2 days ago
5
The film Funny Games is notable for several reasons: Its disturbing plot and presentation, its fourth wall breaks, and, importantly for our purposes today, its nearly identical remake. Directed by Michael Haneke and originally released in 1997 as a German language production, Haneke then returned to the story a decade later to translate it for anglophone audiences. Unlike most movie remakes, the film retained its original director and was so faithful to the original that it’s all but a shot-for-shot recreation. In film, as is the case for most creative mediums, it’s rare for an original author to so thoroughly recreate a work from their past.
But, as rare as it may be, it happens. In the world of music, it happens perhaps more often than most avid listeners even realize. Of course, there are common practices like remixes, instrumental versions, and live cuts, but every now and then, an artist decides to go for the full monty — the full album re-record, where every song on a given LP is meticulously recreated.
The motives behind such full album re-records vary. Some may want to revisit a project that they consider to be unfinished due to lack of experience or budget, others may seek to re-contextualize old songs with modern production or new instrumentation. Then, there are examples of acoustic renditions, anniversary celebrations, and, of course, the type of label fuckery that led to perhaps the best-known full album re-record series of the modern era — (Taylor’s Version).
Some of these efforts are noble, others are less so. More important, though, is the quality of these projects. Believe it or not, some of them turn out pretty darn good, matching or even surpassing the quality of the original record. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case…
So, without further ado, we present to you the good, the bad, and the ugly of full album re-records in 11 (or 22, depending on how you count ’em) projects. Stay tuned for when we re-write this list in, let’s say, 10 years or so.
— Jonah Krueger
English (US) · 