Comments on: And they wonder why we never buy music anymore...

And they wonder why we never buy music anymore...

jon_kill — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 06:13:51 -0800

How you remind me of someday. What you are hearing is Nickelback's "Someday" in your left speaker and "How you remind me in the right". All of those left shocked please raise their hands.

By: jon_kill

jon_kill — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 06:24:02 -0800

Being a bit of a double poster, I'm proud to say I searched for the following terms: nickelback, someday, how you, remind me, how you remind me, mp3, ultimatemetal, left speaker, left channel, right speaker, right channel... Also, move my quote back a few words. Mentally. In your mind.

By: Ryvar

Ryvar — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 06:27:45 -0800

Neat post - where did you find this out?

By: jon_kill

jon_kill — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 06:29:42 -0800

Ryvar: Guy at work.

By: internal

internal — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 06:30:24 -0800

Very cool. Thanks!

By: grabbingsand

grabbingsand — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 06:36:28 -0800

Okay. I know, it's cool to pick on the pop-rock bands like NickelBack. For my part, I smile to imagine the grimacey-rictus of Chad Kroeger every time I hear him vocally emote. Ah, the angst of suburbia! But come on ... this is just a bad mashup of the singled-out vocals from "Someday" dropped on the full-track of "How You Remind Me." The beat stops matching about ten seconds in and after the chorus it just becomes annoying. Of course, the phrasing is the same because they're by a band with a limited technical scope, but to say that the two songs are mirror-images is unfair.

By: turaho

turaho — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 06:37:43 -0800

Newsflash: Formulaic crap indeed formulaic!

By: jon_kill

jon_kill — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 06:39:20 -0800

GrabbingSand: wow, somebody actually defended them.

By: psmealey

psmealey — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 06:39:34 -0800

It's an interesting effect, but it verifies something I guess we already knew: Nickelback writes all of their tunes as mid-tempo rockers in the same key. It begs a philosophical question, however: is a band still considered a one-hit wonder when their follow up hit or hits are essentially the same songs re-written? Is the line of angsty warbly tenors from Eddie Vedder to Gavin Rossdale to Scott Weiland to that fat guy from Staind to Chad Kroeger unbroken?

By: mr.marx

mr.marx — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 06:39:46 -0800

The same thing done to Linkin Park (though not as good).

By: PigAlien

PigAlien — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 06:40:13 -0800

Double Post! Ok, just kidding with you, jon_kill...

By: Johnny Assay

Johnny Assay — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 06:41:52 -0800

It's two bland tastes that taste bland together!

By: grabbingsand

grabbingsand — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 06:44:58 -0800

Okay. On a second listen, the vocals aren't isolated. But even still, you could do the same thing with almost any post-alt pop-rock track. Linkin Park is just ripe for this kind of comparison. But I still say that what you're hearing is not blatant recycling, but just numbing banality.

By: sciurus

sciurus — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 06:46:54 -0800

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. It might get boring, but it still works. I'd much rather have crappy creativity than the same song over and over. But then again, I like Weezer. I wonder how many of their songs you can do that with... Math Rock indeed.

By: tdismukes

tdismukes — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 06:49:38 -0800

I'm not familiar with the band or the songs in question, but I actually liked the combined songs (one in each ear) better than I liked either one by itself. Interesting.

By: jon_kill

jon_kill — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 06:52:10 -0800

GrabbingSand: Yeah, I never said they were mirror images. No one could be that dumb. THey are close enough as to make me want to puke with hilarity. Weezer are nowhere near math-rock. Polvo, North of America, THe Plan, Weight's and Measures, etc... now they are math-rock. Weezer just kinda plain suck. Don' let the horn-rims fool you.

By: grabbingsand

grabbingsand — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 06:54:00 -0800

Weezer: Crappy Creativity. That pretty much sums it up. ducks to avoid impending curses from the weezer-heads.

By: footballrabi

footballrabi — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 07:06:46 -0800

My hand is raised, jon_kill. Has anyone come across something like this with two different bands? I would imagine it wouldn't be that difficult to find.

By: kavasa

kavasa — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 07:09:48 -0800

I still hold that Weezer's first and second albums are more than listenable. So there! Seriously though, it's the same old saw - "the music from when I was in highschool is obviously superior!" There's nothing wrong with liking the music you grew up with, although any 20-25 year old caught listening to Nickelback (or fitty cen') I find suspect. I thought this mp3 was pretty hilarious - I mean, the beats don't exactly match, but the sort of angsty heavy-riffs sections match up pretty exactly and the stuff inbetween is mostly indistinguishable. Not surprising, no, but still funny.

