Contemporary pop music thru the filter of a gentler, more segregated age: Postmodern Jukebox etc

I thing the other difference with that 90s lounge stuff like Mike Flowers is that it reveled in it's own tackiness and this is all horribly tasteful

The other problem is fedoras thinking Amy Winehouse is 'vintage 60s'.

all that chap-hop, Mr B the Gentleman Rhymer stuff feels like a close-ish cousin to this

I hate almost all of this stuff but I have to begrudgingly say that I like the clown's version of 'Royals'.

I have a cut off point of Nouvelle Vague being the band that totally made this ubiquitous and awful. Obviously it existed long before but even in the silly easy listening trend of the '90s it wasn't ~everywhere~. Also, even though I don't really like musical comedy, at least it was obvious the '90s bands were being comedic, whereas these newer gentrifiers seem to believe that they're somehow "capturing the inner beauty" of a song or something, like pop is this ugly thing, but look, we superior beings have gleaned the diamond in the rough and presented it to you.

xps oh, I was writing that when soref posted, yes, that.

these newer gentrifiers seem to believe that they're somehow "capturing the inner beauty" of a song or something, like pop is this ugly thing, but look, we superior beings have gleaned the diamond in the rough and presented it to you.

v. otm

'gentrifiers' as a descriptor seems particularly apt

This is also closely related to that gyspy jazz/electro swing continuum ain't it? It's that austerity nostalgia thing mixed with 'it's just a bit of fun'

The people I know who like PMJB are either not that into music and like them for the novelty factor. Either that or they're proper 'band' people who play a bazillion instruments.

I like Easy Star Allstars a lot. Not sure what the difference is here? It's probably the starchiness at work here. They scream 'festival bigtop at 3pm', crusties doing the can-can in gingham dresses.

iirc Nouvelle Vague's choices of cover versions were from the (alt) canon and critically robust so I never really found anything distasteful about them in the sense of other stuff mentioned itt

what's the earliest example of this sort of thing?

Think this bunch are pretty foundational for that queasy mixture of sincere admiration and snooty pastiche

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Temperance_Seven

seeing a "diamond in the rough" seems to me like a theoretically v good reason to do a cover version albeit one ripe for abuse

I started typing something on the relationship to electro swing but I actually think this is the inverse of that. Electro swing is modern music using the recordings and riffs of the other era; the fact that both sets of fans (and there is undoubtedly a huge fan crossover) dress the same way obviously clouds the issue.

I think the first Nouvelle Vague record was the last time I was aware of this being a thing, I'd assumed that the crossover of it into e.g. the "traditional" John Lewis Christmas advert meant that it was too mainstream to even be considered a novelty. Is Gary Jules maybe a turning point?

Yesterday I was imagining a long, slow, mournful version of Livin Joy's 'Dreamer' done in the style of Fields of the Nephilim or Johnny Cash's 'American IV'.

It left me wondering whether such a cover version would be more of an indictment of goth music than pop music, i.e. - would it be easier to ignore the fluffy broken English of the original were it weighed down with funereal gravitas? and if so, does that prove something about supposedly 'serious' goth music and its ability to make frivolous lyrics sound deep and meaningful, as opposed to highlighting the quasi-gibberish of the source lyrics?

https://youtu.be/jdYuSbthibI

That 'black metal covers done in a euro-trance style' album from the Soft Pink Truth is a good inverse to this kind of thing.

For another early example, could we argue Mrs Mills? She certainly did enough contemporary material, and her use of stride piano was to appeal to the pre-war generations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6mIP2uRuM4

There are few songs that can't be improved by adding synth fireworks and a kickdrum, but there are very few songs that sound better "stripped back"

Like I always think of how when Adele sang "Someone Like You" at the British with just a piano and it was good but it would have been so much better with a dance routine and a dubstep part

Basically this is the inverse of all those Clubland compilations from the past decade and all the worse for it

At the Brits, even

The Postmodern Jukebox things are utterly loathsome and unbearable. The Hackney Colliery Band covers linked in the OP sound way more tasteful in execution, even if they're still super mediocre, like a passably funky band at a blues bar or something.

The problem with a lot of these songs is that they aren't written to be played this way. Contemporary pop songs are based around four-chord loops that don't mesh with swing/jazz/blues era harmonies or structures. You hear a trombone player mimicking a vocal part by playing a rhythmic pattern that stays on one or two notes and it's like, why is this happening? I don't understand why people buy into this gimmicky shit.

iirc it was all oldies rather than contemporary songs done in an old-timey way, but the massive success of Robbie Williams Swing When You're Winning seems like a step towards this stuff becoming omnipresent, it kind of grew out of the 90s easy revival but with a focus on "classiness" rather than tackiness, the smirky mien with which Williams delivered this seems to set the tone.

