When Mitchell Taylor ’19 uploaded a mashup of Taylor Swift’s songs “Wildest Dreams” and “Ready For It” on Aug. 5, he never expected it would go viral.
The morning after uploading, Taylor woke up to around 50 notifications. One of these notified him that his YouTube video had been taken off on Twitter – to date, it has around 250,000 views. “It’s like, how did this happen? It’s just bizarre,” Taylor said.
Shortly after the video went viral on Twitter, Taylor was approached on Facebook by a Taylor Swift fan group who wanted to make him an administrator so he could post new videos to the page as soon as he made them. Despite being taken aback by the request, Taylor agreed and posted the video to the group. It now has over 50,000 views on Facebook.
Even though this mashup has received a lot of attention, Taylor Swift herself has yet to acknowledge it, though Swift fans are hardly to blame.
According to Taylor, fans have been tagging Swift in the comments of the video on social media, so perhaps it is only a matter of time before the pop singer takes notice.
Taylor only began testing his hand in mashup creation this past summer.
“I’ve always wanted to do it, but never really had the tools to do it, so this summer I just started,” Taylor said.
Taylor said he was determined to spend time audio editing after spending time abroad last year.
“I didn’t have my guitar, I didn’t have a piano. It was fun to be abroad, but I felt very cut off, so when I got back all these things I’d been wanting to do for a long time, I was just like ‘you know, I just want to go for it.’”
“I’ve always wanted to do it, but never really had the tools to do it, so this summer I just started.” – Mitchell Taylor ’19
His mashup of “Wildest Dreams” and “Ready For It” was the very first mashup he’s made. Beyond thinking the songs would sound good together, Taylor was inspired to use this mashup to right Swift’s musical wrong.
“I hate the rap in ‘Ready for It,’ so I was like ‘gosh, I wish there was something that could get rid of the rap.’”
Taylor started by using Audacity to change the tempos and keys of the songs so they match, and then used Garage Band to stitch the two together.
“It’s a guilty pleasure. It’s so nerdy, but it’s so fun!”