By: kavasa

kavasa — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 07:12:54 -0800

And furthermore! at the end of the day, I doubt Nickelback and Weezer give a shit what we say, if our words somehow manage to reach them in their giant mansions hand-built in the Himalayas or whereever they are.

By: thebabelfish

thebabelfish — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 07:15:26 -0800

What tdismukes said. Since the instrumentals don't interfere with each other, it's interesting to hear the guitar and drums pause in one ear but continue on the other. I also like how I can either get the effect of two vocal tracks at the same time, or specifically listen to one side or the other to pick it up more clearly and kinda tune out the other.

By: emelenjr

emelenjr — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 07:23:21 -0800

Well, footballrabi, off the top of my head there's Joan Osborne's "What if God Was One of Us" vs. Sarah McLachlan's "Building a Mystery."

By: shoepal

shoepal — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 07:24:50 -0800

thebabelfish, that's selective hearing. See also the famous "cocktail party" situation.

By: crunchburger

crunchburger — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 07:40:44 -0800

All of The Spin Doctors catalog can be sung to "Sweet Home Alabama"

By: psmealey

psmealey — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 08:00:02 -0800

The fact that Nickelback doesn't care what we say has nothing to do with the fact that they are a 4th generation copy grunge band that absolutely sucks. But what the hell, I didn't know any better when I was a pre-teen either (when I listened to Foghat and Foreigner), so I guess their fans deserve a break.

By: chicobangs

chicobangs — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 08:03:40 -0800

It goes to show that the value of a solid drummer who can play faithfully to a click track can't be overestimated. And if anyone's surprised at the poor quality of their songs, turn off your commercial radio and go see a live band. Any live band. You'll be better for it.

By: Outlawyr

Outlawyr — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 08:12:15 -0800

"I'm not familiar with the band or the songs in question" Thank god I'm not the only one. These two songs are about as similar as they can be without being identical. Tempo, key, progression, mix, arrangement, everything. Pathetic

By: n9

n9 — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 08:21:16 -0800

there is a lot of cross-channel bleed from the right side into the left. I think that emphasises the similarities in the instrumental arrangement. It is not two purely isolated tracks. it does seem that they are in the same tempo (exactly) key and structure. almost like they went back and reworked the protools session for the one song to make the other. I thought that electronic musicians were the only ones that did that!

By: DragonBoy

DragonBoy — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 08:24:12 -0800

Is twice the NickleBack a DimeBack? Seriously, the comparison is pretty sad. It reminds me of Rush. I have a suspicion that Rush wrote all of their songs over the course of a three day weekend from high school and have just been staggering the release of them over the last few decades. You talk about no artistic progression, and I think of Rush. Even with the songs played together, I still don't care much for the band.

By: interrobang

interrobang — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 08:29:40 -0800

I remember one of the first songs (maybe *the* first song) on "Gish" being totally identical to a song on "Nothing's Shocking", but I can't remember the names of either of them.

By: Mars Saxman

Mars Saxman — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 08:39:00 -0800

there is a lot of cross-channel bleed from the right side into the left. The person who mixed this probably used headphones. Hard left/right panning works fine when you're listening on monitors, since the channel separation is imperfect and both ears hear a little of each other's sound, but it tends to make your head hurt when you hear a sound through *only* one ear.

By: jon_kill

jon_kill — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 08:46:34 -0800

n9: there is no difference between an electronic musician and a rock "musician" going to ProTools, other than the fact that what the former is doing is appropriate and what the latter is doing is probably garbage. Vive l'analog.

By: gompa

gompa — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 08:46:42 -0800

Has anyone come across something like this with two different bands? footballrabi, I haven't actually done the experiment, but I'm pretty certain that Oasis' "Cigarettes and Alcohol" and T. Rex's "Bang A Gong (Get It On)" would sync up quite cleanly. I smile to imagine the grimacey-rictus of Chad Kroeger every time I hear him vocally emote. Ah, the angst of suburbia! For the record, Chad & Co. are actually from a podunk little prairie town called Hanna, Alberta, which means they're as closely related to the Shaggs as they are to city boys like Vedder. It almost makes you want to forgive their staggering tunelessness. Almost. (Also: The Shaggs rule!)

By: psmealey

psmealey — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 08:53:45 -0800

OT: the best smashup I have heard to date was the Stooges "No Fun" mixed with Salt 'n' Pepa's "Push It". A google search turns up nothing, but I'll see if I can post it somewhere later on. /OT

By: loukas_c

loukas_c — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 08:55:35 -0800

jon_kill: North of America, THe Plan Wow, Halifax bands on Metafilter. Who'da thunk it.

