Awesome Music

Karma Police, arrest this girl; her Britney hairdo is making me feel ill. There I Ruined It used AI voice matching tech to make Radiohead’s Thom Yorke sing the lyrics to Britney Spears’ Baby One More Time and Oops, I Did It Again to the tune of Karma Police. It sounds like a terrible idea, but it’s way better than we thought it would turn out.

Thanks to Leo Moracchioli, we now have three favorite versions of New Order’s 1983 track Blue Monday: The original, the Orkestra Obsolete’s awesome 1933 instrumental, and Leo’s new heavy metal rendition. The fact that it works so well in different styles is a testament to the skills of songwriters Gillian Gilbert, Peter Hook, Stephen Morris, and Bernard Sumner.

Brass instruments like the tuba and its smaller brother, the sousaphone, make some of the best sounds in a marching band. John Baylies, aka Sousasteps, upgraded his sousaphone in two ways: it controls a synthesizer, so it sounds like an electronic didgeridoo, and its bell is packed with LEDs that change in sync with the music.

Musician Alexander Uhl loves to perform rock, pop, and movie music on a church pipe organ. His YouTube channel is packed with covers including this version of Darude’s 1999 trance hit Sandstorm. We also suggest checking out his covers of Bon Jovi’s Living on a Prayer and Cutting Crew’s (I Just) Died In Your Arms.

This clip from Vinheteiro has the stone-faced musician playing the same five note sequence on 80 different musical instruments. It’s a fun video to watch, but we suggest putting on your headphones and listening with your eyes closed to see how many instruments you can name by ear.

If you’ve seen the Coen Brothers’ film, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, you’ll immediately recognize the song I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow, made famous by The Soggy Bottom Boys. Singer Geoff Castellucci sang all parts of the American folk classic and embellished the track with his impressive low bass vocals.

The Vince Guaraldi Trio’s Linus and Lucy from A Charlie Brown Christmas brings happy memories flooding in. While the jazzy original was performed on piano, bass, and drums, Foggy Mountain Spaceship gave it a twangy new sound by playing the track on banjos. For more banjo goodness, check out their cover of Walking on the Moon by The Police.

When the guys at Stockholm, Sweden’s DLX Music are bored, they break out the instruments and start playing. For this clip from their #fridayfeeling series, they performed a cover of I Want Candy, adding an extra flourish to the track’s syncopated rhythms by setting up a literal drum circle. Their Makita-enhanced version of Miserlou is fun, too.

The drum parts in rap and dance tracks are often performed using drum machines or samples. Groveman Drums has mastered the art of playing these rhythms live on his drum kit. His versions of Run D.M.C.’s Peter Piper, Salt N Pepa’s Push It, and Missy Elliot’s Work It are as stellar. There’s also compilation of some of his other performances.

Before broadband internet was a thing, we had dial-up modems. These devices used regular phone lines to send sounds that represented data, and the beeps and squeals they made when connecting were awful. But in the talented hands of remixer Eclectic Method (aka Jonny Wilson), these sounds have a certain musicality when given a backbeat.

Mel Brooks is a comedy legend. To celebrate his many contributions, he received an honorary Oscar at the Academy’s Governor’s Awards, and Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane presented the award. Along the way, they roasted Brooks, and like any good musical, they burst into song with a medley of some of Mel’s best songs.

CLMC Music takes us on a trip back to the 1990s with a medley of synthesizer riffs from hit tracks of the era. His performance packs in familiar bits of 18 tunes from bands like C+C Music Factory, Snap, Eiffel 65, Haddaway, Technotronic, and MC Hammer. If this doesn’t get you dancing at your desk, nothing will.

For their July 2023 concert in Cesena, Italy, the Rockin’1000 gathered 1000 guitarists, drummers, bass players, keyboard players, and vocalists to perform the Muse track Knights of Cydonia. We always thought Muse sounded much bigger than a three-person band, but the wall of sound created by hundreds of musicians makes the track even more epic.

Feeling stressed and uneasy? Have we got the video for you. This unexpectedly relaxing video from newdustthings delivers on its promise by combining footage of capybaras lounging in a Japanese zoo, accompanied by a chill vaporwave playlist. It’s the next best thing to hitting the spa.

There are electric guitars, and then there’s this thing. SamuraiGuitarist Steve-san Onotera got his hands on one of the weirdest guitars ever, the MCI B-35 Guitorgan. This late 1970s oddity combined a guitar with an electric organ. The hollow-body instrument packs a large circuit board and plays keyboard sounds using sensors between its frets.

For those unfamiliar with the One Hacker Band, it’s a roomful of electromechanical musical instruments created and programmed by Aaron Todd. For this performance, he programmed his robotic band to play Video Killed the Radio Star, the 1979 Buggles song that launched MTV and kicked off the music video era.

Composer Lalo Schifrin’s theme from Mission Impossible is one of the most recognizeable TV and movie theme songs of all time. But we bet you’ve never heard it like this. Musician Jamie Dupuis found a way to preserve the urgency of the original while adding a dash of bluegrass on the 5-string banjo.

Kristan Toczko is a talented harpist with a knack for playing popular music on a classical instrument. Here, she shows off her skills with a brief performance of the famous guitar intro to AC/DC’s Thunderstruck on an electric lever harp. By connecting it to distortion pedals and retuning the harp, she was able to closely replicate the sound of the original.

Christmas celebrations should be festive, and with that festivity comes music. If you’re looking for something new to add to your holiday playlist, consider Charles Berthoud’s slap-tacular electric bass performance. The arrangement is based on Trans Siberian Orchestra’s Christmas Eve / Sarajevo 12/24.

It’s nearly Christmas, and Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas is burrowing its way into ear canals everywhere. Film editor Fabrice Mathieu created this movie mashup in which characters can’t escape Mariah’s ubiquitous song and music video as it takes over every TV on the planet. Find the list of all 40 movies in the YouTube description.

Normally, if you want a guitar and a bass, those are two instruments. Inspired by a weird prototype guitar shown in the Beatles Get Back documentary, Mattias Krantz engineered this unique guitar with a cylindrical neck that rotates beneath its player’s digits, allowing its player to switch instantly between guitar and bass strings. It’s also got a motor drive.

Musician Dalton Deschain is an expert at making unlikely cover versions of hit songs. He’s especially adept at performing tunes in the style of the B-52s. Here’s his version of System of a Down’s Chop Suey with Fred Schneider’s energetic vocalizations. Singer-songwriter Jo Kroger brings the Kate + Cindy energy, minus the beehive hairdo.