The subject reads like something that bored kids fooling with an old-fashioned 4-speed turntable and some 45s might do.
Somebody just took a 45RPM single of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” and slowed it down to 33-and-1/3RPM. Sounds like a simple and silly-assed gimmick at first, yeah.
But damned if it doesn’t sound pretty damned fine. I love how her voice goes all throaty and smoky while the instrumental just turns into a sort of folkie dirge.
Yeah, I know I heard it a year or two ago as well. Miley Cyrus does a really good version too. Of course, it helps that it’s good song in the first place.
You have neither lived, loved nor lost until you’ve wrapped yourself around a fifth of Jim Beam and wept to the Chipmunks singing Willie Nelson in slow motion. It makes me wish it was 1996 again so I could listen to this with a virgin broken heart and Doc Martens under my bed. Well done, Slo-Mo Alvin, well done.
I heard the “slowed-down Dolly Parton” thing in college, so that would have been 35 or so years ago. And, at that time, the DJ pointed out that if you play a Parton 45 at 33, she sounds more than a little like Bruce Springsteen. :eek:
That’s really funny, and it sounds exactly like Parton. At some point, around the time of The River, Bruce started sounding country on some of his songs. I bet Born to Run era Springsteen sped up wouldn’t sound like Dolly.
Jolene slowed down, though, sounds more like Tracy Chapman than Sprinsteen.
This kind of thing is actually pretty popular, culminating in Vaporwave. I haven’t gone that far, but I did treat a bunch of songs a year ago or so for my Vaporboard project; the titles are meant to clue people in on what to expect.
I wrote to Daikaiju; they wrote back. I sent them their 2 songs and they said they loved them and I could post them. I also did 2 treatments of Die Antwoord’s Baby’s On Fire but they got blocked by YouTube’s algorithms. I’d really love to get in touch with them; I think they’d be amused & interested.
ETA: FTR I loved Jolene and the Chipmunk song! Aces both!
As an April Fool’s day joke one year back in the late 70s/early 80s when Fleetwood Mac was hugely popular, the local rock radio station announced they had an exclusive sneak preview of the new Fleetwood Mac single. Then they played the album cut of Bob Welch’s “Imaginary Lover” at 45 rpm. It really did sound a lot like Fleetwood Mac!
To me, her voice doesn’t just sound lower, it has a creepy quality. Like the auditory version of uncanny valley. Maybe I’m just imagining it because I’m familiar with the original version but I feel like I’d find something “off” about it even if I didn’t know it was altered.