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The other day, in an interview with Rolling Stone, it was announced that Avicii had added to his usual co-star roll call of Logic and a Macbook Pro by enlisting the help of musicians with actual instruments.
The use of musicians is not surprising; electronic artists like Bonobo use live instrumentation and Skrillex released an album featuring people like Chance the Rapper and Kid Harpoon. It’s natural that Avicii wants to evolve – but it’s his choice of sidekick that is as perplexing as the time Walkers decided to release Vanilla flavour Monster Munch.
The album will feature: 52 year-old mullet-loving denim fan Jon Bon Jovi, former Fugee Wyclef Jean, consciously uncoupled champion Chris Martin, and Serj Tankian from System of a Down. He’s also recorded a track with Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong called “No Pleasing A Woman”.
Now – if that list sounds like the line-up to the world’s most target-less festival, then imagine what condensing it into a 50-minute LP will sound like. And, perhaps even more confusingly, who’ll actually buy it? I’ve had the somewhat debatable pleasure of sitting through a Jon Bon Jovi gig and I can tell you now there’s not a whole lot of crossover between the over-aged manic Bon Jovi fans and the Swedish star’s pilled up Tomorrowland attendees.
The inevitable clusterfuck that will be Avicii’s LP might not be out for a while yet but he’s not the first artist to indulge in a strange music hook-up. Here’s a selection of some that’ve been swimming around in the nether regions of my brain for the last few years…
Avicii & Incubus’s Mike Einziger – “Wake Me Up”
Let’s be honest – this is probably where Avicii got for his new album from. “Wake Me Up” – his omnipresent club smash – has had more than 403 MILLION plays on YouTube, which is basically the same as one person listening to the track on repeat for over three thousand years. Most people don’t know the track was co-written by Mike Einziger, the guitarist for Incubus. “At first I was puzzled thinking, ‘How would that work?’ But then I was like, ‘Why in the world would I not?’” said Einziger of the collaboration, while rolling around naked in a ball pit of €100 bills and occasionally stopping to laugh down the phone at his former bandmates.
Skrillex and The Doors – “Breakn’ A Sweat”
Incorporating a vocal sample from a long-dead lothario rock icon into a dubstep track which happens to be a collaboration with the rest of his surviving band is – some could justifiably say – strange. A few guitar lines might be the only hint to the LA band’s contribution, but it’s still enough to potentially make Jim Morrison turn in his leather trousered grave.
Deadmau5 and Gerard Way – “Professional Griefers”
Gerard Way – the guy that seemingly wrote an entire album inspired by the Nightmare Before Christmas bags tourists buy in Camden market – has done some weird shit in his time. Turning MCR into Sgt Pepper style alter egos the Killjoys – a group of post-apocalyptic rebels in future California; ditching his entire previous career to create what looks set to be, by all intents and purposes, a 2014 version of a Britpop album. This collab with masked-man Deadmau5 should be the least of his shock moves, but…
Dappy and Brian May – “Rockstar”
Moving from weird shit to just plain shit, here’s Never Mind the Buzzcocks star and one third of debatably talented combo N-Dubz, Dappy and curly-mopped badger fan Brian May. Why the former Queen guitarist would consent to guesting on a track by a man primarily known for a) shit hats and b) common assault is anyone’s guess, but their resulting track “Rockstar” is just as much of a horrorshow as you’d expect.
Wu Tang and Texas – “Say What You Want”
Back before there was Adele, Emeli Sande and all this decade’s age of beige, there were a whole other host of artists making MOR, mum-friendly music that was good for toe tapping along to with a glass of Chardonnay while making a risotto if you were over-40 and had lost all hope. Texas were prime exponents of this niche, which made the remix of their 1997 single “Say What You Want”, featuring Wu Tang’s Method Man and RZA, all the more baffling. Think of it like a slightly crap precursor to “Stan”.
Kesha and Alice Cooper – “What Baby Wants”
Since Kesha dropped the $ and became a Fully Credible Artist, she’s managed to drum up a roll call from the weird and wonderful of the rock world in a series of increasingly WTF duets (Iggy Pop, The Flaming Lips, etc). Play mega-smash breakthrough “Tik Tok”, then play this Alice Cooper track “What Baby Wants”. Aside from the latter being a kind of awkward Rocky Horror style ‘raaawkkk’ parody, it all feels a little like Cooper might have dragged a slightly smashed Kesha back to his lair and turned her into one of the Satanic Sluts :(
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