"I get a lot of comments saying 'WHY DOES THIS WORK?' " Johan Olsson says. "What is he doing now? He kind of fell off the radar after 1994." "Definitely my favorite singer from that decade," one listener deadpans in the comments section of a take on Ed Sheeran's "Shape Of You" that recalls snappy Minneapolis funk.
Moreover, creators and listeners are in on the humor together: As with any good meme, appreciating these remixes involves a shared in-joke. Many of the videos extend their concept to the thumbnail art, where Photoshopped visions of Katy Perry in spandex workout wear, Rihanna with teased hair or Justin Bieber with a mullet are adorned with fake artist logos in neon colors and bubbly fonts - a cousin of the absurdist mock-ups that light up social media. Mashup superstar Girl Talk even sampled the "Sugar, We're Goin Down" drums in his own " Smash Your Head."Īnd yet, '80s remix culture feels distinctly of its moment. The digital mix-and-match of familiar sounds has an immediate ancestor in 2000s mashup culture: Think of the genre clashes of 2manydjs and The Hood Internet, or the revelatory hip-hop/Beatles conflation of Danger Mouse's The Grey Album.
compilation series where young, loud bands tackle the pop canon. troupe Mike Flowers Pops, which does cheeky lounge versions of popular songs (notably Oasis' "Wonderwall"), or the long running Punk Goes. Consider "Weird Al" Yankovic's gleeful polka hits medleys, or the U.K.
Remaking popular songs in incongruous styles is a practice as old as elevator music, and its standouts tend to trade on novelty. (Consider this perhaps the digital equivalent of a one-hit wonder.) Others are choosier: GK Starwalker has just two tracks, and only the pulsating "1987 Version" of Miley Cyrus' "Wrecking Ball" has any traction. Popular peers DUBSPILLAZ and the endearingly named TotallyRad80sChannel are even more prolific. Today, TRONICBOX, whose catalog also includes a neon-hued Ariana Grande's "One Last Time" and an even more melodramatic Gotye's "Somebody That I Used To Know," has amassed more than 27 million views with a catalog dozens of uploads deep.
The trend began bubbling up in earnest in 2016, when a Canadian musician and software developer named Jerry Shen, who runs a YouTube channel under the name TRONICBOX, found Internet fame with two Justin Bieber remixes: "What Do You Mean It's 1985?," a reimagining of the titular 2015 hit, and a sitcom-theme take on " Love Yourself. Search the phrase "80s remix" or "80s version" on YouTube and you'll find thousands of synth-drenched takes on modern pop and rock songs. Olsson is not the only musician dabbling in this era. His Fall Out Boy experiment is his second viral hit this year, following a rework of Green Day's " Boulevard of Broken Dreams" that exudes Miami Vice intrigue rather than suburban ennui. REO Speedwagon was one of the main inspirations," he tells NPR Music. "I started trying out some chords, and it just evolved from there. Olsson decided to create this remix after encountering a YouTube video of Stump's isolated vocal track. (The group's debut EP was released June 29, and a lush, dream-pop single, "7 Years," is streaming now). The 23-year-old multi-instrumentalist - he plays guitar, piano and bass and also sings - has his own band, ms. The "80s remix" of "Sugar, We're Goin Down" is the creation of a musician from Norrköping, Sweden, named Johan Olsson. By the time the chorus hits, it's clear we're not in the LiveJournal era anymore: This is the kind of pastel-hued song that could soundtrack an awkward junior high slow dance in 1986. Slower and more wistful, this version wraps Stump's vocal track in gauzy synths, cascading harmonies and a synthetic sax solo - and rather than defiant, it plays like the sonic embodiment of an unrealized crush, all lovelorn and yearning. In early June, a fan-made remix of "Sugar, We're Goin Down" popped up on YouTube. The instant it starts, you know what you're hearing. Fall Out Boy's first major hit, " Sugar, We're Goin Down," became an anthem for scrappy underdogs when it arrived in 2005, and its sound is still unmistakable: churning guitars, piano twinkles and Patrick Stump's roller-coaster vocals, kicked off by two bars of tripping-over-your-own-feet drums.
Whether you thought of the 2000s emo-punk boom as watershed moment or the nadir of modern music, there's one song from that era that's hard to forget.