Weird Playlists
- About this page:
- This is not, primarily, a list of songs I like, although Pretty Lights - Hot Like Sauce is one of my all-time favorite songs for resonating with a mood of confidence-cockiness
- It's a list of songs by some sort of weird feature that they have in common, which might be noteworthy even if it was only the case of one song, and is even more intriguing if there are more.
- Feel free to message me on Twitter @Malcolm_Ocean if you have suggestions for other songs to add to any of these lists!
- Offbeat Offset: remixes or mashups that move the emphasis to a different part of the measure
- Mashup
- Original — Certified by Glasses Malone ft Akon
- line is mostly this one sample "Ask around the streets man, I'm certified, Cross seas, all my customers are satisfied"
- in Hot Like Sauce, "ask" comes on the 1 beat
- in Certified, "ask" comes on the 3 beat
- Hot Like Sauce also samples this line; I haven't checked the offset
- Now 'Kon break it on down & deliver the hook (Let's go~!!)
- pretty much the entire song is offset by 2 beats
- although it feels even weirder because Toto's Africa has a really strong 1-3 pulse which makes it sound like it's in half time so 1 2 3 4 feels more like 1 & 2 &
- Mashup
- Original — Rich Boy - Throw Some D's
- Main section, eg "rich boy selling it" or "just boughta cadi llic"
- in mashup, each word of those 4 "word" phrases is beats 1 2 3 4
- in original, "rich boy selling it" or "just boughta cadi llic" each word is beats 3 4 1 2
- Hook: "Throwsome D's onthat bitch"
- again, this is 1 2 3 4 in the mashup
- and 3 4 1 2 in the original
- in the faster bridge/rap thing (starts ~1m20 in the mashup and ~2m00 with "I never slip, I never fall")
- in original
- the 3 syllables "I never" are on the &4&, with "slip" on the 1 beat
- "fall" and other emphasized beats land on the 4 beat
- the beat is super trippy there so it's really hard to tell what's going on
- in mashup, again it's offset by 2 beats
- so there's this neat silent first beat then &2& for "I never"
- "fall" is now on the 2 which is super weird
- original - Miley Cyrus - 4x4
- I don't even know how the hell I found this one.
- Maybe I'd heard "I'm a female rebel" sampled in yet some third song before I heard it in the Alt+J one, so I went to whosampled.com to find the source? But checking it just now, whosampled doesn't list any other songs that sample 4x4, so that can't be it
- Hunger of the Pine
- line: "I'm a female rebel"
- REB lands on the 1-beat in Hunger of the Pine
- FE lands on the 1-beat in 4x4
- labelling the 6 syllables of "I'm a female rebel
- 4x4 - 4&1 2 3 4
- Hunger of the Pine - 2&3 4 1 2
- there are some additional weird effects because
- not only is Hunger of the Pine slower (94bpm vs 120bpm)
- it also has a spacious 1 & 3 emphasis, whereas 4x4 is, appropriately, 4-on-the-floor (a bass drum hit every beat, if you don't know that term)
- so even though it's only ~20% slower, it sounds waaaay slower
- 2 beats later, in the verses
- original: you HAD my heart ("had is on the 1)
- this one: "had" is on the 3
- Linkin Park - Waiting For The End (vocals one beat early)
- ...made by me!
- I got the stems for Waiting For The End by Linkin Park, and I didn't have ambition to like, actually remix them, but I did experiment with moving the vocals one beat early, and aside from a few moments, it's GOOD
- works better on the rappier bits than the more melodic bits
- instead of
- THIS is not the end, this is NOT the beginning
- just a VOICE like a riot rocking EVery revision
- you get
- this is not the END, this is not the beGINning
- just a voice like a RIot rocking every reVISion
- Genre-Self-conscious: List of songs that are primarily about their own genre
- I thought it would be fun to collect a list of songs in different genres that are about the genre in which they are canonically performed. Partly out of curiosity, but also because like, what are these musicians saying about their genre?
- Just referencing it once isn't enough—you'll notice that for most of the titles below, the title gives you a pretty damn good hint what the genre is. Others (eg Starship — We Built This City ) contain the name of the genre in the hook.
