Every single time a singer dies these days, the likes of Soundcloud are filled within days – and sometimes even hours – with “tributes” to the deceased. Now, allow me to explain. By “tribute”, I do not mean a carefully crafted new interpretation to show respect to the original artist.
No, that would require effort and simply be too much work for these clout seekers. By “tribute”, what I definitely do mean is lifting a song from the deceased singer and adding a drum loop from a sample pack to it. Or a distorted kick drum that’s totally out of proportion with the song. Or maybe some ridiculous EDM-style drop. You know the sort of thing.
And now, the artist doesn’t even have to be dead before the clout seekers commit acts of sacrilege. They just have to take a long break from making music – in ABBA’s case, 39 years. In order to make sure you don’t have to, I did a search on Soundcloud for terms like “abba remix” and “abba edit”.
Just look at what appears – and many of these were uploaded over the past few days…
Who do these people think they’re impressing by doing this? Clearly, there’s an audience for this stuff, judging by some of the listening figures. I know that remix EPs seem to be a thing in the pop world at the moment, but deep house versions of “Thank You For The Music”? A remix of “Dancing Queen” with the Amen break added?
It’s bad enough we have to tolerate the edit scene as it is. I suppose I should just be thankful that no one’s lifted “Money, Money, Money” and done the Moar Cowbell remix. Yet…