(maybe Tom Jones' Reload album fits in somewhere as well?)

The 'indie night' at my student union used to be about 40% ska-punk covers of well-known pop songs like Come on Eileen. Later I think they did the same thing with big-room dubstep drops.

Fallon's barbershop covers seem like an egregious example of this, even if the intent is self-mockery or making fun of the older style.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkCfh-mB_G0

Downside of too many conservatory kids no longer feeling constrained to playing Chopin or whatever, plus the talentshow-ization of music encouraged by American Idol and youtube.

jimmy fallon is a plague

*shriek*

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6RD6mjiIZE

advertisers really going to town with this shit at the moment

five years behind the curve, so right on time

Things I don't have a problem with:
- covering songs in a radically different style to the original
- jazz versions of popular songs (half of jazz is built on this, although from the days when popular songs had way more chords and more raw material to work with harmonically)

Things I do have a problem with:
- shoving every popular song from the last 30 years into a generic 'jazzy' form without putting any great effort into it or thinking whether it's a good idea
- patting yourself on the back for being so clever to do thing A in style B
- pulling weird faces and mugging for the camera in videos and thinking this is somehow connected to 'irony'
- equating slow tempos and lack of electronic instruments with being more meaningful and deep, maaan
- implicitly shitting on the original - "look how we turned this disposable pop rubbish into a real song"
- always keeping it so damn tasteful and never cutting loose or improvising or using the song as a jumping off point
- calling yourself 'Postmodern' just because you have a double bassist and he wears a hat

advertisers really going to town with this shit at the moment

That Fatboy Slim cover on an advert for some bank is particularly toe-curling

that one and whoever's doing "I Only Wanna Be With You" are rising my urge to kill considerably

I am not familiar with this and cannot listen at work but the impression I'm getting is something like
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG_rEqCivn4

advertisers really going to town with this shit at the moment

there is a current ad for Phoenix University that uses the faux jazz voice to sing/speak "If I Only Had a Brain" with dumb new lyrics that is the most embarrassing thing i have ever heard in life.

The unintended consequence of that commercial, for me, is thinking 'if you only had a brain, you wouldn't associate yourself in any way with the University of Phoenix'.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=paul+anka+black+hole+sun

idk, i think the thread criticism on this has it a little bit backwards. like the postmodern jukebox people are folks who are all barbershop quartet fanatics pat boone-ing contemporary hits? the whole notion of this is that people know and in many cases love carly rae jepsen and they get an excuse to listen to an older, unpopular style of music by hearing carly rae jepsen done in that style.

the closest historical precedent i can think of is liberace, early in his career, doing "cement mixer". that's not the way we think of liberace now, mind.

as for "rap the musical".... :)

I feel like Pentatonix fits into this. My kiddo loves the video of them on Sesame Street and they seemed pretty charming. Then the autoplay started playing stuff like "ACAPELLA DAFT PUNK MEDLEY" which made me wanna gouge my eyes and ears out. I know this is supposed to be technically impressive and it kinda is but with 400 million views or whatever there must be people out there who really dig this stuff. Different strokes, my friends.

I know this is supposed to be technically impressive and it kinda is but with 400 million views or whatever there must be people out there who really dig this stuff

there is a guy that does this with videogame songs and he is huge and gets written up all the time about how skillful this guy must be but it is super obvious that he just auto-tuned his vocals to some MIDI files

I had never heard Liberace's "Cement Mixer," that's amazing! Was Slim Gaillard's original that well known at the time I wonder? (Although his version is really more like Steve Allen mockingly reading the lyrics to "Be Bop A Lula.") xxp

based on the audience response from the live video of him doing it, they certainly seem to know it pretty well!

the whole notion of this is that people know and in many cases love carly rae jepsen and they get an excuse to listen to an older, unpopular style of music by hearing carly rae jepsen done in that style.

in the case of my friend who is deeply into this shit, she'd never listen to carly rae jepsen on her own in a million years but postmodern jukebox-style covers provide the veneer of muso chops and knowing distance which make the original i dunno 'respectable' in her opinion

i guess another way to say that is that she's enjoying the music despite the original rather than because of it - like the talent of postmodern jukebox allows them to overcome the lacklustre origins of the song by turning it into a smug dinner-jazz atrocity

Moog Cookbook's Black Hole Sun > Soundgarden's Black Hole Sun > corny jazz Black Hole Sun

a lot of people think jeff buckley's version of "hallelujah" is the best ever too. as long as you don't act like it's a fucking christmas song i'm fine with that.

