Haven’t quite recovered from the shock experience of seeing Miley Cyrus twerk on stage at the VMAs? Well, don’t let it tarnish her songs for you — while “waiting in line in the bathroom” while “trying to get a line in the bathroom” may not be your thing, her latest hit may just need a different musical spin put on it to make it good.
That’s exactly what pianist Scott Bradlee and his band Postmodern Jukebox have done with their reworking of Cyrus’ ‘We can’t stop.’ Their doo wop cover, featuring The Tee-Tones, was created in response to the singer’s performance at the awards show, and has gone on to rack up 3.6-million views on YouTube in six days. It may be a far cry from the 184-million views the actual music video for the song has amassed, but it’s still the most popular Postmodern Jukebox video to date, beating out the number of views of their vintage covers of songs like Macklemore’s ‘Thrift shop‘ and Psy’s ‘Gentleman.’
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The ‘We Can’t Stop’ cover is Bradlee’s latest effort in trying to reimagine popular music in a bid to find the artistic merit inside of the songs. He says his goal with Postmodern Jukebox is to show how “songs can be twisted, shaped, and altered without losing their identities — just as we grow, age, and expire without losing ours — and it is through this exploration that the gap between “high” and “low” art can be bridged most readily.” Still, it’s quite a strange experience to watch a six piece jazzy band perform a song with lyrics like “la da di da di, we like to party.”
