Writing a New Mashup: Dance the Night of December 1963 Next to Me Queen

Brass Mash arranger Anthony Yi, already brainstorming his next 5 mashups

Here in Brass Mash, we write our own mashup arrangements. Every song we play is a mashup of at least two (but usually 3 or more) songs. Colin and Anthony write most of the arrangements - contrary to what is said at some shows, I (Stephanie) have only written four mashups.

It has been a few months since we’ve introduced new charts, so when Anthony shared his latest creation with us I thought it would be a fun opportunity to share how one of us approaches the arranging process.

If you have heard us play, you know that our mashups are all unique. As such, the arranging process is different every time. There is no secret formula we always follow. Which we love! It keeps the experience fresh for everyone. Today, let’s hear from Anthony about his new arrangement, “Dance the Night of December 1963 Next to Me Queen.”

Tell us about your new arrangement. What songs are in it, and why did you choose them?

The new arrangement took about 3 days to come together. There was an audience member I’d talked to a couple of months back (or maybe more…) asking for “Dancing Queen.” I saw her again at the last Liquid Gravity gig [Feb. 2024]. After we played an ABBA song I saw her and she was like, “Dancing Queen? Is that gonna happen?” I was like, “Oh yeah! I’ve gotta get on that.”

I originally had that in another project. I have so many projects, so many mashes in progress, and it takes awhile to complete them. “Dancing Queen” was in another mash, and then I decided to take it out. One of the songs in that mash was already being used by Colin, I hadn’t really finished it yet and I wasn’t sure how to get out of it and wrap it up, so I thought I should just find a new mash.

Then while I was driving, I asked my Google Assistant to play my mash playlist on Spotify. I have multiple playlists about mashes - I have to label them something different, but I guess I labeled two of them with the same name, “Mash.” It didn’t play the one that I wanted, with all my current songs, but it went to an older one that only had one song - “December 1963” by Frankie Valli.

That was one of my favorite songs growing up, so I thought I would just listen to it for fun. Then, the Spotify algorithm played “Dancing Queen” right after, and I was like, “Oooh! Hey…does that work? I think it does.” Late that night when I got home, I started to try and put the two together. I’d already had “Dancing Queen” from the first mash, I just had to start putting down the Frankie Valli tune.

From there, I thought “What else would be a fun song?” And, because both the Frankie Valli and Dancing Queen are very old songs, what would be a current song I could tie it to? I was thinking of the “dancing” theme, and I came up with “Dance the Night” from the new Barbie movie, by Dua Lipa. Going from the major to minor was pretty seamless.

Then I thought, “How can I end it?” The next day, I was scrolling through TikTok and one of the songs on my feed was the K-pop song “Standing Next to You” by Jung Kook. I was like, “Oh yeah, this riff is always so sick, I always like it…wait…it feels like it’s the same tempo as Dance the Night and all the others!” I checked, and found that it is - it could work!

So the four tunes came together and it wrapped up super nicely. It’s always funny that a project that only started two days before was able to be completed, versus all the others in my backlog that I’ve been working on for over a year, still unfinished. When you have inspiration, you get the motivation to do it and it gets done pretty quickly!

It’s a fun one! I always try to listen to my mashups in my car, on the way to work, with the MIDI sound effects from the Sibelius software. It always makes me smile, hearing the mash and the way that Dancing Queen works. In the beginning, it’s just a feel-good dancing song. People will lean into it and start dancing, I think. Then to take it into the modern realm of music. Maybe people will be doing that TikTok dance when we start playing it! That would be cool.

Listen for “Dance the Night of December 1963 Next to Me Queen” in our setlist, starting in April 2024!