lol I've been needing a new display name, t'anx! xxp

a lot of people think jeff buckley's version of "hallelujah" is the best ever too. as long as you don't act like it's a fucking christmas song i'm fine with that.

leaving aside for a minute the relative artistic merits of buckley's version, it's not like he was recontextualising the work of disposable pop sensation leonard cohen in the same way postmodern jukebox might say they were for carly rae jepsen, was he?

yr welcome dan, use it wisely xp

yeh, hecker's "acid in the style of david tudor" falls into this category for me. check it out you will not believe what i have done

noted chart-botherer david tudor

600 david tudor fans can't be wrong

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55rtXg0ZsLE

Steve & Eydie ahead of their time...

leaving aside for a minute the relative artistic merits of buckley's version, it's not like he was recontextualising the work of disposable pop sensation leonard cohen in the same way postmodern jukebox might say they were for carly rae jepsen, was he?

― Drive Your Lover Wild In Bed By Cosplaying As Jeff Lynne (bizarro gazzara)

do they say that? i don't really follow it that closely, but are they actually promoting their recontextualization as "improving" on the original, or is that just what many of their followers read into it? i mean i don't think even pomplemoose would talk shit about earth, wind, and fire.

Primary takeaway from this thread imo is that a lot of ILX users know insufferable people who are fans of Youtube cover bands.

"know" insufferable people. ha ha.

i have no objection to a good novelty cover from time to time. for instance miche braden's cover of "sweet child o mine", which if it isn't "postmodern jukebox" proper it's close enough as to make no nevermind. somebody is "racist" for preferring braden's rendition to the original, sung by a fucking racist hoosier?

noted chart-botherer david tudor

― Drive Your Lover Wild In Bed By Cosplaying As Jeff Lynne (bizarro gazzara), Friday, May 19, 2017 6:29 PM (forty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

600 david tudor fans can't be wrong

― Drive Your Lover Wild In Bed By Cosplaying As Jeff Lynne (bizarro gazzara), Friday, May 19, 2017 6:30 PM (forty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

<3

for instance miche braden's cover of "sweet child o mine", which if it isn't "postmodern jukebox" proper it's close enough as to make no nevermind. somebody is "racist" for preferring braden's rendition to the original, sung by a fucking racist hoosier?

who are you arguing with here

The bits of recontextualising that I tend to enjoy (I love live drummers playing drum & bass beats for example) seem to be a completely different beast to most of this stuff. I don't understand the point of the slow ukulele versions of everything - they all sound the same, they never sound remotely exciting, and if it was ever an amusing novelty then it certainly isn't one now.

I like the Senor Coconut Kraftwerk album though. And Nouvelle Vague was ok at the time (dare I revisit it?). Where's the line? Dub Side of The Moon? Hayseed Dixie?

Primary takeaway from this thread imo is that a lot of ILX users know insufferable people who are fans of Youtube cover bands.

in my experience it is far more common *not* to be a fan

*more uncommon

Is this the one that started it all off in its most recent form?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NG2EGOB9-lc

Think people found it hi-lar-i-ous at the time. Not so much now.

who are you arguing with here

― Drive Your Lover Wild In Bed By Cosplaying As Jeff Lynne

myself, mostly

Having just seen it on TotP83, is "Only You" by the Flying Pickets tge first example of this?

not quite 'contemporary pop music' but fucking hell a slowed-down sensitive singer-songwriter take on 'heads, shoulders knees and toes' is a new low

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTdp7jSRDqk

The best part of that song is when it gets going so fast that it barely hangs together like a Bad Brains song for 2 year olds or something.

Oh God, there is an advert with a horrible version of "I Will Survive" doing the rounds at the moment, which almost has me throwing my shoe at the telly, Baghdad style, every time it comes on.

I tried to persuade a group of nursery staff one time that toddlers love Melt-Banana but they wouldn't listen

(xp) Turns out it's by Cake, so somebody here probably likes it.

I have complex moral qualms about KFC using DMX on that new advert

XP The Cake "IWS" cover was a big radio song in the states for them around 20 years ago.

I like the Cake cover. (I'm probably a representative of the people this thread is railing against tbh.)

cake's "i will survive" cover is truly the antecedent of this execrable lineage

I'm trying desperately to remember what it was not, but I saw yet another movie trailer using yet another slow, piano-y, "emotional" version of an up-tempo rock song for what seems like the zillionth time and I wanted to burn down the theater with myself and everyone else trapped inside.

the cake i will survive cover was on the same album as the distance, which was popular in the uk, but i can't remember if i will survive charted

i thought this was funny in 1983.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaufhdtVCJ8