A couple days ago, I discovered a magic trick: Take any popular song, from any era, type it into YouTube—followed by the words “house remix”—and you will discover a beautiful rabbit hole.
There are so many children willing to program horrible, gussied-up club versions of all of your favorite music. It will literally never end. Sure, some of them make sense (nobody is surprised that kids are putting four-on-the-floors under Drake choruses or whatever), but there truly illogical artifacts buried below the surface. I did some exploring, and I present to you the unlikeliest songs to ever get the “house remix” treatment.
1) Oasis, “Wonderwall”
There is a moment, about two minutes into this deep house edit, where you’re just rolling with the synthesizers and suddenly that fucking “Wonderwall” guitar comes out of nowhere. It’s the rudest awakening ever and also maybe the funniest moment in music history. “Wonderwall” has long been the clarion call of serious, furrowed-brow, please-look-at-me white-boy soul-searching, and now it’s been updated for an entire new generation of pouters.
2) Red Hot Chili Peppers, “Under The Bridge”
I have to include this because it is awful and laughable. But let’s be real. Was it ever truly “unlikely” that I would find a house remix of Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Under The Bridge” on YouTube? No, absolutely not. That is the most likely thing.
3) Creedence Clearwater Revival, “Fortunate Son”
I do not consider myself a traditionalist. I think great new music is being made all the time, and if someone thinks Migos are better than the Beatles, that’s totally fine with me. (They’re totally right in certain contexts!) However, we all have a sense of the sacred, and limits to laissez-faire taste. My god, why on earth would you remix “Fortunate Son”?
We can evaluate this discretion mathematically.
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John Fogerty has no idea what house music is. Nor has he ever said the word “remix.”
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Creedence Clearwater Revival has never, for any reason, been requested in any dance club on Earth.
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There is an absolute zero percent chance you are going to make “Fortunate Son” better by putting a 4/4 groove under the chorus.
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The accompanying video has a bunch of Vietnam movie clips, except at the end where it turns into the shittiest rave ever and our boys Dreier & Mohr repeat “SOMEFOLKSAREBORN-SOMEFOLKSAREBORN-SOMEFOLKSAREBORN” before the ‘drop.’
I don’t know if I’m a patriot anymore.
4) Train, “Hey Soul Sister”
I was very ready to mock the audacity implied in a house remix of “Hey Soul Sister.” I mean, this is the sort of Internet content that writes itself, right? It’s fucking Train. I can’t think of a band less prepated to deliver on the euphoric promises of dance music.
But… this is actually OK. And it makes more sense than you think. Our boy HSDLX guts the song entirely save for the vocals, and honestly? Patrick Monahan (Train singer, I’m not expecting you to know that name on your own, and if you do, god help you,) has the exact sort of clean self-seriousness you look for in your average rave diva. You won’t be able to get down to this while unironically sober; still, better than I expected.
5) Joy Division, “Love Will Tear Us Apart”
Fundamental proof that if a song is popular enough, it will be remixed by entrepreneuring kids on the Internet forever. “Love Will Tear Us Apart” is the most iconic song from one of the most influential bands of the 20th century. It also happens to be about a disintegrating marriage and sadly prophetic suicidal thoughts. WHATEVER, TAKE IT TO THE FLOOR.
On the real, this is actually decent and not nearly as tone-deaf as it could’ve been. Sad dance music is some of the most effective dance music, and Christian Strobe is a professional. A weird choice nonetheless! But I could absolutely skulk to this (whenever I get sick of New Order).
6) Daft Punk, “One More Time”
How are you going to make a house remix of Daft Punk, the housiest house act known to mankind? If I needed to explain what house music was to a bunch of aliens (and let’s hope our first interactions with aliens is that amicable), I’d probably play them “One More Time.” Also, this is barely a remix. My dude drops some tribal drums in the chorus and down-shifts the vocals. And you know what? I don’t entirely blame him, because again, this is a Daft Punk house remix, which is categorically impossible.
Photo via Brian Roberts/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)