5: Punk Goes Pop and A Successful Remix

Punk Goes Pop is a series of albums that are made up exclusively of popular music that has been remixed into the punk genre. The first volume was released in 2002, and included modern hits such as “…Baby One More Time”, covered by NICOTINE, though originally by Britney Spears, and “Bye Bye Bye” covered by Further Seems Forever, originally by NSYNC.

NICOTINE

The change in genre is usually far from subtle when it comes to Punk Goes Pop, as we can see in NICOTINE’s cover. The song is performed with heavy, complex guitar riffs and a beat much faster than that of the original version, and managed to turn off a good portion of the audience who thought it was too hard to listen to andstrayed too far from the meaning of the song. But that’s the point of remixing. D.W Edwards claims that remixes are a “valid and important composing practice, one that has the potential to teach a wealth of rhetorical knowledge for a digital age” (Edwards, 42) in his essay ” Framing Remix Rhetorically: Toward A Typology of Transformative Work”.

B.o.B

Punk Goes Pop demonstrates the ideal practice of remixing, as it is according to him, in that, without altering the lyrics of a song, the meaning takes a complete 180 degree turn. The instrumental and vocal rhetoric of these albums tends to make songs come across in a more aggressive and/or angry manner, due simply to the loud, fast nature of punk music. The bands that cover songs for Punk Goes Pop keep the original melody and beat of the song, but substitute instruments, and sometimes change the key and vocal style. For example, in The Ready Set’s cover of “Airplanes”, originally by B.o.B, replaces the piano in the intro with an electric keyboard and synthesizers, and the raps are all sung. These changes, especially the sung raps, completely alter the rhetoric of the song. It no longer feels as personal as B.o.B’s does, and the electric instruments take away a lot of the sincerity and desperation that the original song aims for. It becomes to processed, in my opinion, but I can’t deny its success in solidly changing the meaning and impact of the song.

Edwards expresses concern over “copyright infringement and responding to feckless copyright takedowns” (52), rightly so, of course, but Fearless Records, the producer of Punk Goes Pop, has permission to create the covers, and can even sell them as hard copies on CDs and on platforms like iTunes. The songs are also available on Spotify for streaming with ads.

Remixes are all about creativity and rhetoric. It is important for those involved in digital media and publishing to practice working with pre-existing content, and how to change or place it––what to surround the content with––in order to alter the meaning successfully. Remixes also help to teach us about copyright infringement, and how we can be careful to avoid it.

 

Word Count: 484

Works Cited:

Edwards, Dustin W. “Framing Remix Rhetorically: Toward a Typology of Transformative Work.” Computers and Composition, 24 Dec. 2015.

“Punk Goes Pop.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 18 Feb. 2018.

“Punk Goes Pop.” Fearless Records.