This seems like an appropriate time to bring up a topic like remakes. It is becoming more prevalent lately and more people have been taking notice of how many things are being remade in the last few years. One area in particular is with Disney remaking a bunch of their animated classics to be live-action instead, the forthcoming Lion King being the latest in the line. Of course remaking movies and TV shows is nothing new, it’s been happening for decades, and before that it was books, music, and other theatrical works. There aren’t any forms of media that are safe from the desire to remake or retell stories in order to bring it to a modern audience (with maybe the exception of podcasts, but that might change with time).
The quick version of my opinion on this practice is that I think it’s fine and people have the right to do it, but it also sucks because 99% of the time the remake is worse than the original. Sure you can say that I just think that because nostalgia makes me think the original is better, but it appears to be true for most people, so it begs the question of why it’s being done. Classics are classics for a reason, and remaking them is just going to be difficult to win people over because of that nostalgia. It is usually a lot easier to take something that was originally bad, but had enough good parts that you can turn it into something worthwhile.
There is one example in particular that I want to bring up because I experienced it this week and I just can’t fathom what the purpose of it was. But I think it’s also worth talking about instances where remaking things should be encouraged.
So when I was in high school, like many other nerds and geeks my age, I got really into anime. I was allured by the idea that animation could be for adults as much as for kids, so I went all in and consumed as much as I could. Like most mediums, most of it wasn’t actually good, but I still got a lot of good out of that period of my life. In particular, there are several Japanese bands and musicians that I still follow and listen to because of the credits music for many of those shows.
As I’ve mentioned many times this year, one of my goals is to listen to 200 new albums this year. During my travels through the artists I’m trying to catch up on, I listened to the whole catalog of Asian Kung-Fu Generation, who originally rose to fame based on their openers for Naruto and Fullmetal Alchemist in the early 2000s. What I love about AKG is that they are good at blending pop and trance rock, with a few hard rock pieces thrown in here and there. Really catchy and easy to listen to.
Well I found out this week that there were two albums I hadn’t heard yet, their latest that came out last year and… a remake of their second album.
What?
I could’ve understood if it was a remixing or remastering of the original recordings, but no, they re-recorded the entire album, more than a decade after it came out. It sounds significantly different from the original and, frankly, it sounds a lot worse.
I will use my favorite song from the album, Loop & Loop, to demonstrate what is different between the two. The video is kinda lame, but we’re focusing on the song here.
Pretty catchy right? That was the original one, the next one is the new one.
Structurally the songs are the same, they didn’t add in an intro or extra bridge parts like they did with some other songs on the remake. But you can probably tell where I have issues with it. First thing, it just isn’t as catchy as the original, despite being the same beat and chords. I think this is because it’s over-processed, you can tell the original is more raw and that lends to the pop-iness of it. Second thing, the new one feels like they didn’t actually want to perform it. It’s restrained and lacks energy. When you watch the chorus in the original music video, you can see the band having a good time. I just don’t see that in my mind while listening to the remake.
And the entire album feels like that, it doesn’t have the same enthusiasm and energy as the original. Which leads me to wonder exactly why it was made in the first place. It’s not like the original version had production issues, it sounds just as good as any album made today would. I find it hard to believe that it was a passion project because it simply doesn’t sound like it is, though that is likely the real reason. It could’ve been a corporate decision to have something released between normal albums, but the timing doesn’t work out for that either, it was only a 3 year gap between albums, which is pretty normal. I’m sure they have explained the reason somewhere, but it’s probably only in Japanese, which I can’t read.
In any case, I have no idea why this album exists. As a musician, I totally get the appeal of redoing something that you were not happy with. Before my band went in to record our second album, we debated if we should devote some time to re-record one or two of our songs from the first album because that album had a lot of issues and we had grown a lot as musicians since then. But we decided that our new stuff was more important and the first album should be treated like the time capsule it is. Besides, as a band you are able to “re-record” your music all the time through live performances, which is great and many fans will prefer those recordings anyway.
So, if you are in a band where you feel it is justified to redo an album that you love because the original production was bad, I’m all for that. I think that is a good reason to remake something. Similarly, remaking books is also totally fine when the original has a bad printing or is full of errors. That’s why second, third, fourth, and so on editions of books are somewhat common (especially in the field of technical/learning books).
But I am generally not a fan of other forms of remakes. Doing it just to be different from the original and try to appeal to a different audience (hi Disney) is sad and I don’t personally support it. I also don’t care for so-called homages, where someone will remake something out of love for the original. It always has that feeling that the artist(s) think they know better than the original creator(s). Borrowing ideas and applying them to original works is a better way to go. This is exactly why I also don’t support fanfiction or covers. Regardless of how good it might be, that effort could’ve been put towards something new instead. You could argue that it’s hypocritical of me to think that since I’ve spent countless hours playing guitar and drum parts of other people’s songs, but I’m not pretending to replace that original. I’m just playing along with it and trying to get better so that I can make better original stuff.
Anyway, I don’t have anything else to say about that. I just wanted to rant about that album a little. It’s disappointing and I just don’t get it.