The past week or so has seen house music being spoken about in circles which haven’t mentioned the genre in decades, if they ever have done at all. Inevitably, the results varied from the ignorant to the downright ridiculous – from the patently untrue claim that Beyoncé’s record sampled Robin S, or Arianna Coghill laughably claiming Knowles has brought house music back.
Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of house music will, of course, be aware that the genre has been around for almost 40 years – the fact many in journalism didn’t even attempt to find out these basic facts is a damning indictment of how much this profession has fallen. The truth is Beyoncé Knowles should have done far better – her songs have been given house remixes of vastly superior quality in the past.
Drake’s efforts were even more pitiful – this was one turd even the hugely gifted Black Coffee couldn’t polish. One lesson from the past week must surely be there was little wrong with the 1990s model where pop musicians did pop stuff and labels brought in house remixers to do house stuff – everyone playing to their own strengths, in other words.
And if labels – or the artists, whoever is actually dictating this stuff – are serious about getting behind house music after many years of neglecting the genre entirely, they could do a lot worse than calling Detroit DJ and producer Thomas Barnett to work on their next song. Take a listen to what he did for Lizzo’s recent “About Damn Time”…
We’ve been listening to this for weeks here at Ears To The House HQ, and we love it. Is it more of an edit than a remix? Probably – but when things are this funky and well produced, we don’t really care what it’s called. We’re also somewhat surprised we haven’t published anything about it before today – please do forgive us for our impertinence.
House music never went away, as anyone who does even a little digging will find out. And if the pop world really does want in on house music, do it properly – not the pathetic, half-baked efforts of Drake and Beyoncé…
