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TGIF! Let’s Chill with Some Simpsonwave, a.k.a. Vaporwave Songs Mashed up with The Simpsons

Over the past couple of months, YouTuber Lucien Hughes has been adding track-by-track to a playlist called “Simpsonwave“; it currently stands at 12 songs, and they’re all pretty incredible. But this isn’t a new trend, and Hughes didn’t start this weird train. Simpsonwave began a year ago with this totally sweet Vine by Spicster. Ever since then, music aficionados have been mashing up clips from The Simpsons with cool vaporwave tracks, sometimes including Simpsons dialogue chunks as well.

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A simple search for “Simpsonwave” on YouTube will turn up plenty of weirdly good contenders. Why does this exist, and why does it work so well? Well, anecdotally, I’ve noticed that a whole lot of my peers enjoy getting high and watching old episodes of The Simpsons. So I’m guessing that’s part of the origin story of this particular genre. Some of these Simpsonwave tracks seem like they might make you feel paranoid if you watched them while under chronic influence, but overall, they seem like great background noise for a party. As a straightedge square myself, I also think they’re damn good to enjoy while stone cold sober.

Is Simpsonwave a joke, or is it meant to be taken seriously as a musical art form? I guess the answer is “both” … although arguments about the intentionality of Simpsons jokes can apparently destroy friendships, so I’ll be careful not to take a firm stance here. Whether you watch Simpsonwave ironically or earnestly, it’s a mega-chill enjoyable ride.

(via Laughing Squid)

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Author
Maddy Myers
Maddy Myers, journalist and arts critic, has written for the Boston Phoenix, Paste Magazine, MIT Technology Review, and tons more. She is a host on a videogame podcast called Isometric (relay.fm/isometric), and she plays the keytar in a band called the Robot Knights (robotknights.com).

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