Are you sick of Miley twerking all over the Internet? Would you like to see a more conservative version of her hit "We Can't Stop?" Well you're in luck because her (we must admit) catchy song has been "ragtimified." Scott Bradlee & Postmodern Jukebox's cover of "We Can't Stop" takes the tune from a raunchy Top 40 hit to a '50s classic. Sung by Robyn Adele Anderson with back-up vocals from The Tee-Tones, this doo-wop rendition is arguably better than the original.
Postmodern Jukebox performs covers of many modern pop songs, such as Macklemore's "Thrift Shop" and Daft Punk's "Get Lucky." On his website, Bradlee explains how he began making these covers.
"Growing up as an aspiring jazz pianist, I wasn't interested in listening to anything that might appeal to those that I deemed to possess a less than refined palette of musical taste," he writes.
"This willful ignorance continued for some time; it was not until I began making YouTube videos (and subsequently receiving requests for modern pop songs) that I decided to drop my preconceived notions and examine contemporary pop with an open mind. What I found is that, despite my initial aversion to the stuff I was hearing, I was unable to truly categorize this as "bad music" without first defining a set of arbitrary, culturally-defined criteria. Furthermore, the fact that such a rigorous vetting process exists for the output of major labels indicated that these songs and artists certainly RESONATED with the culture of our times - no easy feat, in and of itself. As a relentless devil's advocate, I then found that by simply altering the context of such songs, I could find quite a bit of artistic merit inside of them."
He says that the goal of Postmodern Jukebox is to make people think of songs as flexible rather than defined.
"Through this exploration ... the gap between "high" and "low" art can be bridged most readily," he says.
His method seems to be working. The "We Can't Stop" cover has already been watched (at press time) 2,660,400 times since it was posted on Sept. 3.
Let us know what you think of this cover in the comments section below.
