I remember seeing a breakdown of The Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up" that made me lose absolutely any respect I might have had for the composition of that song. This writeup kind of had the opposite effect; I get what went into the song and how much the tools they were using defined it, but it's somewhat more interesting as a result.
I have to say I’m more impressed by artists who’s music is largely sample based but they twist them into entirely new forms (eg DJ Shadow and Future Sound of London) than just lifting a few loops wholesale though!
Finding stuff like that will definitely give you a new appreciation for DJ Shadow (both, for what it's worth, were excellent live).
Also Labi Siffre: very good stuff.
In case you didn't know: KEXP occasionally does breakdowns. Here they played every song sampled on Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique. https://www.kexp.org/breakdown/paulsboutique/
and the whole of that first album, Deadringer, is great.
Oh, I only found this which is an actual cover - did he put the original on one of his releases too?
https://www.whosampled.com/cover/5048/RJD2-Making-Days-Longe...
The whole album is nothing but a medley, and it's one of my favorite albums of all time.
Daft Punk not so much. Rather than composing the samples together they use the entire sample as the hook. Maaaybe they might speed it up a bit but that's usually it.
Remaking an existing hit song is much easier than making a new hit song. Making a hit song is very very very hard, even if you're using some samples along the way.
Same goes for Daft Punk. Those samples were all sitting there for the taking for years, but no one else put them together in such an electric way, supplemented perfectly with their own synths and drum machines, mixed brilliantly (there's a lot of unique and creative mixing and engineering going on) etc.
I did a little remake of the main loop of LCD Soundsystem's Someone Great. It wasn't particularly hard (once I had access to the right synths). But to have sculpted idea to use those sounds, notes, chords etc. all put together like that is brilliant.
I'm a big fan of Imogen Heap who is very similar to Kate Bush in that she brings together technical sophistication in composition, a love of technology in the service of art, and something deep and meaningful to say in each song. It's hard to conceptualize that much awesome incarnate in a single person.
"Making of "The Prodigy - Smack My Bitch Up" in Ableton by Jim Pavloff"
Personally, I started listening to her because of the much smaller "wuthering heights fandom". Regardless of how people get into her, it's good to hear people are finally listening to her in the states.
I feel like this has been missing in more recent videos though.
One thing I often notice is that if you listen to music with other people, you hear new things in it, because you are partially hearing it the way they do through reading their reactions.
Song writing is an art it's not like a technology where you can point to power usage and how v 2 is better than v1 to show the thing is now better, great.
He goes into great detail about the entire songs it's never just "point to a thing" and say "there it is". He'll describe how the choice of the wording, the chords, what scale e.g. "mixolydian vs dorian", how it all combines to make the song great.
He's at his best when he's analyzing the vocal melody against the chord harmony (ie: they're using the #4 on the F for a Lydian feel to the 3rd on the Am)
Thankfully I don't listen to music radio or watch TV/Cable/Sat so I'm not being exposed to the oversaturation of once upon a time nice things.
Maybe time to re-visit The Dreaming :)
Never for Ever is really good too though. The range represented in those three consecutive albums (NfE/TD/HoL) is staggering.
What I like about Kate Bush's songwriting is that many of her songs cover relations or are from viewpoints that are quite different from those usually found in popular music.
For example "Breathing", from the viewpoint of a fetus during or shortly after a nuclear war. "The Kick Inside"--consequences of incest. "The Infant Kiss"--Governess dealing with children possessed by the spirits of the dead previous governess and the dead lover of the previous governess.
Also: there are more good episodes of Bob's Burgers than there are of the Simpsons. You're seriously missing out.
Also I feel bad pointing this out but one thing fetuses don't do in the womb is...
She's just so weird! If you like Kate Bush a lot, and I sort of get why her weirdness is endearing, you'll like Tina Belcher. Just a lot of the same energy.
Finally, it's what she represents, which is an artist who was able, over and over again, to pursue her exact vision while giving zero fs what EMI wanted -- and was able to release top selling albums (in the UK) in the 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s and 10s.
She's probably the only pop artist that is worth engaging with as a genuinely mind-broadening experience that should be undertaken precisely becauseyou might not like it at first, like some classical or jazz.
I love this song, but I wonder if I'm the only one who thought it was really out of place in that scene, even kind of forced in.
It too me out of the scene rather than keeping me in.
;P
(It would have been more fun if we'd spent the past month with clickbait like "What is Orgone Energy, Anyway?"