When two singers sat down together, sheet music in hand, they looked like they were about to perform a traditional choir piece. When they started to sing in harmony, using editing to double up, it was clear they were going to be singing in a very traditional style, but the song they were about to perform was not traditional in the slightest. Instead, they had decided to sing the Bee Gees’ ‘Stayin’ Alive’, reimagining what it might have sounded like if it had been released over 400 years ago.
Music Man readers will be absolutely astonished by how the singers took a song that feels so synonymous with the modern sound of ’70s disco and transformed it into a song that sounds more like it should be sung in an abbey, the harmonies providing a truly ancient feel to the song. Listeners joked about how the song’s reimagining gave it a whole new context, one commenting, “In 1577, Europe was dealing with major outbreaks of bubonic plague, so ‘Stayin’ Alive’ meant a whole different thing.”
I was amazed by the singers’ voices and the harmonies they created. I was fascinated by how the new arrangement gave the song an entirely new feel. It didn’t just sound ancient, but, as I’m sure many Music Man fans will agree, there was something melancholy about the song in its new form. It provided a stark contrast to the upbeat disco-pop sound of the original, and the lyrics struck me in a much darker way thanks to the arrangement’s downbeat feel.
Jonas Wolf, the creator of the piece, has many other ancient arrangements of modern popular songs on his YouTube channel, most of them transformed into 16th-century sounds. One of his most popular is a Renaissance version of ‘Let It Be’ by The Beatles. Unlike his version of ‘Stayin’ Alive,’ which turned the feel of the original on its head, fans felt that his version of ‘Let It Be’ simply built on the original’s feel, using ancient harmony to further explore the composition’s beauty.
Jonas’s concept for his covers is utterly original. There are not many who would think to cover modern pop songs as though they had been written 500 years ago, but clearly, with his knowledge of music history shining through, Jonas was the perfect artist to execute the concept.
Perhaps even more unexpected than the creation itself is the reaction of online listeners. Not many could have predicted folks from the 21st century flocking to listen to Renaissance madrigals, but clearly the beauty of the music of the time, along with Jonas’s unique application of it, means that people are still more than happy to dip their toes into the sounds of yesteryear.