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Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
We Invented the Remix Part 2
01:00:57
In part 2 we continue to story of the remix.
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You're listening ad free on Amazon Music. Welcome back to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate Magazine about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Melanphy, chart analyst, pop critic and writer of Slate's why Is this Song Number One series. On our last episode, I ran down more than three decades of of remix history, how DJs and producers went from extending tracks for Dance Floor Ecstasy to reinventing them from the ground up. We are now at the turn of the millennium and a dancer turned actress turned singer is about to score a chart topper so radically rethought she will change the rules of the REM. From her very first album, 1999's on the Six, Jennifer Lopez and her team at Sony Music aimed her singles at multiple audiences. For example, Waiting for Tonight, a Latin house banger, was serviced not just to top 40 radio stations but also Spanish language stations in a version called Una Noche Mas and to club DJs in a remix by house producer Hex Hector. The Hex Hector remix was actually a hit, first topping Billboard's club play chart more than a month before the pop version peaked at number eight on the Hot 100. Team Lopez even recut the Waiting For Tonight video with Hector's version to reinforce her club credentials and keep the track fresh. All this was child's play compared to the promotional blitz that greeted Jennifer Lopez's second album, 2001's JLo, by the way, the disc that permanently established that well known nickname. Lopez's management wanted to affirm her as a queen of all media, so Sony music dropped the JLo CD the same week Sony Pictures released her romantic comedy the wedding planner. When JLo debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 in early February, Lope became the first artist to have the top album and the top movie at the box office in the same week, a milestone that frankly was not really a thing. Before Team Lopez made it a thing on the Hot 100. The album's lead single, Love Don't Cost a Thing, was already lodged in the top five. Everything seemed to be going brilliantly for JLo, the person and the album until the wheels started to come off. A couple of months later, a second single from the album, the electro pop track Play, whiffed on the charts in the spring of 01, peaking at number 18. Consequently, the album began to tumble on the charts, even briefly falling out of the top 100, a liability for an artist of Lopez's stature. What especially concerned Sony was that Black Radio in particular was averse to playing Lopez at a moment when hip hop and R and B were taking over the pop charts and it didn't look like JLo's next single would right the ship. The original version of I'm Real was a percolating 80s flavored dance pop ditty. By the start of the summer of 01, promotion for the track had already begun. Lopez shot a glossy video and the track was serviced to top 40 radio stations. But Lopez's producer Corey Rooney, feared that I'm Real, like the play single, might stiff on the very hip hop centric radio of the early aughts. I said we have to work with a person that radio cannot refuse, R.A. rooney told Billboard Book of number one hits author Fred Bronson, adding at the time, that was Ja Rule. Born Jeffrey Atkins in Queens, New York, the gruff voiced Ja Rule was indeed on a roll in 2000 and 2001, racking up a string of hits on the hip hop pop label Murder Incorporated. Notably, in keeping with his Thug In Love image, virtually all of Ja Rule's biggest hits that year were pairings with female singers and rappers like Christina Milian, Lil Mo and Vida. So Corey Rooney had the idea that Ja Rule could score his next hit duet with Jennifer Lopez, and he gave Ja and the Murder Inc. Team carte blanche to remake I'm Real however they saw fit. What Rooney was banking on was that a pop version of I'm Real and a hip hop version of I'm Real could not only blanket multiple radio formats, but climb the charts through Fused Together as a single hit called I'm Real. There was precedent for this even beyond the work of Lopez's ex boyfriend Sean Combs. Generally, Billboard would track a remixed hit separately only if it had a different title, such as, for example, when rapper Big Punisher had a 19 R&B hit in 1998 called I'm Not a Player, Which Big Pun then followed with the similarly titled but completely separate hit Still Not a Player. That so called Remix, really an all new Track, got to 6R and B and crossed to the pop charts, reaching number 24 on the Hot 100 in a completely separate run. On the other hand, Nashville group Lone Star scored a 1999 country smash with Amazed, a ballad that gradually began crossing over to adult contemporary and even some pop stations.
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I wanna spend the rest of my life with you by my side.
