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<\/p>\nIt’s one of those inspired ideas that leads listeners to wonder why someone hadn’t thought of it before: take modern-day hit songs, and recast them in the styles of yesteryear. That’s the winning approach of the fiendishly creative \u2013 and prolific \u2013 Postmodern Jukebox<\/b>. The brainchild of New York City pianist and arranger Scott Bradlee<\/b>, PMJ has become an enduring YouTube sensation with its weekly \u201cthrowback Thursday\u201d music videos.<\/p>\n
Bradlee admits that he didn’t see PMJ’s success coming. \u201cIt’s always very hard to predict what’s going to take off,\u201d he says. \u201cI don’t think I had any inkling of the possibilities, of how far this could go.\u201d He’s lost track of exactly how many music videos \u2013 all shot on the cheap in his NYC apartment \u2013 Postmodern Jukebox has made (the actual number is somewhere upward of 200).<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Bradlee admits that project began out of a combination of desperation and necessity. \u201cI was trying to make a living as a jazz pianist in New York City,\u201d he laughs, \u201cAnd I wanted to build a kind of online business card.\u201d He noticed that many musicians had made successful use of YouTube as a medium to promote their work. So he made and shared a homespun video of his own. \u201cMore people saw me play that one piece of music than had watched me play my entire life!\u201d<\/p>\n
Postmodern Jukebox grew out of an earlier project of Bradlee’s. Observing the backlash when rockers Nickelback<\/b> \u2013 named by Rolling Stone<\/i> as the second-worst band of the ’90s \u2013 was chosen to play a football halftime show in Detroit, he decided to come up with a musical program he called A Motown Tribute to Nickelback<\/i>. \u201cSomebody had made an online petition with 60,000 names or something like that, petitioning against Nickelback playing there,\u201d Bradlee recalls. He saw an opportunity. \u201cI thought, ‘What if I try to make both sides happy?’\u201d<\/p>\n
Bradlee’s retrofitting of Nickelback tunes like \u201cPhotograph\u201d into classic 1960s-styled arrangements was well-received, and the template for Postmodern Jukebox was established. Starting in 2012, Bradlee, his band, and a rotating cast of top-flight vocalists recorded and posted a new tune every week. Eighteen of PMJ’s best tunes were compiled as The Essentials<\/i><\/a>; that album was released on physical CD in September.<\/p>\n The live, touring version of Postmodern Jukebox serves up the group’s variety in thrilling style. A universally known tune like Celine Dion<\/b>‘s Titanic<\/i> smash \u201cMy Heart Will Go On\u201d finds new life as a doo-wop extravaganza in a style that recalls Jackie Wilson<\/b>‘s \u201cLonely Teardrops.\u201d<\/p>\n There’s a never-ending supply of songs just begging for the PMJ treatment. But Bradlee is selective. While he admits that he loves a good challenge \u2013 that’s part of the project’s appeal \u2013 not every song lends itself to his radical reworking. \u201cSurprisingly,\u201d Bradlee says, \u201cit’s much easier to adapt an electronic-sounding song than something that already has a throwback feel.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s one of those inspired ideas that leads listeners to wonder why someone hadn’t thought of it before: take modern-day hit songs, and recast them in the styles of yesteryear. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12336,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,42,49,51,60,69],"tags":[2873,2970],"class_list":["post-12335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-jazz","category-new-release","category-pop","category-rb","category-soul","tag-postmodern-jukebox","tag-scott-bradlee","cat-41-id","cat-42-id","cat-49-id","cat-51-id","cat-60-id","cat-69-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12335"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12337,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12335\/revisions\/12337"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}