The first inklings of this story came from fans of Ms.Parton’s earlier hit single ‘Jolene’. Pretender (based on ‘The Great Pretender’ written by Buck Ram) features the opportunity for a dramatic gender change, suggesting a hypothesis concerning the singer, Ms.Parton, perhaps worthy of headlines in the National Enquirer. This is from Oswald’s liner notes on the Plunderphonics EP: Track 2 of the Plunderphonics EP is “Pretender,” in which Dolly Parton’s rendition of “The Great Pretender” is manipulated to sound more like a man’s voice. Tracks 1, 3, and 4 mess with Igor Stravinsky, Count Basie, and Elvis Presley, respectively. The Plunderphonics EP has four tracks, each of which aggressively reworks a famous bit of music. (Oswald generally avoided charging money for his reconstituted works in the hopes of avoiding copyright infringement suits, but also withdrew and destroyed existing stock in the face of legal challenges.) In 1989 he distributed the Plunderphonics EP with four tracks to media outlets and radio stations. Oswald was a self-proclaimed “Plunderphonic” who argued for the necessity of (basically) fucking with famous pieces of music. It’s unclear whether “goodlittlebuddy” knew this or not, but either way Oswald deserves some of the credit here. Not a lot of people discussing “Slow Ass Jolene” took the opportunity to credit John Oswald for the insight about “Jolene”-but Oswald realized the exact same thing as early as 1988 (to be fair, a sprinkling of YouTube users did make the connection). The main YouTube video, originally uploaded by YouTube user “goodlittlebuddy” in April 2012, has now been viewed 1.75 million times. Many, many listeners expressed astonishment that Dolly’s phrasing and even vibrato were so finely expressed that hardly any flaws showed up, even at such a slow speed. The premise was that if you played that single not at the correct 45-rpm speed but at the 33-rpm speed, a reduction of about 25%, the resultant version was quite startling, as if “a soulful male ballad singer” ( The New Yorker) were covering it (and, incidentally, fucking with the gender dynamics of the song). Is this another build up to say that commercially successful songs are better/worse, or that there is a definite one way that music can be expressed with regards to song structure.Last month a slowed-down video of Dolly Parton’s classic song “Jolene” made the rounds on the Internet. I am curious what the “definition” of shit music is, as what is shit to you may be gold to another listener. Then there was always the late night dulcet tones of Zamfir or Kenny G as they flogged off their latest instrumental set of LPs, but were they any shittier than the played out super groups of the 70s, or the New Wave inspired sounds of the 80s, or the ever present generic pop sound since the 90s? Demento who is considered to be a purveyor of some of the finest shit music around. I grew up on much delta blues inspired rock, but at the same time when i was a pre-teen I was absolutely enamored with Dr. This gets into some seriously subjective taste, especially re: what exactly is shit. One example that made me stop and take note of might even be an interesting exercise to refer to:ĭolly Parton’s “Jolene” slowed down from a 45 to 33rpm (from her 1973 album of the same name)Īnd here why, if you are not already Reply giving a chance to a second listen to a song I would have otherwise passed on, or not listened to in the first place. I listen more and more to CBC’s under the covers. A song that you might like/ love might say nothing to me. shit songs by whose criteria, bad lyrics? wrong voice, commercialized, in a style the listener does not like. it comes across as so fake to me, that i often don’t bother giving the lyrics a chance.īut your question also makes wonder. Hearing a vocal treated by autotune also drives me to change the channel too. Very few songs make me want to immediately change a station if I come across it.
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