Someone Mashed Up The Smiths & Tears For Fears, And It Is Glorious

Although his former band The Smiths charts pretty highly on Morrissey's shit-list (probably just below "getting groped at airports"), the UK outfit have remained a massive influence in indie-rock circles for decades on account of their infectious arrangements and subversively downcast lyrics.

Around the same time, country-mates Tears For Fears made their mark as a new-wave force to be reckoned with, going on to enjoy mainstream success that objectively eclipsed that of their mopey indie contemporaries, though they conversely have not achieved the kind of casual-cool credibility afforded to Moz and friends. To wit, the two acts were opposing sides of the same coin, burgeoning within the same culture and time period with dramatically polar results.

Thus, it comes as something of a delightful surprise to find out, courtesy of a new mash-up by Californian web developer and musician Daniel Barassi, that their songs work so well together. Or, at least, two songs in particular do: The Smiths' Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before and Tears For Fears' Everybody Wants To Rule The World, which Barassi has seamlessly integrated into a singular composition sure to make you start wishing that there was a band called Tears For The Smiths for real. 

In some ways, Barassi's skill with '80s British tunes shouldn't be too surprising — he spends his Monday-Friday filling webmaster duties for Depeche Mode's official website, and dedicates his downtime to a broad range of affiliated interests, including "audio mastering, CD/DVD authoring video editing, video archiving, music consulting, DVD project consultation, remixing, web design & HTML/CSS/PHP/Javascript coding" and about a million other technical things.

Previous mash-ups have included unexpected fusions such as Fleetwood Mac and Massive Attack, The Beach Boys and The Beatles, Echo & The Bunnymen and U.N.K.L.E. and The Jacksons and The Prodigy.

Check out Barassi's other work at his Vimeo channel.