By: psmealey

psmealey — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 08:59:54 -0800

btw, as an active recording musician, I love analog too, jon_kill, I just can't friggin' afford it! LogicAudio has been a lifesaver in terms of recording and producing my and other bands demos for the past few years... if I ever get the record deal, we'll go reel-to-reel at the Power Station, but until then, my digital setup at home suits me just fine.

By: n9

n9 — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 09:12:33 -0800

i can 'sound' more analog with digital than with analog. to get an analog recording rig that would have better sounding biasing and compression than what I use to record would cost more than $150,000. My rig cost me about $2500. PSP Audioware's Vintagewarmer, Mixpressor and MasterQ along with Antares Tube and some software from OhmForce and the like give one a lot of flexibility and dirt, and that's just the beginning. Analog fidelity can be accomplished in the digital domain no problem. UAD's emulation of $20,000 - $80,000 vintage tube compressors is generally held to be all by indistinguishable from the originals at a cost of less than $1000 for a whole arsenal of them. The sweetest (and most $$$) kind of analog *presence* is still a ways off.... maybe. But these songs would sound flat and trite no matter what you did with them. It is easy to discount digital audio processing in a knee-jerk kind of way, but you shouldn't, imo.

By: Satapher

Satapher — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 10:17:12 -0800

THE POLYPHONIC SPREE IS SO GOOD GUYS

By: caution live frogs

caution live frogs — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 10:17:47 -0800

i've got a feeling that andrew w.k.'s "party" song (or whatever the hell the title is) and his "she is beautiful" song would more than synch up. i'm pretty sure that one night he just got drunk and started ad-libbing while staring at a chick in the audience, and his bandmates had no choice but to keep playing the party song even though he'd changed the words. (i swear it's the same song, yet the radio people keep trying to get me to believe it's different...)

By: logovisual

logovisual — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 10:18:38 -0800

"No Fun / Push It" is on the album As Heard On Radio Soulwax Pt. 2 by 2 Many DJs (otherwise known as Soulwax), also responsible for Destiny's Child vs. Nirvana "Smells Like Booty" and the Skee-Lo / Survivor "I Wish / Eye Of The Tiger" hybrid. They are the bomb diggity. That's the best DJ mix album of 2002, by the way, so you should pick it up, though be warned it's not wall-to-wall brilliant mashups (though there are a couple). Oh, and Weezer are great. The "math rock" comment somebody made above was a pun on the formulaic nature of the music in question, not on the actual -- and ridiculous -- genre of "math rock." Or so I gathered. =W=.

By: Reggie452

Reggie452 — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 10:26:04 -0800

2 Many DJs are definitely talented, but the best in the mashup business is Go Home Productions. His "Pistol Whipped" record is amazing. Also, go to his "Downloads" section and snag "Rapture Riders (Blondie vs. The Doors)", "Karma In the Life (Beatles vs Radiohead)" and "Beatleg Bootles 1."

By: edlundart

edlundart — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 10:50:49 -0800

U2's "Beautiful Day" is like a cover version of a-ha's "The Sun Always Shines on TV," right down to the "toouuucch me" lyric. Somebody did an mp3 combination of the songs a couple of years back.

By: Sijeka

Sijeka — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 10:54:55 -0800

I believe we call that the Oasis syndrom. They started it.

By: abcde

abcde — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 11:54:47 -0800

The worst self-duplication I can remember is the forsaken Lou Bega, whose "1+1=2" is the same as Mambo #5, but awkwardly transcribed into a major key. It's on the same album, too, so he was pre-emptively dogging on his success (at least he knew when he had a "good" idea!)

By: zpousman

zpousman — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 12:04:36 -0800

psmealy: " the best smashup I have heard to date was the Stooges "No Fun" mixed with Salt 'n' Pepa's "Push It". A google search turns up nothing, but ... " Here it is. you're welcome.

By: waxpancake

waxpancake — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 12:04:50 -0800

Very clever! I'm mirroring the MP3.

By: abcde

abcde — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 12:17:00 -0800

Karma Police would go well with Sexy Sadie, perhaps, because part of the piano line is an almost direct lift (no offense to Radiohead though, they used it an entirely different way).

By: PinkStainlessTail

PinkStainlessTail — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 12:19:55 -0800

Sweet Jane and Crimson and Clover maybe? Would probably need some massaging...

By: schoolgirl report

schoolgirl report — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 13:45:44 -0800

"Don't Worry Be Happy" and 4 Non-Blondes' "What's Going On?" are so close to the exact same song I'm surprised Bobby McFerrin didn't sue the ugly hats off them.

