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I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

  • http://www.youtube.com/user/Freethinkersanon Christopher

    Well, it’s certainly more upbeat. But even so the song still takes me back to when the original video came out and, before I’d seen it, a friend called me up and said, “Holy crap, when did you learn to play the mandolin?” And then I saw it and all I could think about was that the director and I must have been reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez at the same time.

    This was before I cut my hair. Actually almost two decades before I cut my hair. But I still haven’t learned to play the mandolin.

  • boristhebear

    this sounds awesome. that person should redo that entire album. not that theres anything wrong with the album of course, just nice to hear something old in a new way. for me its nice i mean.

    • http://twitter.com/SimRos1000 SimRos1000

      It’s awful. His voice doesn’t fit the major scale. The D minor to D major is OK but the rest is awful. Also the middle bit is really F major 7 and they made it A major. OW. It’s really horrible

      • http://www.facebook.com/people/Timothy-Steele/516182689 Timothy Steele

         haters lol

      • NicoleLeeWhite

        It sounds quite nice to me.  But, maybe I am wrong.  :)

        • Boundegar

          You are.  This is a horrible horrible crime against music, and the culprit must be found and punished.

          • Remy Porter

            Yeah, I have to agree with this. It’s… oh, god, my mind-brain is rejecting my real identity.

          • allgood

             It’s a thing!

          • Andy H.

             God, who gives a fuck?  It’s a weird experiment, you don’t really have to shit all over it.

          • http://www.facebook.com/iammichaeldavis Michael Davis

            Dude, did you not know SimRos1000 is the mayor of music? If he says it’s bad it IS, bro

        • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=614666406 Kowgirl Jenkins

          I really like it too.  Different but not necessarily bad.  Agree it’s good to hear something old in a new way.  Each to their own though.

      • Anthro89

        The original song is in A minor so in the middle section, when it goes to a chord rooted in the 6th scale degree, it goes to an F major chord.  This edited version places the song into A major so when the middle section goes to the respective chord on its 6th scale degree it makes an F# minor chord (not an A major chord; although very similar to an A major chord an F# minor chord is ultimately different).  So all respective chord changes in this video make absolute tonal sense.

        Again, tonally speaking there is absolutely nothing wrong with this video. Whether you prefer it over the original (for the record I much prefer the original but enjoy this as a novelty piece that I will probably forget about over the next few days) is entirely a different debate.  As for his voice not fitting into the key that’s also untrue because this person edited the vocal part as well making him singing in A major (as to not clash with the rest of the piece).  The “not fitting” notes you hear are probably pieces of the original A minor respective melody still stuck inside your head creating a sense of unease when you hear it played in such a drastically different key.

        By all means hate this video but hate it for the right reasons; you simply do not like it.  There is nothing musically incorrect about this song or in what it set out to accomplish.

        • Cory Davis

          wait, nevermind.

      • http://profile.yahoo.com/IUSQI2IYY5XETY7LIFFJUF7244 dudly d

         can you just hear that? or do you need a guitar to confirm it, Just curious because im impressed if youre right

      • essmeier

         I prefer D minor.  It’s the saddest of all keys, you know.

      • http://www.facebook.com/timothy.horrigan Timothy Horrigan

        It sounds like “Shiny Happy People”

    • zombiebob

      And shiny happy people should be done up the opposite

      • oasisob1

        As well as the entire B-52′s catalog.

        • Gloo

          I’d like to hear that too ! B-52′s the kind of band I miss nowadays.

          • http://twitter.com/VantiveManDCFC Max Headroom

             Rock Lobster! Peter Griffin’s favourite song

          • Gloo

            Too bad I never watched this series. Anyway, don’t know if she really came from Planet Claire herself but I still  got a crush on Kate Pierson’s voice. I was also recently listening to “Who knows where the time goes” by Sandy Denny from Fairport Convention and was moved again.  Recently Boing Boing’s been great at bringing back almost lost memories to me… Thanks for that Mr. Doctorow :o)

      • http://twitter.com/sacriliciousjsh Jess

        I was just thinking the same thing!

