Music
What happens when a remix is a bigger hit than the original song?
The Remix Lab invites top producers to show us how they rework tracks into bangers. But what happens when the remix is bigger than the original song? We spoke to some experts in the field to find out.
“Honest truth: I was in Australia on a bender,” says dubstep godfather Skream. “I had writer’s block for the first time in my life. I called Benga into my room and said, ‘look I think I need to quit because writers block wasn’t actually a thing I thought existed’.”
A few minutes later, a label manager came through the door, clutching a track by a new artist that needed remixed. It was La Roux’s In For the Kill. The rest – La Roux herself saying it was a rebirth of the song’s soul, Skream getting more remix requests than he could wave his laptop at – is history.
The actual history of remixes, though, tells a different story. Their invention is generally credited to Tom Moulton, the legendary New York DJ who ruled the roost during the sparkling height of disco in the early ’70s. Frustrated with the shortness of so many tracks, he manually used reel-to-reel recordings to create extended gems and turn them into stone-cold classics. See also Patrick Cowley’s hugely influential Mega Mix edit of Donna Summer’s I Feel Love. The focus wasn’t so much on bettering tracks as it was lengthening them.
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Aeroplane, the production alias of Belgian DJ Vito de Luca, has an enviable discography of his own remixes. “Moulton was just doing them because of the club culture on the rise, and being like: ‘Okay, this sounds great, but when I play it in the club it’s either too short, too slow, or the kick drum isn't loud enough.’”
Simon Langford, producer and author of The Remix Manual: The Art And Science Of Dance Music Remixing With Logic, describes this kind of remix as “akin to the role of the studio producer”. It’s a literal remix – mixing, mastering, merging and manipulating the malleable stems of the different instruments and sounds without adding anything new.
“For the sake of honesty,” says Langford, “I'd put around 90 percent of the remixes I've ever done into this category.” He adds: “That was a conscious choice because I always thought it was more important to pay deference and show respect to the original artist and song rather than show off my production chops.”
Joey Negro, a prolific UK producer behind myriad disco-house reworks, agrees. “I suppose that’s called an edit now – an old-school remix in the same way as most of Larry Levan’s or Walter Gibbons’ in the ’70s and ’80s. They were generally based around what was on tape, and mixed again.”
Modern-day 'edits', still popular in dance music, tweak tracks into beefier, bigger bangers. As Detroit techno legend Carl Craig, creator of hundreds of dance remixes, puts it: “Maybe the bongo break was two bars long, but the people who wanted to dance to it needed 16 or 24 bars. Hip-hop is the perfect example of that.”
But while minor adjustments might make something better than the real thing, it doesn’t always make it bigger. It takes a lot more than that to take a hit and supersize it.
Carl Craig
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Perhaps the easiest, most surefire path to success is to stack the original line-up with more guests. The bigger the names, the better. It’s seen throughout hip-hop history, with some, like DJ Khaled, building much of their early repertoire this way. His remix of Ace Hood’s Bugatti, for example, added stars such as Wiz Khalifa, T.I., Meek Mill, French Montana, 2 Chainz and Birdman.
You don’t need to look far to see some stellar examples of this sort of remix in contemporary rap and pop. Strut back a few steps in your cowboy boots and you’ll find Old Town Road. Lil Nas X’s tune went properly west, becoming a gargantuan country-rap (or hick-hop?) anthem, by blending together the impossible. But it was Billy Ray Cyrus jumping on the remix that took it to the next level. After dropping in April this year, the rework became a mainstay in charts, topping the Billboard Hot 100 for a mind-boggling 19 weeks. The remix now has 280 million more streams than the original on Spotify.
Pop on the radio and you’re way more likely to hear Sir Spyro’s version of Ed Sheeran’s Take Me Back To London in which Jaykae and Aitch jump on the beat alongside Stormzy. With these two remixes, the original artists were still very much present. Billy Ray Cyrus, Jaykae and Aitch were just bolt-ons, adding to the source material instead of taking away. It doesn’t always work, though. The less said about Justin Bieber’s addition to Billie Eilish’s Bad Guys, the better.
Craig compares this phenomenon to movie cameos. “People still have the idea that a remix will be as desirable, if not more desirable, than the original,” he explains. “On rap records, you might have a guest star, and you look at that like a movie or TV show with a guest star.” These extra names might bring in new fans and inspire viral hashtags, but they’re not actually adding anything new.
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What happens, though, when a rework becomes a new piece of work entirely? When a remix properly, well, mixes everything up? It’s in this liminal space between old and new, between the original artist and the meddling remixer, that mad things happen to songs.
In 1996, Armand Van Helden transformed Tori Amos’ Professional Widow from its clanging, guitar-driven original state into a dancefloor heater. “If you take the remix of Tori Amos,” explains Aeroplane, “it’s got nothing to do with the Tori Amos record.” Erol Alkan, veteran DJ and one part of production duo Beyond the Wizard’s Sleeve along with Richard Norris, echoes those thoughts. “How many people know the original track that Armand Van Helden’s remix samples from? A remix can just bring so much life to a track.” It’s the kind of rebirth that La Roux spoke about – it’s not just a new sound, but new life, new vitality.