- This is a pretty common trope in many genres, particularly rock and happy hardcore. Most of the genres here are musical genres, but there are also a few that are more about the lyrical genre (eg "love song")
- Sincere songs
- Nylons — Good Old A Capella
- Joan Jett — I Love Rock n Roll
- Clean Bandit — Mozart's House
- (They say "This is Mozart's House", which, for an electronic song with live violins playing some classical themes that are likely actually Mozart, is fairly reasonable)
- "people say that electronic music is boring. that it's repetitive. well... it is... repetitive."
- Pendulum — Blood Sugar
- genre: Drum & Bass
- Lyrics:
- Ladies and gentlemen
- We understand that you
- Have come tonight
- To bare witness to the sound
- Of drum and bass
- We regret to announce that this is not the case
- As instead, we come tonight to bring you,
- The sonic recreation of the end of the world
- Ladies and gentlemen prepare to hold your colour!
- (some build-up)
- Okay, fuck it, I lied
- It's drum and bass
- what you gonna do!?
- Van Canto — To Sing A Metal Song
- Specifically justifying the existence of their niche genre, A Capella Metal
- Nobody Listens to Techno
- (a techno track sampling a line Eminem said in Without Me)
- (this is in affirmative because while the only lyric is "nobody listens to techno", it's not a parody and I imagine fans of techno enjoying it ironically)
- Kavinsky & Cautious Clay - Renegade (Oliver Remix)
- genre: (electro)funk
- "we eat with the funk. we sleep with the funk, [etc]"
- *NSYNC + BT — Pop
- Starship — We Built This City
- "we built this city on rock and roll"
- wait... is this actually about rock & roll?
- I feel like the song is more synthrock
- whoa, huh
- Starship was formed by ex-members of Jefferson Starship
- which was itself formed by ex-members of Jefferson Airplane
- Chillcore — S3RL feat Lexi - "I like to chill to happy hardcore"
- Vulfpeck — 3 on E
- isn't exactly about a genre
- but is about songs that have 3 hits on the bass E string at the start of some riff
- and is itself, one of those songs!
- (other examples include Good Times (/ Rapper's Delight) and Another One Bites The Dust, Hollywood Swinging)
- see this clip for a demo of these different basslines
- Parody / satire / making fun of the genre
- Ylvis — a capella
- The Axis of Awesome — How to Write a Love Song
- The Axis of Awesome — Four Chord Song
- Kobojsarna — Sång om ingenting
- ("song about nothing": about how itself, like other club songs, isn't really about anything but is just designed for bouncing around)
- See this FB post for more
- These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things: songs that are listing things that are good
- the original ofc, from sound of music
- I Love by Illuminati Congo
- and a remixed version called Love That
- Farrah Fawcett Hair
- Jessica Ocean found one, sorta, on tiktok but I'm not sure we can find it again
- it goes something like "sometimes when I'm sad and I don't feel good, then I remember all the shit that's good! this good shit, and this good shit!"
- Meta-Catchy: songs that are a parody of a song, singing about that song
- particularly, singing about how catchy & annoying the song is
- Weird Al Yankovic — Achy Breaky Song
- Peter Behrens — dep de dö dep
- about Tom's Diner, in German
- The X Song: songs whose titles are or contain "The ___ Song"
- The Logical Song
- The Cocaine Song
- I'm a bag: songs that compare a person to a plastic bag
- Fireworks by Katy Perry
- "do you ever feel... like a plastic bag...
drifting through the wind... wanting to start again?"
- Democracy is Coming by Leonard Cohen
- "but I'm stubborn as those garbage bags that time cannot decay"
- Songs about demands by record labels or radio stations
- Record labels
- main hook: "I'm not gonna write you a love song, 'cause you asked for it, 'cause you need one"
- this, allegedly, was not about a lover but about her record label asking her to write a love song
- "Harder to Breathe," is actually not about his ex-girlfriend, Levine cleared up.
- "That song comes sheerly from wanting to throw something," he explained. "It was the 11th hour, and the label wanted more songs. It was the last crack. I was just pissed. I wanted to make a record and the label was applying a lot of pressure, but I'm glad they did."
- Radio stations
- Monty Python? — I Bet You They Won't Play This Song On The Radio
- Mashups that use one build-up then a different drop (I would love to have a whole 1h mix that's like this, #lmk if you find one)