    • http://jimbeach.net mindfu

      This song is so much BETTER than the original. Even the somewhat clashing vocals, it gives it something of a Nirvana feel.

      To be fair, I hate the original whingetastic version so much, that I’d rather hear it done by Two Live Crew.

  • http://soundcloud.com/pocketsquare grumble-bum

    Wow! That is a truly interesting experience.

  • Jason

    This literally made me nauseous in much the same way “reverse skate” made me nauseous at the local Skate Ranch when I was a child. Not a criticism per se, just describing my physiological reaction. 

    • Supernumerary

      Totally going off-topic: Did reverse skating really make you nauseous? Were you able to do it? 

      • http://twitter.com/brindy Chris Brind

        Strangely, I could never do reverse (ice)skate for exactly the same reason!  I feel the same way about this version of the song.  Weird!

    • Forkboy

       Doesn’t everybody have that reaction to REM ?

      • http://www.facebook.com/dale.crawford Dale Crawford

        lol… I was a HUGE fan of REM and still love this song, but dude… that was funny.

    • thinkingmachine

      Oh my goodness. I was just listening to this version, and had exactly the same physical reaction. My brain just cannot cope after hearing this song in its original form for more than twenty years, and it makes me feel queasy.

    • Jim Schuler

      Hopefully the people you nauseated with your reaction to this song are feeling better.

  • RadioSilence

    Is that George R R Martin at 2:14? :)

    • Snag

      Or a naked Santa!

  • jtropp1

    Now it’s a Sting/Police track!

    • http://www.gildedgreen.com/ Girard

      Hmmm….Police songs are usually a lot more demented than this. And they have those reggae affectations.

      This sounds more like Paula Cole-style innoffensive 90s soft rock.

  • http://johnkgoodman.com/ John K Goodman

    yeah it’s kind of old now, but s/he did Riders on the Storm too, which, IMHO works far better than this REM song…
    http://vimeo.com/24939393#at=0

    • Roose_Bolton

      That is SO good.

      • http://profile.yahoo.com/PVIITSL3WOOXL5LXROMMTHWHHY Sean

        Partridge Family!  
        Danny always dreamed of becoming Lizard King 2.o!

  • Daneel

    I think Bill Bailey did something once where he shifted upbeat songs into minor keys to show how sinister they became. My google-fu is weak today though, can’t find it.

    • http://twitter.com/Diego1978 Diego

      Bailey played the Match Of The Day theme in a minor key and said it sounded like “a Jewish folk song”.
      Also, Christian Reilly tried that with the Friends theme and retitled it “Relatives”.

    • JoeBuck

       This was done in “The Nightmare Before Christmas”: of course that’s how the Halloween Town people would sing Christmas carols.

    • http://www.matthewpetty.com/ Matthew Petty

      Not to mention the radiation-mutated people in the underground city singing “All Things Bright And Beautiful, the good Bomb made them all” in ‘Beneath The Planet Of The Apes”

    • L_Mariachi

      Funny, I remember a music theory class where the instructor dug up a bunch of examples of upbeat music that was actually in minor keys. This version here still sounds melancholy despite being in major.

  • Their feldspars

    Try this: take the major-scaled version of “Riders on the Storm” from the same source ( http://vimeo.com/majorscaledtv ) and run it through the Swingifier ( http://swingify.cloudapp.net/ ). Very horribly interesting.

  • MollyMaguire

    Weird, it barely sounds different to me.

    • lafave

       even the chorus?

      • sdmikev

         the verse and the chorus are the same chords (through technically, the verse begins after a G)
        only the bridge is different.

