Death Disco 2012

[koganbot]

Embedding this just because I think it's brilliantly great, and to see if it gets a rise out of arbitrary_greay. Also, the Dead Lester thread is getting close to where LiveJournal does that horrible thing of collapsing subthreads on us, so if you have any more responses to what's on that thread, I suggest you do so on this one.

Watch on YouTube

Comments

[arbitrary-greay.livejournal.com]

Van Der Merwe
It makes sense. Humming the "main melody" of Beethoven's 5th would sound incomprehensible, but it can be done with "Stars and Stripes Forever."

"Give It Up Or Turn It Loose"
I guess this is a return to form, where then's a theme and a structure developed around the theme?

Death Rock 2000
"What Ya Want" is, I think, a salsa rhythm, a 4/4 with definite downbeats on 1 and 3, and everything else up for play. (often counted in eighths like "1 2 3 -, 5 6 7 -") Not quite a polyrhythm like I first thought it was, but polyrhythm does not inherently cause disruption, either.
When you wrote about the disruption in rhythm between melody and arrangement, were you speaking about it being novel for pop/mainstream music?
The first thing I thought of while listening to "What Ya Want" was Bernstein's fusion of latin and jazz rhythms and his own rhythm playground of a classical style (as popularized by Copeland) in West Side Story, which, as it was originally a Broadway musical, involved an interplay of melodies, both vocal and instrumental, and arrangement. The entirety of the "Symphonic Dances" version seems to "refuse to honor the measure bars and the main beats," and there are moments where there seems to be no one line of "melody," as the focus jumps gleefully from one line to another, or runs two simultaneously--similar to the way you described Destiny's Child's music.
I'm also reminded my how my sister's violin teach was joking about how everyone thinks that Bernstein's rhythms are hard, but are easy for him because he's Bulgarian.

Swan Lake
Doesn't bother me. The "Swan Lake" elements in the song are minor, a short phrase that is by no means the main focus of the piece, not trying to evoke the feel of the original ballet at all.
Here's another instance of where a classical reappropriation doesn't bother me.