My dad called this remix "a coat of lipstick." I really like it for its simplicity. I think it's kind of a perfection of the song. But I can see how such minor changes can be considered really uncreative or, worse, just stealing.

Remixing authenticity and...aided authenticity?

Kanplay? Coldye?

There's a fine line, if any, between remixing and recycling. Just one example of a company that's doing both with clothes, updating the old to current fashion tastes.

Newspaper blackout poems by Austin Kleon

Listen to the drumming in Brand New's "Guernica," starting 2 seconds in on this link
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGPaPBEpw0w&ob=av2n) and to the drumming in P.O.D.'s "Youth of the Nation" starting 22 seconds in on this link (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFpqGeQY12M). It's a very simple example, but it's just a reminder that it's hard for anything to be truly 'original' anymore. The similarities of the sort of wispy accompanying guitar bits in each song makes it hard for me to believe that Brand New was not influenced in some way by "Youth of the Nation," which came out two years before "Guernica." I'm not sure it matters, though, if an artist borrows something without knowing, intentionally uses it, or comes up with something that's been done before without having heard the original.

Technically, this is a remix of Rick Astley's "Never Gunna Give You Up."

Around my sophomore year of high school, I remembered a great instrumental I'd heard at some point in my life but couldn't place. I sung it to a friend (ber ner ner ner ner neeer ner ner…) and while she recognized it, she couldn't place it either. We made it our mission to figure it out, asking everyone we knew, and eventually someone posted the attached link to my facebook. This class made me suspicious that perhaps the instrumental wasn't actually created by DJ Kool. Using whosampled.com, I found out that the this awesome piece has nothing to do with him. The entire instrumental is taken from "The 900 Number" by The 45 King (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axJpBlxW6n0). But then I looked up The 45 King, and discovered that he, too, is a DJ. "Let Me Clear my Throat," which gets the credit for this instrumental, is actually a remix of "The 900 Number," which is a remix of Marva Whitney's "Unwind Yourself" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ym7IoodKeWI). And Whitney is just the singer; I wasn't able to find the sax player behind it all. I think it's upsetting that most of the credit goes to DJ Cool, who merely added a worthless hook you wish wasn't there and small bits of songs which barely alter The 45 King's work. At least Mac Miller, the most recent borrower I could find, changed it up a bit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3GGN51_pjE

Biggie's music is the epitome of 90s hip hop. The production is unmistakably from an earlier decade, and his style, although smooth, is choppy against the music. Basically, if you don't like 90s hip hop, you won't like Biggie. But he has so much talent, and I think it's great that he lives on through artists who have layered his vocals onto contemporary and relatable music.

I like that The Hood Internet remixes songs that are still within the public's consciousness. It seems like a very honest thing to do; very few people, I think, would encounter this remix and not recognize it as a remix.

Whether or not you like Britney Spears (to this day I believe she- or at least her producers- changed pop), I think the use of sampling in this particular song is inarguably creative. That iconic shrill melts perfectly into the song and yields a completely different feel from the original: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=oGKDBhdxn6c

I can't decide if this is butchery or an acceptable use of remixing to bring Nirvana into the 2010s. Probably butchery...but I still like it.

This is "Pretty Little Penthouse," Brent Duvall's take on Tayyib Ali's "Penthouse Minutes". I like the remix much better. Here's the original: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSh7-Hdt12Y

New narration and music for a funny and creative potential version of The Shining.

This is an example of a meme based on a character on Comedy Central's Futurama. The character is Zoidberg and his catch phrase is "Why not Zoidberg?" A humorous take on remixes converging with politics.