        • Suzanne Vaartstra

          Hey – actually the verse and chorus are different chords now: the A minor is now A Major; Em & Dm are now E Major and D Major respectively. There is more they did – but that would mean me caring enough to explain it all. LOL

          • sdmikev

            I know, they changed it for both, and they were both the same to begin with.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1148773043 Thomas Wincek

    I think they did it by composing a new instrumental, in major key, and then pitch correcting the a’capella vocal track (pretty easy to get a hold of) and laying it over the top. It’d be the only way to achieve this without terrible artifacting, and some of the instruments sound a lot like sampled / virtual instruments.

    • Diederik Werken

       I think they used the original studio multitrack, it leaked on the internet back in August.

  • paul_leader

    For the same kind of cognative dissonance check out Richard Cheese, do does mostly metal, hard-rock and various bits of pop in a lounge style. Hearing some of the lyrics done like that is utterly brilliant. Works best for tracks you know well.

    • http://johnkgoodman.com/ John K Goodman

      ….and of course, Richard Cheese will go down in history as creator of the most marvelous  “The Star Wars Cantina Song”!!
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=En3atiTAHXM

    • http://grathio.com Steve Hoefer

      See also Max Raabe and the Plaast Orchestra which does pop hits in the style of a 1920′s orchestra. His cover of Sex Bomb is probably my favorite, though We Will Rock You and Oops I Did It Again are apparently crowd favorites.
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdiaDpYlNiM

  • http://twitter.com/tollkuhn Jekka

    Shiny Happy Atheists

  • http://fallsastar.com Crashproof

    It sounds so much more monotonous this way, and kind of weirdly desperate.

    • Cowicide

      Yeah, it was interesting, but nonetheless I had to turn it off about halfway and put on the original to clear my ears out.

      • Donald Petersen

        Man, between this and the above-linked “Riders on the Storm” it’s like somebody’s trying to Katrina-and-the-Wavesize the KLOS playlist.

        This is how they should have scored American Psycho.

  • Jody Durkacs

    Ugh… You can hear the autotune in Stipe’s voice. That killed it for me.

    • tape

      well I mean that’s how this little exercise was created – by digitally modifying the pitch of the original.

  • sdmikev

    sounds weird on the G.. :)
    otherwise, very cool.

  • http://twitter.com/iamnoskcaj Jackson Bloomston

    Wow, that’s a completely different experience. They really did a number on he vocals. They’re so much more upbeat sounding. (I just listened to the original and it’s quite obvious they changed the vocals in this too). I can’t wait to check out their mod/remix/resample/retune of riders on the storm.

    Side-note: I also enjoy lounge style covers of songs.

  • http://twitter.com/iamnoskcaj Jackson Bloomston

    Next thing we know Glee will be up shifting minor scale tunes into major scales. I can see the headlines now…

  • dmc10

    Hate it. Totally loses the melancholic, sad tone to the song that to me gives it so much power and feeling.

  • soapdish

    Nope.  It’s still a shitty song.

  • echar

    It tickles my brain, like how pop rocks tickle my mouth. 

    • relawson

      Is there a word for such a feeling? If not, i’m going to just call it “echar” from now on.  

      “Dude, you gotta check this out! It echar’d the hell out of me!”

  • kateling

    So weird. It’s like a little switch that magically removes all the emotional resonance. I sort of wish I’d heard it without knowing what had been done to it. I don’t know if I would have figured it out or just felt that something was unaccountably wrong.

  • Stonewalker

    What a strange sensation!  Its, wonderful.

  • bardfinn

    Not /every/ note has been adjusted
    >.<;

    It's like looking into the eyes of a sociopath.

  • http://www.facebook.com/SacoHarry Harold Johnson

    It now makes me think of The Decemberists. You start bouncing your head back and forth, happy & carefree. Then you dig deeper and listen to the lyrics and say, “Whoa. Dark.”

    • http://obsidian.kokolis.net Chloramphenicol

      Indeed.  “On the bus mall” being one of the best for that sort of dissonance.

