Boulevard of Broken Dreams", Oasis' "Wonderwall", Travis' "Writing to Reach You" and Eminem's "Sing for the Moment" which itself samples Aerosmith's "Dream On". "Sing for the Moment" was used solely because Party Ben did not have "Dream On" on hand and was on deadline for his "Sixx Mixx" radio show. Later versions (see below) used Aerosmith's original.

The mash-up first appeared as the finale of Party Ben's Sixx Mixx radio show on LIVE 105 on Friday, October 1st, 2004. It was posted as a standalone mp3 on his website a few days later. The track began receiving radio airplay and was eventually aired on hundreds of radio stations worldwide ^[1], despite having no official release. It eventually landed on many stations' lists of the most played tracks of 2004 and 2005^[2]. The mash-up was a popularly downloaded track on the Internet and received moderate critical applause. Canada's Music Critics Poll proclaimed it the #3 download of 2004 ^[3], while Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day thought that the mix sounded "cool". ^{[citation needed]}

A new version of the mash-up was later created with the original of Aerosmith's "Dream On" instead of "Sing For The Moment" and was included on "Best Mashups in the World Ever are from San Francisco." A third version with the Aerosmith ending and a sample of Missy Elliott was included on the American Edit, a full-length mash-up album of American Idiot, produced by Party Ben and Team9 under the name "Dean Gray". The album also contains a dance version of "Boulevard of Broken Songs."

Trivia

A parody of this mash-up, entitled Blogger Board of Broken Spoofs, was recorded by DJ Particle in 2006 as a hidden track for her album Shiny Round Thing Inside. While not using quite as many mash-up tricks as the original, she used parodies of three of the songs Party Ben selected for his original, those parodies being spaff.com's I Blog Alone and King Kong, and Bob Ricci's Wonderbra.

References

1. ^ Party Ben's website
2. ^ One station's list of most played tracks
3. ^ Music Critics Poll

External links

• Party Ben Information Systems (official site)
• San Francisco Chronicle article on Boulevard of Broken Songs

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