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So Lone Star re recorded Amazed with pop leaning instrumentation, removing the pedal steel and other twangy country instruments. But because this re recording was still called Amaze airplay for both versions contributed to the same chart position, helping Lone Star climb all the way to number one on the Hot 100 in March of 2000. This, in short, was the strategy Corey Rooney and the Sony team hoped to follow when they commissioned the so called Murder remix of J. Lo's I'm Real. Remember, the original pop version of I'm Real sounded like this, But the track Ja Rule and the Murder Inc. Team came up with for Lopez sounded like this. If you're trying right now to listen for the elements of the original version that were carried over to the remix, let me save you the trouble. There are none. Virtually nothing about the new recording matched the old. Not the tempo, the melody or the lyrics beyond the titular refrain. Even the chorus was the different the important part as far as Team Lopez was concerned, was that both songs were titled I'm Real and could therefore both contribute to its chart position. But this was kind of fraudulent and fairly unprecedented. Even in cases like George Michael's Monkey in the 80s, Jules yous Were Meant for Me in the 90s, and Lone Star's Amazed in 2000. A fully re recorded hit that was called a Remix was at least a new recording of the same composition. The two I'm Reals had nothing to do with each other as songs, Yet billboard allowed Sony's gambit to proceed from July through early September 2001 on the Hot 100, I'm Real was listed as a Jennifer Lopez solo single. Pop stations were at that point mostly playing the original version. The week it reached number one, however, Billboard changed the artist corporate credit to Jennifer Lopez featuring Ja Rule because by then, the magazine reported 85% of the airplay was for the Murder remix. Several things were controversial about this remix and a bit unfortunate. For one thing, it happened to be number one the week of the tragedy of September 11th. Not a great national event to be associated with I'm Real. Try Too real for another thing. In the Murder Inc. Team's zeal to make JLO sound street, she drops the N word in one of her verses, for which she was roundly castigated in the media. I won't highlight that lyric for you, but it's still out there if you want to hear it for yourself. In any case, none of this notoriety seemed to harm the song's commercial prospects. I'm Real went on to spend five weeks at number one both before and after September 11th. Perhaps it provided some welcome distraction, but in the insular world of the music business, the most controversial thing about I'm Real was its split personality across the industry chart watchers and rival labels cried foul. This was not a remix. By the end of 2001, Billboard magazine agreed. In a policy statement published in its issue dated December 1, 2001, Billboard's editors wrote, the art of remixing songs has taken on a life of its own, to the point where some remixed versions in no way resemble the original recording. For some of these songs, perhaps remade is a more appropriate description then remixed. Effective with the first week of 2002, Billboard will treat re recorded songs that bear no resemblance to the original recording as a separate and distinctive song song. For the purposes of chart tracking, the guidelines are lyric and melody. If neither element is similar to the original recording, the two versions will not be merged. Perhaps sensing which way the wind was blowing in the fall of 01, Lopez's team immediately repeated their I'm Real stunt. Lopez went back into the studio with Ja Rule to reimagine another J. Lo track, Ain't It Funny, as a totally new song. By that title, Billboard in a concession to Sony Music, which did manage to get Lopez and Ja Rule's latest onto the charts by mid December 2001. Grandfathered in ain't It Funny, the original and the unrelated Murder remix version were merged into a single Hot 100 slot. Ain't It Funny reached number one in March 2002, the last hit permitted to artificially conjoin separate compositions under the same song title. The first major artist to feel the impact of the new JLo rule was Lopez's ex paramour Sean Combs, who by the way now went by P. Diddy. Diddy would not be deterred. In a total flex he titled his 2002 Bad Boy Family compilation We Invented the Remix. King Tubby and Tom Moulton, call your lawyers. Rather than shrinking from the challenge, if anything, Diddy was glorying in the new remix world order we invented. The Remix included two tracks, both called I Need a Girl that were separate songs Lopez style only now under the new Billboard rules, both versions were smash and separate chart hits.
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Yo, I'm internationally known on.