      I couldn’t make it the whole way through this key-shifted version.  About halfway in my brain started rejecting it because it sounded so off from what I know.

  • http://twitter.com/johnsperanza John Speranza

    There’s actually a great Reddit thread that goes into detail about how this was (probably) done — no original masters, no new instrumental or vocal tracks, just some fairly advanced signal processing:

    http://www.reddit.com/r/Music/comments/16vl5i/losing_my_religion_major_scaled_this_guy/c800014

  • NicoleLeeWhite

    I used to live with a skilled musician who would transpose happy pop songs to minor scale, and play them on her accordian, to really wonderful effect.  This was done on a computer, so it sounds a bit funny, but I still really like the idea.

  • http://twitter.com/markbrus Mark Brus

    My band and I once played Muse’s Map of Your Head with all minor chords – so fun! Are there any more things like this? I absolutely bloody love playing around with music.

  • http://www.facebook.com/gkishtoo Georgy Kishtoo

    This is so ugly I could unfriend anyone who would share that. They didn’t only shift scale, they chose ugly/banal sequences.

  • Halloween_Jack

    Now I want to go back in time to ’91, when this was in heavy rotation, and play it in a major key at some open mike event on campus just to watch heads explode.

  • http://www.facebook.com/chris.kouzes Chris Kouzes

    Now how about Shiny Happy People in a minor key?

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1358507540 Michael Steven Martin

    Bruising My Religion.

  • Gloo

    Kind of weird but also a great idea and I like it.

  • B A

    I Love it. I think it adds a whole new level of melancholia to the tune.
    Quite possibly done with Melodyne, but undoubtedly track by track, now that multitrack music is becoming readily available.

  • eldritch

    I’m actually a huge fan of the opposite effect – going from major to minor. Probably my favorite example of this is Ghost’s cover of Here Comes The Sun. Absolutely chilling.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwpcyrSsP_c

    • Anon_Mahna

       ooh damn, I like that.

    • Dewgeist

       Agreed.  Nice and creepy.

  • http://doran.pacifist.net/ Doran

    The minor version sounds like a lament, the major sounds like an affirmation.

  • http://twitter.com/miclumley Michael Lumley

    It’s certainly different. What I’d really like to hear now is the major backing with Michael Stipe’s original minor vocals.

  • sebulba

    Very disturbing, makes me wanna vomit(almost did).

  • LegalCat

    Yeah, but can you put in phrygian mode?  Or how about lydian?

    Put me in the “don’t like it” column.  The original was just fine with me.  And also, start a “why in God’s name would anybody bother doing this?” column, which you may put my name at the top of.  

    • http://www.facebook.com/nicnac13c Nicole Antonia Carson

      I’m sure the maker didn’t mean it as a substitute for the original. Maybe the reason somebody would “bother” to do this would be to see the way people react. You’ve given them a good example. 

      • bhowza

        Thank you for getting it.  It’s an experiment and an interesting demonstration of the power of music.

        I can’t believe the uptight whiners here.  Sound like a bunch of Michael Stipes.

  • http://ravenlunatick.wordpress.com/ ravenlunatick

    Gaaaah! This made my brain feel itchy inside (so did the cover of Here Comes the Sun). Now I have the jibblies….

  • Guilherme Parzianello

    it seems to me that the song, as upbeat as it may be, still maintains a force that pulls it down and that’s what makes it so sickening.

  • http://www.facebook.com/RobertMHarrison Robert Harrison

    there are some ridiculously beautiful chords in this version. 

    • http://artdonovan.typepad.com Art

       Do you mean chord inversions or combinations of chords? 
      I ask because I didn’t hear anything like that in this remix.

  • http://artdonovan.typepad.com Art

    Major Key?  That’s horrifying!

  • Andy Grilz

    Interesting. The song becomes much more…manic in a major key. I like it. 

