NEWS
EVENTS
The best remixes that far overshadow their originals
Other | Thursday 26th June 2014 | Matthew
The great remix, at its best, is something that can make it near impossible to listen to the original. At its worst, it's just a waste of everybody’s time and effort. While sometimes it can be little more than a passable B-side for a single, it can at times eclipse the popularity of the original.
So without further ado, here are some of the greatest remixes that cast a shadow over their originals.
Bobby Brown- 2 Can Play That Game (K-Klass Remix)
While he is un-questionably a massive dickhead of such dizzying heights that only Chris Brown has been able to reach since, when compiling a list of defining pop songs from the early 90s, it’d be criminal to over-look this one. In the way that Coke Zero is everything that's good about Coke, but with all the bits that make Coke good missing, this remix is the exact opposite.
R Kelly- Remix to Ignition
Odds are that you knew this was the ‘remix to Ignition’ as R Kel constantly reminds you throughout the 3.09 run-time but you’ve never paid attention to what the original sounded like, unless you accidentally downloaded that one instead on Limewire or Napster or whatever it was you were using in 2003.
Nightcrawlers- Push The Feeling On (MK '95 dubs)
MK has been putting music out for over 20 years (since 1989) and by the looks of it, been using fabulous face moisturiser for every day of it as the House music master craftsman has been so busy remixing any and everyone during the past two decades that he's forgotten to age. Again, I very much doubt you’ve heard anything other than the various MK edits of this track and frankly you should probably keep it that way. And yes, this is the sample Pitbull used for his truly awful Hotel Room Service track.
La Roux- In For The Kill (Skreamix)
Already a song with its popularity exceeding fever-pitch, the then dubstep pioneer and now Radio 1 DJ Skream extended the shelf-life on this electro-pop anthem by at least six months and shipped it to club nights that the track wouldn’t have otherwise got a sniff at.
Public Enemy- Bring Tha Noize (Anthrax Version)
Rap/ Rock Rap/Metal collaborations are usually a ball-achingly bad affair, see Imagine Dragons and Kendrick Lamar’s outing at the Grammys that had me wishing for an embargo on guitars but once in a while they are a gold mine of sheer excellence. This track started life as just a Public Enemy track, and before Anthrax jumped on board, Chuck D saw the whole thing ‘as a bit of a joke’ but the end result ‘just made too much sense.’ So, thank you for the song boys, but you did curse us with a terrible cross-over genre that we can’t shake off.
Run-D.M.C- It’s Like That (Jason Nevins Remix)
If you're a 90s kid like me, you can probably still remember seeing this video at 7PM on a Friday night at the end of Top of The Pops as it held the number one spot for six weeks and subsequently introduced a huge wealth of other pasty white kids to Break Dancing for about a month before your Mum told you off for flailing about on the carpet like an idiot and breaking numerous vases because your fine motor skills and articulation at the age of six were really shit.
Sigma- Nobody To Love (Started life as a Bootleg Remix of Kanye’s Bound2)
It should be a general rule of thumb that you don’t sample Kanye, the same goes for Prince or MJ. Simply because, those three are all better at music than you and you are indefinitely only going to make it worse, and popular music doesn’t need any more bad sampling. Of course, when the song in question got to number one, as this did, my rule of thumb is better off ignored, sadly.
Justice Vs Simian- We Are Your Friends
While on the subject of Kanye, this was the track that won the best video award at the 2006 VMAs much to Yeezy’s dismay because Touch The Sky had ‘rockets and Pamela Anderson and shit.’ When you compare the two, he definitely has a point. Before all of this however, We Are Your Friends was called Never Be Alone by Manchester band Simian (two of which are now Simian Mobile Disco). French Electro duo Justice then submitted their remix as part of a Paris College Radio Station’s remix contest in 2003 and a few years later it got its official release. This led to Justice being signed to Ed Banger records, so by all accounts a fairly important number with how much has spawned from it ever since.