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I Need a Girl Part 1 by P. Diddy, featuring singer Usher and rapper loon, reached number two on the Hot 100 in May 2002 and a couple of months later. The completely different I Need a Girl Part two featuring Loon, Genuine and Mario Winans, reach number four. Under the old chart system, perhaps I Need a Girl would have been merged into a single one hit rather than a pair of separate Top five hits, but Diddy didn't seem to mind. One year after Diddy's gambit, Soul singer and future jailed sex offender R. Kelly pulled an even bigger flex with Ignition Remix, a number two smash that was written before its related but separate album track. Ignition. Kelly's Ignition Remix, a totally great song, which, by the way, we will not be playing for you on Hit Parade here or ever again, was not just the only version of the song issued with a music video in the lyrics, Kelly actually referenced its remix status right in the chorus. It's the remix to Ignition Hot and fresh out the kitchen. The remix was now commenting upon itself. And by the way, Jennifer Lopez as you can tell from our vantage point two decades later as she enjoys headlines about her latest wedding themed movie and her revived romance with actor Ben Affleck, she survived her various controversies just fine. By 2003 she was back on top of the Hot 100 with another jam that leans into her prevailing JLo plus rapper style, a duet with hip hop legend LL Cool J called All I have. Now that the chart rules had changed, there was only one version of All I Have. Turns out JLO could top the charts just fine without an artificial assistance. For a while in the mid aughts, other acts were trying the flex of scoring pairs of separate hits under the same title. In 2004, rap rock band Linkin park took their angst ridden shout fest numb to the hot 100 twice. First in its original emo new metal form which reached number 11, And then just a few months later a team up with rap king Jay Z called Num Encore. The mashup of Linkin Park's track with Jay's Black Album album song Encore charted separately from the Linkin park original version of numb and reached number 20. If anyone tried the pre 2002 tactic of different songs with the same title, Billboard held the line. In 2005, 50 Cent's outta control was remixed, really remade from its version on Fitty's album the Massacre. The new Outta Control featured rap duo Mob Eat. Turn the music up a little While the remix was climbing the charts for just one week, the original album version of Fiddy's Outta Control scored enough download sales to make the Hot 100 on its own. Again. Under pre 22002 rules, the two outta controls would have been combined pushing a single chart entry up the Hot 100. Instead, the 50 Cent Solo outta control spent just one week at 92 and fell off a week later. The Fiddy and Mobb Deep remix of Outta Control ranked at number 25 that week, it eventually reach number six with no help from the original album cut one remix tactic that was still chart legal, however, was a featured artist collaboration built out of the original recording. And by the mid aughts digital downloads powered by Apple's iTunes Music store were a factor on the Hot 100. For the labels and their star artists in the download era, there was strong incentive to keep a rising song fresh by any means necessary, including, say, adding a rapper to a pop song. By the turn of the tens, this remix tactic would be weaponized in an unprecedented way. Greetings Loved ones. The lead single of Katy Perry's 2010 album Teenage Dream was California Girls. A sunny pop confection with a disco and electro dance vibe, the song was an instant hit, shooting to number one in under a month. Notably, California Girl Girls had a featured performer from the Jump. Both the album version and the single featured west coast rap legend Snoop Dogg. Perry's next two singles, however, didn't need an assist from a rapper. The wistful title track of Teenage dream reached number one in September 2010, And the chest thumping Firework reached the summit in December. Three straight number one singles was the best Katy Perry had ever done on the charts. Her previous album, 2008's One of the Boys, had spawned only one chart topper, the Troll Gazy I Kissed a Girl. The Teenage Dream album was now on a roll and Perry's label, Capitol Records, was looking to make maintain the momentum. But now that its three most obvious singles had already been released, finding more number ones was going to get tougher and Team Perry was going to have to get creative. Early in the Teenage Stage Dream campaign. Just before the album dropped, Capital released a deep cut from the album called E.T. as a promotional single at iTunes. E.T. was a quirky, spacey track about alien sex that sounded like trap music crossed with the hard rock band Evanescence. It spent just one week on the Hot 100 in the September 2010, purchased mostly by rabid Katy fans on itunes, then dropped off the chart completely. Reportedly, Katy Perry thought ET could be a hit and Capital was skeptical, but now that they needed a fourth single, ET Looked like a better bet. Just in case Capital called in a reinforcement. Kanye west, then at the zenith