    • relawson

      brb, registering the name “MANIC! In a major key” band name

  • http://www.facebook.com/nicnac13c Nicole Antonia Carson

    Sounds like an early Beatles song! Circa 1965, think “I’m A Loser” or “Help.” Extremely
    freaky. I’m picturing Stipe with a Rickenbacker guitar, a turtleneck sweater, John’s brown suede jacket and a shag haircut. Oh modern technology. You’ve freaked me out.

  • freshacconci

    It actually kind of hurts. Like my brain is trying to figure out a ridiculously difficult riddle and failing.

  • lolag721

    Funny how the repetition in the lyrics works in minor key but is really jarring here- and as someone said earlier, kind of frantic/desperate sounding. Minor key me says nope!

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/CSYNCPDDJ6N73XOV7ZQXORMXTQ Rick

    wth????

  • http://twitter.com/Keither402 Keith Stuart

    Are the intervals to the vocals changed as well? 

    • tape

      gosh, I don’t know, did you try listening to it?

  • IknowIknow

    I actually really like it. It reminds me of Robyn Hitchcock.

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/U7Q7JGSWQ7UWIATZDY6ANJMUS4 jc

    That sounds TERRIBLE!  Sounds like nails on a chalkboard.  Now you can really appreciate Mills. Berry, and Bucks talent as musicians and how they arrange the melodies.   Eeeeck….

  • RaymondCarver

    So bizarre. It’s a Toad the Wet Sprocket song now

  • njbartlett

    Umm… sounds the same. What am I missing?

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/IUSQI2IYY5XETY7LIFFJUF7244 dudly d

     re: the Fmaj7 and A

  • http://twitter.com/solarguy Alan Bleier

    Sounds awful to me too.  Somehow turns the emotional flatness of the original even flatter…

  • http://www.facebook.com/corinne.crammer Corinne Crammer

    Awful! And I love the real song.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Clint-Barnett/100000028777474 Clint Barnett

    This…is…..awful….

  • http://www.facebook.com/mike.mccann Mike McCann

    Someone needs to do this for a large portion of the Cure, Depeche Mode and Joy Division catalogues – could be fascinating!

    • beaker

      The Cure’s Poronography would be a real challenge for Melodyne.  Would it come out sounding like the Lovecats?

  • katielala

    What an interesting experiment. Listening to this version makes my teeth hurt, or something. It’s so intriguingly uncomfortable!

  • http://profiles.google.com/joshuabardwell Joshua Bardwell

    I have been listening to this on and off over the last 24 hours. It’s growing on me.

  • http://www.facebook.com/mark.gunson.3 Mark Gunson

    I dont know why he bothered. What a waist of time. You can see why R.E.M. have had so many hits. They know how a song should sound.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Sean-Shamus-McCabe/503851252 Sean Shamus McCabe

    They definitely used Melodyne to so this

  • http://www.facebook.com/jaytraveller Jay Sanchez

    its an amazing work, yeah, but i still feel mind raped. 

    couldnt help it, the revulsion came by itself.

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/X4TDOI3HNLFPM23LYLYT2IRWPI Paul

    This sucks. Go and paint a frown on the Mona Lisa.

  • http://twitter.com/MartianEmpress Rezeya Montecore

    Some of these people are demanding a hell of a lot out of what is essentially a music experiment. It’s for PLAY, people, do you not grasp the value of that even when it’s not 100% aesthetically perfect?

  • http://www.facebook.com/CharlesABoyer Charles Boyer

    The many negative comments are an interesting study in rejecting the unfamiliar — it’s as if the song is in the Uncanny Valley of music.  That doesn’t make the listeners with negative comments wrong, taste is taste and who am I to tell someone what to like, but the large number of negative comments is surprising to me.  

  • Sean Nelson

    For those who don’t have musical training, please see this reference: http://youtu.be/6RmO6fc-FdE?t=13s

  • http://www.facebook.com/brandoneaves Brandon Eaves

    Wait, are you singing mixolydian scales, or something?