Lately, I’ve found myself listening to more musical remixes: I prefer my songs sped up or slowed down, as if their original tempo had lost its flavor.
In fact, my listening habits are directly linked to the content I consume online. The videos that I upload on TikTok and YouTube often have as a soundtrack doctored songs that Internet users deliberately slow down or speed up, in order to modify the affect.
On March 15, when American rapper Cardi B launched her most recent hit Enough (Miami), she has also released more than ten versions of her song: the a cappella version, for example, the instrumental version, but also the accelerated and slowed down versions. This increasingly common practice among big names in the industry counterbalances the abundance of remixes generated by Internet users, derivatives which abound on platforms and which do not always respect copyright. By launching her own official remixes, Cardi B ensures that she inflates the total sales of her song and maximizes the revenue associated with her streaming.
Read the article “Cardi B Invades iTunes With Her New Single Enough (Miami) ” (in English)
Of contemplation
It must be said that the modified versions found on the web sometimes seriously compete with their original alter ego. On YouTube, for example, videos associated with the musical microgenre slowed+reverb (slowed down with echo) sometimes accumulate more views than the official music videos of the songs they cover.
Perhaps it’s because slowing down the original song and injecting it with a little dose of echo results in a contemplative work with a new breadth and emotional depth.
Listening to a song slowed+reverb, I sometimes have the impression of hearing my solitude resonate with the whole world. It is the music of those who are alone, together.
Extract For you to love me again in slowed+reverb
I can spend hours listening to these melancholy musical covers, like this remix slowed+reverb of For you to love me againby Céline Dion, or even this version of Dancin, by Aaron Smith. I am not the only one to fall under the spell of this musical trend, which took off in full swing during the pandemic but which has its roots in the chopped and screweda genre that originated in the Houston hip-hop scene in the 1990s.
Extract of Dancin by Aaron Smith, slowed+reverb
Quebec choreographer Alexandre Morin also appreciates the altered tempos that punctuate the internet. It is inspired by the microgenre slowed+reverb and EBM (electronic body music) in his brand new dance show, Cutting through the noisepresented at the Agora de la danse on April 4, 5 and 6, a work where 12 dancers “try to find their way in a world where screens reign more than ever”.
Visit the event page
Nostalgia for refuge
Alexandre Morin first came across videos slowed+reverb during the pandemic, through his digital wanderings. He was attracted by the nostalgic imagery that often accompanies clips of this musical microgenre, images of Japanese anime from the 1980s to 2000s. This great admirer of the Sailor Moon manga was quickly hypnotized. For Morin, the nostalgic aspect of the musical trend also represents a form of escape, of flight from reality. When we experience a loss of bearings, as was the case at the heart of the pandemic, it can be tempting to cling to what we know, that is to say our past, even if it means idealize. “In response to the pandemic, we took refuge a little, we tried to find our inner child. I started collecting toys from my childhood,” he explains to me in a telephone interview.
We could also describe the nostalgia that permeates the aesthetics of the videos slowed+reverb of “internet nostalgia”, in the sense that it directly refers to the years 1980 to 2000, an era swept by a wind of optimism about the promises that the web held. However, the current digital experience contrasts with the utopian vision that we held then. Faced with an increasingly changing, extractivist and corporatist digital reality, it is easy to feel the sweet bitterness of the melancholy specific to slowed+reverb.
A unifying solitude
To this melancholy, Alexandre Morin opposes the notion of community. If the 12 performers he directs evolve in their respective bubbles, as if to reactivate a form of pandemic solitude, they are also united by music. The unifying aspect of the microgenre slowed+reverb appears very important to him. For our experience of this musical genre to be complete, it is not enough to watch several videos. You should also read the comments below the videos. There, Internet users talk and respond to each other, evoke their memories, the emotions that go through them, everything that the music arouses in them. For a moment, they are able to silence ambient noise, cut through the noiseand perhaps to reflect, to slow down a little, like the music.