Artist of the Week: DJ Earworm

Born as Jordan Roseman, DJ Earworm started his career as a DJ in 2007, he and never looked back.

From San Francisco, CA, DJ Earworm was born into a music family, and he chose that path for himself. After being raised in Iowa and Illinois, he attended the University of Illinois. He first went for a physics major, but changed his career path to venture into the world of music theory and computer science. He started with mashups in 2003. This field, he said, was “relatively unexplored [as an] art form.” Instead of following usual DJs, who took the singing from one song and mixed it with an instrument piece from another song, he made one song the underlying tune, while adding other tunes over it. In addition, unlike other DJs, he uses songs more than once.

This spectacular DJ can use five programs at a time to make his music. They include Ableton Live, Adobe Audition, ACID Pro, Final Cut Pro X, and VJing. In addition, he has also gotten help from fellow artists. For example, his career took off after showing his first songs to DJ Adrian, who encouraged him to make more and to share them online.

DJ Earworm has two main mashup series: “United States of Pop” and “SummerMash.” Different segments of “United States of Pop” have been published since 2007. These include “United States of Pop” (2007), “Viva la Pop” (2008), and “Do What You Wanna Do” (2014). In each mix, he includes all the songs that were in the top 25 in the year’s charts. Furthermore, he chooses one song to be the underlying tune, and then adds the rest on top so they can fit together. For example, for the 2008 version, he used Coldplay’s “Viva la Vida” as the main music, while in 2007, he used Rihanna’s “Umbrella.”

DJ Earworm has acknowledged that in his last few albums, he has decreased the amount of electric dance music (EDM), and has slowed the tempo down. He said, “And [in 2014], “Timber,” which was popular in January, is the only popular dance track I’m dealing with. It’s definitely down-tempo, so you have to decide, how is this going to go? How am I going to maintain the energy levels while being true to the sound of the year?” However, it is still a great album.

DJ Earworm also has the “SummerMash” series. This started much more recently, in 2013, but has already become a hit. “SummerMash ’13” contains all the songs that have “the spirit of summer 2013.” In 2014, he released “SummerMash ’14” featuring Calvin Harris’s “Summer.”

DJ Earworm also publishes mashups for organizations. In the spring of 2014, he released “Hands-Only CPR Mash-up” in co-ordinance with the American Heart Association’s CPR campaign. An interesting fact: the song is set to 100 beats per minute. In CPR, one should do 100 chest compressions a minute.

DJ Earworm was also featured on Noah Gearhart’s first Spectacular Spontaneous Show. Gearhart, a member of BlackHawk TV, has posted his videos to BlackHawk TV’s Youtube Channel. You can see the show here.

Don’t expect DJ Earworm to fade away anytime soon, because he mashes away into our ears every year.

To listen do DJ Earworm’s music, click here. To learn more about him, click here.