this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2024
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Yes and no. He took a Stevie Wonder song and made something new out of it. I would say that made it his.
I would suggest listening to the original Neil Diamond version of Red, Red Wine and the UB40 version. Basically all UB40 did was make it a more reggaeish sound and add a dub bit in the middle and they took an absolutely awful song, turned it into something new, and made it theirs.
And that is less different than Gangsta's Paradise is from Pastime Paradise.
And I think we'd both agree that Amish Paradise is Weird Al's song.
Hey, I agree. Check out the Tony Tribe version from 1969, if you're not familiar with it. It kind of reinforces your point, because all these versions are so different.
Sure, but on a gradient, it clearly has a shaky ground to stand on being pissed over it.
No matter how you spin it, the core of Gangsta's paradise success is not coming from what Coolio added, other than taking something good in a less "fresh" genre and bringing it into the cool (heh) teen friendly gangsta-rap scene.
"It wasn't successful because of anything Coolio did, except for that thing that made all of the difference"
You're sounding extremely ignorant about music and also older than steam 😄
Well, steam is from 2003 so...
The thing that "made all the difference" is not a particolarly impressive feat.
If you think for a moment that Coolio AKA everybody-only-knows-him-for-that-song is even remotedly in the same ballpark of Steve Wonder you are out of your mind.
I obviously meant steam power, not the game store that's much newer than the song you're acting old about 🙄
Showing your ignorance again. Do you even know how music works at all? What it IS??
And here comes the common refuge for people who can't win on the ACTUAL arguments being made: the strawman argument.
Nobody's saying that one great song makes him comparable to Stevie Wonder. All I'm saying is that his cover IS his song that HE (as well as the fantastic vocals of LV in the chorus) made successful.
I know?
Anyway, I'm not a producer I'm the average consumer. Maybe miracles exist and only a guy inspired by the full pantheon of artistical Gods assembled can take a song from one of the most critically acclaimed album there is and make a succesfully selling hit out of it, or maybe that song became a global instant hit because any song from "Songs in the key of life" is an instant sell if you take out the whole "God almighty" of it. See Will slapping Smith with "Wild Wild West" inspired by "I wish".
It is "his" song because legally it is, I'll give you that.
Tbh, I think it’s evenly split. The violin and the rapped verses are each about half the appeal for me.
That said, I’d never actually heard Pastime Paradise before (or I’d assumed it was gangstas paradise) and I liked it as well. I like Amish paradise less, but that’s just because I don’t generally like parody songs as much as the originals. I respect the hell out of Weird Al and think he’s one of the most talented modern musicians out there, but his songs tend to hit me more academically than emotionally.
If you're talking about purely from an academic standpoint, the technical precision in the video parody of Bad for Weird Al's Fat, matching virtually everything in the original video, matching almost all the shots and almost all the choreographt and doing it in a funny way beyond "fat guys dance like the dancers in the first video" is just mindblowing to me.