of his acclaim just after the release of his album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, contributed some dark, twisted rap verses to a remix of Perry's E.T. however awkward some of West's embellishments, This was a clever way to make a month's old album cut new, both for Perry's hardcore fans and more casual radio listeners. In March of 2011, et al re debuted on the Hot 100 at number 25, it was now credited to Katy Perry featuring Kanye West. Since the bulk of the sales and the airplay were for the remix. But importantly, consumption of either version of the song would count toward its chart position. Since the Kanye remix was simply an embellishment of the original recording, this ultimately was what Capital and Katy Perry wanted. Extra terrestrial ET reached the top of the Hot 100 in April, the fourth no. 1 single culled from the Teenage Dream album. Other promotional teams on other labels took note of this gambit and immediately replicated it to great success. Barbadian pop goddess Rihanna nudged her lewd but lagging hit S and M to number one by dropping a remix with fellow pop deity Britney Spears. S and M, credited to Rihanna and Britney hit the top for a single week, actually interrupting Perry's and West's five week run with ET. Two weeks after that, Britney pulled the remix gambit herself, dropping a new version of her acclaimed hit Til the World Ends with new vocals by Nicki minaj and and Ke$ha that revived that flagging single and vaulted Till the World Ends to a new peak of number three. Again. In all cases, these stunts worked on the charts because the new vocalists and rappers were grafted, however awkward awkwardly onto the original recordings. Combined sales and airplay of both versions of each hit, original and remix, counted for the Hot 100 under post JLo billboard rules. As for Katy Perry after ET she now had a shot at the record books. Teenage Dream was with an asterisk given the non album Kanye Remix, the first disc in years to generate as many as four number one hits. But only one act had ever pulled five number ones from an lp. The vaunted King of Pop. It had been more than two decades since Michael Jackson's nineteen 1987 album Bad spawned five chart toppers. I Just Can't Stop Loving you, Bad, the Way youy Make Me Feel, man in the Mirror and Dirty Diana. In the 22 years since Dirty Diana gave Jackson that all important fifth number one, several stars had taken a run at that record. From George Michael to Paul Abdul to to Michael's sister Janet to Mariah Carey to Usher, all had pulled a foursome of number ones from their respective albums. But no one had managed to match Michael with five. Now it was Katy Perry's turn and she and Capital had been holding onto a perky pop tune that they thought might do the trick last Friday night. Last Friday night, TGIF was an 80s party pop throwback accompanied by a teen debauchery music video in homage to vintage John Hughes movies. When TGIF arrived on the Hot 100 in June 2011 and began climbing, it looked like Perry was headed straight for the top. But then, by August, Last Friday Night appeared to stall stuck for three weeks at number two behind 2011's song of the summer, LMFAO's party rock anthem Shake that. Yeah, 2011 was a pretty frothy summer. Remember when we were that carefree? But I digress. In a final Hail Mary pass, Capitol Records commissioned a late in the game remix of Last Friday Night. Once again, as with ET And Kanye west, they went with a highly esteemed rapper, the great Missy Elliott. Missy led off the TGIF remix with, frankly, a pretty phoned in rap verse. This was clearly a desperation move by Team Perry. Remember, the ET Remix was commissioned early, before the song was even a top 40 hit. Adding Missy to TGIF in its 12th chart week was all about juking the stats and giving Perry her fifth number one. And well, it worked. For the week ending August 27, 2020 20:11 Katy Perry's Last Friday Night TGIF was the number one song in America. Interestingly, Billboard did not add Missy Elliott's name to the track, since the Missy remix only accounted for about a quarter of the song's digital downloads. Frankly, this was for the best. It would have been Elliott's first ever Hot 100 number one for a remix that was far from her best work. But that small bump in the song's download sales and the fact that both mixes of the track counted for the same chart position gave Capital what they craved. For the first time since the summer of 1988, when Michael Jackson's Dirty Diana rose to number one, An artist had pulled five number one singles with all sorts of asterisks from one album. Perry's Teenage Dream had tied Jackson's Bad for the Billboard record. Briefly. In case you're wondering, yes, Capitol did try to give Katy Perry a 6th of July number one from Teenage Dream, which would have given her the record all by herself. In the fall of 2011, they began promoting the appropriately titled Dream track, the One that Got Away. And just before Christmas, in an equally craven maneuver, teenager team Perry issued a late breaking remix of the one that Got Away with then hot rapper.
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After High School when we First Met, it didn't work.
