Girls On Top

The history of the mash-up is far too long to go into accurate detail here, so I'll talk for a minute about the aura surrounding one Richard Philips, better known as Richard X, previously known as Girls On Top. Since releasing a few very popular mash-ups, Mr. Philips has gone on to remix and produce a number of big name artists including Annie and Nine Inch Nails (can't get much more polar than those two, eh?) but his breakthrough was a re-recording of his mash-up "We Don't Give A Damn About Our Friends", which was a meeting of the music from Gary Numan's "Are Friends Electric?" and the vocals from Adina Howard's "Freak Like Me". Yes, unlikely bedfellows indeed, but what a payoff! The track gained enough popularity for a commercial release at which point a slightly edited version was recorded by the Sugababes. It became a number one single on the British charts and, as such, Richard X's career became a legitimate one.

As Girls On Top, Philips only released two vinyl-only singles. These were "Warm Bitch", which was a mash-up of The Normal's "Warm Leatherette" and Missy Elliot's "She's A Bitch" with "We Don't Give A Damn About Our Friends" on the b-side and "Being Scrubbed" which featured the title cut, a mash-up of Tangerine Dream's "Being Boiled" and TLC's "No Scrubs" and on the b-side, "I Wanna Dance With Numbers", a mash-up of Kraftwerk's "Numbers" and Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody". Both singles have since become collectors items but have also been bootlegged relentlessly. At one point, a bootleg "Greatest Hits" collection of Girls On Top tracks appeared featuring both singles in their entirety, a Beatles and Fat Truckers mash-up, a remix of the Sugababes version of "...Friends" and an unreleased track featuring Aaliyah and OMD.

Today, I present to you, a collection of these 6 tracks. It is worth noting that the tracks posted here are not from a single, unified source. I have good quality vinyl rips of the two singles but the version of "Being Scrubbed" has a skip in it, so I used a version from a bootleg compilation in it's place. Also, the Beatles/Fat Truckers track is from a ridiculously lo-fi source so please don't accept this as representative of the final product. I've actually looked high and low for that one and, apart from a youtube stream, had no luck in finding the complete track. The Aaliyah/OMD track is actually from a mix someone gave to me but is indeed the complete track. I'm sure if you ran it through a spectral reader you would find it's quality to be dubious, but it sounds perfectly find to my ears. Finally, if you would like to learn more about Mr. Philips and his various productions, please visit
his site. It's very detailed and features samples of many of his works.



Girls On Top

01 Being Scrubbed (TLC vs. Tangerine Dream)
02 I Wanna Dance With Numbers (Whitney Houston vs. Kraftwerk)
03 Warm Bitch (Missy Elliot vs. The Normal)
04 We Don't Give A Damn About Our Friends (Adina Howard vs. Gary Numan)
05 The White Single (The Beatles vs. Fat Truckers)
06 Romance V.3 (Aaliyah vs. OMD)