Ever wondered how music labels are influencing popular music? 🧵
That's probably not the kind of stuff you expect to see from me here, but whatever, let's go crazy 🤪 Maybe you'll find this interesting!
So there was this Polish rock band called "Perfect". It's a mainstream, household name - think of it as the local Rolling Stones. Their popularity peak was in the 80s, but they stayed somewhat relevant in pop culture across decades.
In 2010, their vocalist and ex-guitarist released a side project.
The album was simply called after the artists - "Markowski & Sygitowicz". However, it took about a year from finishing the material to releasing it. The album was supposed to be published by public broadcaster Polish Radio, but they closed their publishing division and the project was left in limbo.
Sygitowicz reluctantly agreed, later stating in an interview that EMI focused on ballads and left the songs he cared about the most alone 😉 The artists weren't involved in producing the edited versions. A few years later the original versions of those singles have been released to the public.
This gives us a pretty unique opportunity to look at what the label actually changed, as its involvement only started after the material was first done the way the artists intended.
So let's do just that 😁
One such difference strikes already within the first seconds of intimate ballad "Wybacz mi" with how the vocals are processed.
Original first, then radio edit.
It diverges more as the song goes on. The original arrangement relies almost exclusively on acoustic guitar and string quartet to set the mood, with a little touch of bass melody.
The edited version goes much further to fill the space with instruments. The most obvious are drums, but there's also plenty of electric guitar licks. Gone is Markowski’s vocals’ trademark liberal rhythmic expression, all syllables are put into their place and extended or shortened as appropriate.
Let's move to another song: somewhat melancholic "Ty wiesz" was supposed to burst into an energetic bridge with guest solo by prolific guitarist Jacek Królik.
Apparently, the label decided that rock is dead and there's no place for guitar solos in popular music anymore 🙃 The whole bridge has been redone, with live drum stem replaced with drum machine across the whole track.
"To" went through the least invasive transformation - it only got its (rather intense) bridge removed and chorus repeated. However, it lost part of its lyrics in the process - as did "Każdej nocy" along some other arrangement changes.
Who cares whether the lyrics still make sense, just ship it 😂
One song got completely vetoed by the label. It was eventually released online (with some involvement of yours truly, but that's another story 😁), however, I'm afraid you'll have to understand its Polish lyrics to figure out what's the deal with this one 😉 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfV4rTpAj3Y
Fun fact: this whole thing inspired one of my first jam games that I made for #LudumDare in 2015. In "Radio Edit" you fight to defend your artistic integrity from evil label representatives with your facemelting guitar licks 😄 /EOT
Apparently Bluesky doesn't do audio, so if you're reading there, head out to the original thread to listen to what I'm talking about: https://social.librem.one/@dos/113499687034381513
After a while, another label - EMI - agreed to cover the expenses and publish the album. But they had conditions. They wanted to choose and produce the singles by themselves. In the end, four songs landed on the album as "radio edits", and that's what ended up being promoted in media.