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The One that Got Away stalled at number three. And while Perry would in 2012 issue a an expanded edition of Teenage Dream that generated a new number one called Part of Me, Billboard chartologists did not count that chart topper toward her original album tally. Maybe they shouldn't have counted the last two Teenage Dreams number ones either, the tracks that were juiced by Kanye west and Missy Elliott. Feel free to debate this with your friends. We chart analysts will probably never settle that debate. In any case, Perry's chart record was post JLo the savviest use of remixes to conquer the the Katy Perry late breaking remix stratagem became the chart Fad of the 2000 and tens. It was remarkably effective at turning second, third, fourth or fifth singles from aging albums into chart topping smashes, enticing fans in the digital era to repurchase or stream a new version of a deep cut they already knew. And it gave the label promotion team a story they could take to radio programmers. This isn't an old track, the gambit implied. This is fresher, hipper, new and improved. What was a little depressing about the maneuver, however, were the intersectional implications. Bluntly put, a whole lot of white pop stars were glomming onto credibility enhancing black performers. Mind you, this is the history of rock and pop in general. Even The Beatles in 1969 gave their first and only featured artist credit to the indisputably cool Billy preston. But by the mid 10? S it was easy to believe that every white pop star needed needed a supporting black friend to pop on a remix and drive them back to number one. It was a recipe for crossover success in the streaming era, Whether it was Taylor Swift and her mutual admirer acclaimed rapper Kendrick Lamar, who climbed aboard her fourth single from her 1989 album Bad Blood, catapulting that song to number one in 2015. By the way, after Swift's third single from the album, the Superlative Style underperformed. Or Australian singer songwriter iconoclast Sia, who scored her first number one hit as a performer when she added dancehall king Sean Paul to a remix of her 2016 single Cheap Thrills. Or pop rock band Maroon 5, who livened up the fifth single from their languishing 2017 album Red Pill Blues by inviting rapper Cardi B onto a remix of Girls like youe, ultimately a 2018 number one hit. Also, as with jewel in the 90s, remixes in the tens didn't have to be uptempo on his own. Ed Sheeran managed to get his prom worthy ballad Perfect all the way up to number three in the late fall of 2017 before he called called for backup. Then Katy Perry style, Sheeran deployed his secret weapon, a remix he called Perfect Duet, recasting his solo ballad as a pas de deux with Beyonce. How's that for a special guest?
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We are still kids but we're so in love. Fighting against Star.
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Perfect Duet was actually a RE recording, not just a remix, but it was chart legal to combine it with version one under Billboard rules. Since the lead artist and his competition composition were the same. The duet remix vaulted Perfect to number one the week of Christmas 2017, and Queen Bee received full artist credit because sales and streams of the Beyonce duet overtook those of Sheeran's solo version. More than half a dozen years after Katy Perry's machination, the final inning remix tactic still worked. It is ironic to consider that Billboard's remix rule, which was developed to police reboots like Jennifer Lopez's that were too different from the original original song, was now compelling Billboard to weigh in on how to dole out credit for remixes that change very little at all. Throughout the history of the remix, critics, club denizens and hip hop heads have praised remixes that reinvent a song like, say, Beyonce's widely acclaimed 2014 remix of her song Flawless that fundamentally changed the track's sound and even added some of its most quoted lyrics. However, for most modern day hit makers and their labels, the object of the remix game is to ensure that just enough is changed on a remix to make it a little interesting, but not so much that Billboard won't count it. By the late 2010s these remixes that didn't travel far from their origins were oddly going where no hit had gone before, setting all time chart records. Let's consider a hit that I've mentioned on a couple of previous episodes of Hit Parade, the biggest Latin crossover single of all time. As I noted in our Latin pop episode, San Juan balladeer Luis Fonsi had been a sizable star on Spanish language radio for about two decades when he decided in 2016 to team up with the king of reggaeton Daddy Yankee. Dy's brand of Puerto Rican rap with a Jamaican Dembo beat had overtaken all corners of Latin music over the prior decade. Falsi proposed to fuse his traditional balladry with dy's thumping beat for one