People often ask me what my motivation is when I remix a song. What is it that drives me to take a complete piece of music by another artist and transform it into something that is at once recognizable as the original and yet different enough to qualify as a separate work? Am I trying to add my own flavor to the original song? To make ot my own? Am I, indeed, attempting to improve it? Take a sad song and make it better, as it were?
No, surely not. I would never presume to do any of these things. For in remixing, as in any derivative artform, respect for the source material is critical. I do not take someone else's song and make it my own. No, I take someone else's song and make it even more that other person's. In remixing my only goal is to distill the original work down to its true intellectual vitality, to strip away the clutter imposed by the so-called "standards" of marketability and get at what the artist was really trying to say. My humble endeavors can only hope to explore the unfiltered cerebral depths of the original creator and present the artist's original message and raw talents.
And with that in mind I bring you my trifling treatment of Beyonce's "Single Ladies."
(Incidentally this was looping through my head for most of the Colorado Bar Exam.)
Please tell me the triple post was intentional.
Please tell me the triple post was intentional.