By: hughbot

hughbot — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 13:53:57 -0800

Once I saw Spengler, Weights and Measures and North of America all at one show. While Weights and Measures played their last song, the Norts got up on stage and started playing along. Then all seven of them segued into "Central Port of Equal Times". It was the awesomest thing ever.

By: five fresh fish

five fresh fish — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 16:08:08 -0800

There's a comedy pair who sing two Britney songs back-and-forth. Very funny, very obviously nearly the same song. And then there's the Cowboy Junkies, with entire albums that sound entirely the same. I swear, you buy one CJ album, you've bought 'em all!

By: jon_kill

jon_kill — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 16:40:36 -0800

Hughbot: Tear in one eye, dude. Tear in one eye. I saw Thrush Hermit and Buck 65 do a similar trick at the Marquee in Halifax, but they did it four or five times, trading sets.

By: glenwood

glenwood — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 19:00:15 -0800

how about zeppelin's black dog vs. wipe out? ok nevermind.

By: afx114

afx114 — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 19:53:53 -0800

DJs On Strike! just released a new Nirvana bootleg 12" which is quite different from the usual "mashup" in that it's electronic beats and wankery added on top of the entire song. 2 tracks, one is Smells, the other Lithium. What's so special about that, you might ask? First off, most mashups simply take a bar segment and loop it. Easy. DJs On Strike! do it different. Samplers/sequencers carry a perfect rhythm (it's hard to make them NOT carry a perfect rhythm), and Nirvana was such a sloppy band (who didn't use clicktracks) that it was extremely difficult to mix electronic elements into the full un-edited version of the song without it sounding like a trainwreck. In other words, DJs On Strike go backwards - they force the electronics onto the rock song - not the other way around.

By: ChristFollower

ChristFollower — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 22:44:58 -0800

I hope both songs are on the same album. It's the same "pile"...a person shouldn't be billed twice for it!!! :) Also, how lazy can 1 band be. I mean really. A song will raise millions for them. You'd think they'd put a little more effort into it. I write songs for free and try to make them kinda original...gimme $100 bucks and it wouldn't sound like anything I ever wrote before :)

By: jjg

jjg — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 23:09:14 -0800

Okay, I have a question for somebody who, unlike myself, has actually heard either of these songs before just now: iTunes tells me that "Someday" runs 3:27 and "How You Remind Me" runs 3:43. On this MP3, "Someday" starts a couple of seconds before "Remind", but it ends a couple of seconds early too -- and the whole thing only runs 3:10. What was edited out?

By: namespan

namespan — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 23:16:21 -0800

Some "yeah, yeah"s are edited out of How You Remind Me, I think.

By: Satapher

Satapher — Fri, 09 Apr 2004 01:03:22 -0800

Ive never heard any bad music

By: fishfucker

fishfucker — Fri, 09 Apr 2004 02:54:05 -0800

this shit rocks.

By: jon_kill

jon_kill — Fri, 09 Apr 2004 11:58:02 -0800

afx114: there was nothing sloppy about Nirvana's studio recordings. That is a myth.

By: chicobangs

chicobangs — Fri, 09 Apr 2004 12:06:01 -0800

jon_kill's right. If you're as high listening to it as Kurt was when he wrote it, Nirvana will sound rather like early Kraftwerk, or maybe Philip Glass during his disco era.

By: jragon

jragon — Fri, 09 Apr 2004 14:21:10 -0800

All of The Spin Doctors catalog can be sung to "Sweet Home Alabama" Heh. I was just going to point out that you can mix and match spin doctors lyrics to songs. Not that I've known the lyrics to any of their songs in over 10 years, but still.

By: psmealey

psmealey — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 04:46:57 -0800

Nirvana was such a sloppy band...that it was extremely difficult to mix electronic elements into the full un-edited version of the song without it sounding like a trainwreck This couldn't be less true. I can't think of a single Nirvana tune that would have required electronic elements, thought they did use a Cellist on a couple of occasions. I can't verify whether they used click tracks or not, but both Butch Vig and Steve Albini said that David Grohl was one of the very best drummers they had ever worked with. Click track or not, Grohl was able to do two or three takes of each song, that could seamlessly be spliced together when necessary. As it was, Grohl was so solid, they hardly ever had to do more than two scratch takes. jon_kill is right. Personally, perhaps, they were a mess, but Nirvana was nothing short of professional and was very, very focused in the studio. If you're thinking of "endless, nameless" that was the culmination of multiple takes of a song ("in bloom") at the end of the day that they just couldn't get right. Every band, whether Metallica, Rush or Steely Dan has moments like these. Also, I had seen Nirvana play 6 times back in those days, and each time they were still one of the tightest punk rock bands I had ever seen (second only to Fugazi maybe, who didn't drink or take drugs at all).