Joey Negro agrees, too. “For me, if I’m thinking about remixes being bigger than the originals, I’d be thinking about the Marc Kinchen ones in the ’90s, like Nightcrawlers or the Ramirez remix of Bodyrox,” he says. “They’re house mixes really – they’ve taken tracks that are like non-starters in a way, and turned them into something very, very popular. But it’s almost like they’ve made a new record and incorporated a little bit of the original. They're not even really remixes.”
Joey Negro
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For Craig, this is part of the narrative of the remix story – the move from Moulton’s extended edits to sample-driven remixes that might barely resemble the original. “From the beginning of me being involved with Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson, that was what I saw them doing as well as making tracks. Kevin probably made one of the first remixes where it didn’t really include any of the original material other than the vocal.” He continues: “It was the beginning of what happened in the ’90s and what’s pretty much remained the template: taking the bits that you want and riffing on them.”
Crucially, Tori Amos still had a mega career outside of Armand Van Helden’s equally mega remix. But what happens when an artist is almost solely remembered for a remix of one of their tracks?
Take Norman Cook’s (aka Fatboy Slim) classic remix of Cornershop’s Brimful Of Asha, which jacked up the original. “Were they ever going to have a number one record without that remix?" asks Alkan. "It doesn’t matter. What matters is how many people discovered that band through the remix.” The same can be said of the MK remix of Nightcrawlers. “I don’t think anybody even knew who the original was,” says Craig.
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While some artists might be remembered more for a remix of one of their tracks than for their original creation (see Simian’s 2002 track Never Be Alone, which Gallic duo Justice transformed into the massive We Are Your Friends four years later), the same thing can happen to the remixer. Aeroplane, for example, accepts that he's better known for his remixes than for his own creations.
His genius, trippy slow-down of Friendly Fires’ Paris, for example, not only trumped the original in terms of plays, but also became his biggest hit. “It’s the record I’m most well known for. On Spotify, my remix has maybe 10 times more streams than the original.” Why did it happen? “I guess it happens because somehow the guy who did the remix did a better job than the original production,” he thinks. “Or somehow your remix is better or catchier. I’m pretty sure most people don’t even know the original song at all.”
Either way round, it is only a positive thing. “Who wouldn’t want their track to be enhanced by somebody they’ve reached out to, because they hopefully, potentially, respect that person enough to ask them to do something with their music?” asks Alkan. “How many times have we checked out the original track because the remix was so good?”
Aeroplane
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The problem with remixes, though, is that they can be just a cynical afterthought. Or, as Craig puts it, purely a “sales driver”. “For many people, they think the record’s not going to sell unless it has a remix on,” he adds. This quantity-over-quality ethos doesn’t work for anyone. Aeroplane tells us about the time he was asked to remix Grace Jones’ 2008 track William’s Blood. Tasked with listening to 30 different commissions, Jones skipped Aeroplane’s 30 seconds in because of the hi-hats.
Undeterred, Aeroplane decided to leak the track to a blog and it became a sleeper hit. Three months later, Jones was at an afterparty in Australia when the DJ played Aeroplane’s remix. “She kind of recognised her song, looked to her manager and said: ‘What the f*** is this?’” Suddenly, in those summery, sunny surroundings, it sounded like a sizzler. After leaving a voicemail and an apology for Aeroplane, they released the remix – and it became much better known than the original. Not that he earned any serious money for it.
“I guess it’s frustrating to know you’re not making money out of that, but on the other hand it gave me a career, in a way,” says Aeroplane. “I’m kind of proud of it because it’s so different that it’s obvious that it is my work – that is me, that song. If you listen to the record, you’re like, okay, he’s obviously not really taken anything off the original.”
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Skream is similarly relaxed about the financial remuneration he got for his In For The Kill remix. “The mad thing is, I got £1,500 (€1,760 / $1,930) for that remix. Even four or five years later, it was the music for Versace and Armani, the Judge Dredd theme tune. People used to expect me to be annoyed, but the fee was nothing. What it’s done for me as an artist, I’d never change. It was a game changer.”
Remixes, then, can be worth their weight in golden opportunities. It’s why remixes are still a lusted-after commission for producers around the world. Plus, there’s always the promise that you’ll better the original and maybe, just maybe, outperform it too. “I suppose in a way I wanted to choose records where I felt like I could make something better than the original,” says Alkan. “Because I feel that every remixer has that opportunity to better something.”
“I only ever remix stuff that I think I can better,” agrees Skream. “I’ve never remixed something that you don’t need to remix. But when you have that feeling that you can make an original track out of something, and it betters the original, there’s no better feeling.”
Skream
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