Transgenre Music

Jack Baruth led me to my newest musical obsession: Leo Moracchioli’s metal covers.

Baruth posted this cover of “Sultans of Swing” and talked about it at length on his blog, especially the payment scheme for using the material–or not:

I’m gonna tuck the rest of the post below the fold because it’s got a pile of embeds, and I don’t want to slow your browsing experience down if you’re just browsing.

I’m particularly taken with the cover of “Let It Go” from Frozen:

It proves that everything sounds better in metal.

Leo Moracchioli does metal versions of children’s songs, older rock songs, and contemporary pop hits. Which are sometimes almost palatable in metal form.

I bought a metric ton of his stuff on Amazon and burned it to CD so we could listen to it in the car whilst traveling hither and yon. And yon and hither because sometimes we run errands in a different order. I thought my oldest son especially would like it, and he did, but on first listening he took some offense to songs he likes in their originial form, such as “Stressed Out”:

“He’s just making fun of the song,” my beautiful wife said to soothe my moody young pop aficianado’s feelings.

But I disagree.

I mean, I know Richard Cheese has been doing a schtick remaking songs into lounge/swing things for decades, but he’s a character from a radio show that struck Internet amusement success with the gag back in the day:

But later bands that follow the path of rearranging hits into different genres, like Postmodern Jukebox converts songs to swing and Leo reimagining songs as metal, I don’t think they’re making fun of either the music or the genre. Instead, they’re having a little fun with it, which is something different than mocking either the music or the genre.

Perhaps I’m just being defensive about my favorite musical genres, jazz and heavy metal.

But the same songs seem to be very popular when transmuting pop into gold:

Postmodern Jukebox
Leo Morichiolli
“Creep”
“The Final Countdown”
“Royals”
“Zombie”
“All About That Bass”

They’re having fun with the music here, but not really making a parody per se.

Contrast this with Springfield’s own country singer/songwriter Liz Moriondo singing “All About That Bass”:

That is a parody.

Also, compare to the Bad Wolves singing “Zombie”:

That’s a serious metal song, and it’s getting a lot of earnest airplay here in Springfield.

So what was my point?

Oh, yeah. Taking a song and adapting it to a different musical style? Not making fun of.

And in the case of modern pop music, it often makes it better. Especially when it’s made metal.

Sorry, son.

(Note that Friar also posted about transgenre music yesterday, which is when I wrote this post, too. Great minds think alike, and so do ours.

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