monster hit. Released at the start of 2017. That hit, Despacito, was an immediate smash, with Latin audiences topping charts in about a dozen Latin American countries as well as Billboard's Hotline Latin Songs chart. But that's when the story took its improbable remix fueled turn. Around March of 2017. While on tour in Bogota, Colombia, Canadian pop megastar Justin Bieber heard Despacito and was captivated despite not speaking Spanish and having no Latin heritage, Bieber contacted Luis Fonsi's management and asked if he could jump on a remix and they agreed. Fonsi was no dummy. He recalled that back in 1996 it took a partial English remix of Los del Rio's Macarena to turn that Spanish language language smash into an American pop blockbuster. A quick aside, if you haven't yet listened to Slate's One Year podcast, I highly recommend their episode tracing the tangled remix fueled history of Macarena. We've dropped that episode into the Hit Parade feed, as you might say a featured guest. Anyway, in the remix of Despacito, not much changed. Justin Bieber harmonized with Luis Fonsi, mostly in phonetic Spanish. Bieber's only English words came at the very beginning of the remix, But that snippet of English was enough for Despacito to positively explode in the Anglo pop world. The week the Bieber remix dropped, Despacito shot from number 48 to number nine on the Hot 100. Three weeks later it was number one, the first primarily Spanish Hot 100 chart topper since Macarena Bayside Boys Mix 21 years earlier. Even more improbably, Despacito went on to spend a staggering 16 weeks on top of the top of the Hot 100, tying the all time record for most weeks at number one, which since 1996 had been held by Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men's Mega Melisma Ballad duet One Sweet Day. Despacito came exceedingly close to toppling One Sweet Day. Two years later, that Mariah Boys chart record would finally be broken after 23 years. And again, remixes made the difference. This for Montero, Lamar Hill AKA Lil Nas X and his now legendary smash Old Town Road. He got it to number one by himself. His two minute Internet savvy ditty, a fusion of twang and thump that Nas gave the bespoke genre name Country Trap, reached the top of the Hot One 100 the week ending April 13, 2019. Credited only to Lil Nas X. No guests, no features, no remix. But that changed quickly. While Old Town Road was on the rise, Young Montero teamed with country music veteran Billy Ray Cyrus for a remix that deepened the song's country vibe and extended its running time by about 40%. In the remix, one of the best verses now belonged to Billy Ray. So in its second week on top of the Hot 100, the chart credit on Old Town Road switched from Lil Nas X to Lil Nas X featuring Billy Ray Cyrus. And why? Because the remix of Old Town Road had blown up the week the Cyrus remix dropped, it set an all time streaming record, a stunning 143 million US streams in a single week, nearly 30 million higher than the previous record holder for streaming In My Feelings by Drake. By the way, that one week streaming record by Old Town Road still stands three years later. By adding Billy Ray Cyrus, Lil Nas X had reinforced the cross genre universality of Old Town Road. Even though country radio stations still didn't want to play it. The remix helped turn the song from a fluky hit into a cultural event. And of course both versions of the song counted toward the charts as far as Billboard was concerned. For the next form months From April through August 2019, Old Town Road ran roughshod over the charts, locking down the number one spot and preventing several superstars from hitting the top, including new hits by Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran and Post Malone, all of whom stalled at number two for a while. So did the breakthrough hit by 2019's most buzzy new artist, Billie Eilish. Bad guy, Eilish's future Grammy winning record spent a total of nine weeks at number two on the Hot 100 stuck behind old Town Road. Sometime in mid July, when Bad Guy was around its fifth week at number two, Eilish's team at Interscope Records decided to fight fire with fire. As a young girl, Billie Eilish had been a super fan of pop pinup Justin Bieber. Now she was a big enough deal to invite Justin onto a remix of Bad Guy. Critics complained that the Bieber remix was unimaginative and did nothing to improve the already great Bad Guy. But the remix didn't have to be great, it just needed to refresh the song so fans would purchase it again and stream it in droves enough that Bad Guy would topple Old Town Road, which by the way was in its 15th week at number one, tantalizingly close to the One Sweet Day Despacito 16 week chart record. When word got back to Lil Nas X that Team Eilish was remixing her hit and threatening a chart upset, he sprang back up into his saddle. Literally in the same 24 hours that the Bieber Bad Guy remix dropped, Team Nas issued a third version of Old Town Road, its second remix with new verses from rapper Young Thunder Thug and 12 year old Mason Ramsey, who had gone viral on the Interwebs that year as the so called Yodeling Kid. Given the huge prepubescent fan base of Old Town Road, Ramsay's presence on this remix was savvy fan service on Nas's. The result, Old Town Road held on. Even though the Bieber remix of Bad Guy boosted its streams by nearly 40% and its download sales by more than 60%, it still wasn't enough. Bad Guy remained stuck at number two. In part to celebrate his chart win and take a victory lap, Team Nas issued yet another remix of Road, this time adding rapper RM of K pop sensations bts. They called that one Seoul Town Road S E O U L as in the capital of South Korea. By the way, this chart story had a happy ending for pretty much everyone. Old Town road beat the one sweet day record two weeks later in its 17th week on top and went on to an 18th and a 19th week at number one. FYI, the names Mason Ramsey, Young Thug and RM were never added to the chart because those late remixes didn't outsell or outstream the first remix with Billy Ray Cyrus. But they did contribute to the song's long run, and when Lil Nas X finally succumbed in mid August 2019, replacing him at number one was Billie Eilish's original version of Bad Guy. She got her chart topper anyway with the superior OG mix of the song. No offense Biebs. Duh. Now in the 2020s the Insta remix is such a well established chart gambit, it's become almost unremarkable, fueling rises to number one by such hits as Megan the Stallion's Savage remix featuring Beyonce, Doja Cat's say so remix featuring Nicki Minaj, And a reboot of the weekend's Save youe Tears as a duet with Ariana Grande. In 2020, a viral ditty that spread on TikTok, an instrumental track by New Zealand teenager Josh685 that he called Laxed Siren Beat. Was turned into a hit twice over. First in a remix by Meme jacking pop star Jason Derulo, who turned Josh's hook into the song Savage Love, And then in a remix of the remix by bts, whose rabid fan base sent Savage Love Laxed Siren beat to number one on the Hot 100. Even the top song of 2021, Dua Lipa's Levitating, went through its own drama due to its remix. Her label Warner Brothers, first got levitating onto the charts in late 2020 by commissioners commissioning a remix with rapper Dababy, And then in 2021 when DaBaby made some stupid homophobic comments while Levitating was In the top 10, radio programmers and streaming listeners simply switched to the original album cut of duo Dua Lipa's Levitating, Which compelled Billboard, based on the data, to remove DaBaby's name from Dua Lipa's chart entry. It was a rare instance of a smash remix unremixing itself on its way up the charts. Billboard later named Levitating the number one song of the year. The remix had come full circle. You might well have concluded from this Hit Parade episode that a lot of remixes are ephemeral things, tailored for their moment but not built to last. Katy Perry's remix with Missy Elliot, Billie Eilish's remix with Justin Bieber, Dua Lipa's remix with DaBaby. Will anyone even remember these chart stoking promotional schemes decades later? Well, it depends, right? If a remix becomes the definitive version of a song, its legacy can go on for decades, especially for an act that's nominated for the Rock and Roll hall of Fame. I wanted to close this episode with some music by Duran Duran, primarily to celebrate them finally making the Rock hall ballot for the very first time ever, and to remind my fellow Rock hall voters to please check that box. Seriously, they really do deserve it. Also to point out that to this day, when the Fab Five play the Reflex live, they're playing the remix, Including the Flip Flep Flex part Nile Rogers added to the song in 1984. Buying and large Duran Duran listeners don't think about the original LP version of the Reflex anymore. The remix is the Reflex because it's better. It was an act of commerce, yes, the work of many cooks, a means to an end, giving Duran Duran their number one hit. But like a Renoir or a Bank Banksy, it remains a work of fine art. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Hit Parade. Our show was written, edited and narrated by Chris Melanfy. That's me. My producer this month is Benjamin Frick, and we also had help from Rosemary Belson. June Thomas is the senior Managing Producer and Alicia Montgomery, the Executive Producer of Slate Podcasts. Check out their roster of shows@slate.com podcasts. You can subscribe to Hit Parade wherever you get your podcasts, in addition to finding it in the Slate Culture feed. If you're subscribed on Apple Podcasts, please rate and review us while you're there. It helps other listeners find the show. Thanks for listening and I look forward to leading the Hit Parade back your way. Until then, keep on marching on the one I'm Chris.
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Yeah, why yeah, why don't you use it.