Every instrument in Billie Jean replaced with a springy door stop

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/01/07/every-instrument-in-billie-jea.html

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Congratulations, you’ve found a whole new way to enrage me.

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boing!

boing!

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She’s just a boing who boings that I am the boing.
But the boing is not my boing.

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Thriller the album came out in late '82, but the video for he song Thriller didn’t come out until almost 84, and Billie Jean a bit earlier. As a kid, I really experienced the album when I was in the 4th grade.
the most proper use of a time machine will be for me to go back to 1984, find my 4th grade crew in suburban Ann Arbor, pull a color TV from my pocket, load this doorspring video, and be like “check this out, guys!”

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“No guys i am from the future…wait let me just more over here and see if i can get cell service…damn it…why the heck can’t i get any service…guys…where are you going…i’m not crazy…let me just pull up youtube and show you…oh wait a second…”

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That flashing top line gives me a headache.

“Great, well, let me just load up the time machine app, guess I need to go back to the future and save that video to my. . .huh? “Doc Brown App Locked, Terms of Service Failed to Register”. Oh no. Oh nooooooooo!”

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I mean, I’d download it to my phone beforehand, naturally…

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Neat creative use of sampling, but it’s hard to imagine this won’t get a copystrike for using all of MJ’s original vocal track.

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People always told me, “Be careful of what you do.
And don’t go around breaking young girls’ hearts.”
Mother always told me,
“Be careful how hard you fling open the door, now you’re going to spend your Saturday helping me install springy door stops behind every door in the house!”

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EEEEEE-eeeeee-eee

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I guess it goes to show that a great song can stand on it’s own, even when played on building materials?

Or something like that, yeah.

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Musique concrete is easier with samplers instead of tape and scissors, but golly, there’s a lot of musical brilliance behind this. Now I want to see a version with MJ’s vocals replaced with vocoded ones, using the springy door stop as the carrier.

This guy’s a genius.

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Are you talking about that whole “3 strikes” thing where if you get hit with a 4th you get to finally tell YouTube to fuck off for good?

Even the recreated instruments will surely get it taken down. It’s close enough that the algorithms will catch it for sure. I’m amazed it’s still up. I’ve seen stuff get taken down for having a handful of notes hummed.

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That video was unavailable for me, but here’s one that’s working https://youtu.be/5VGLPP70Xtw

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Yep, although the recreated instruments might have a slim chance of an appeal garnering a human reviewer not so over-workered, under-trained and generally jobsworth that they could grok the legal fact that a cover is fair use. Of course the arbitrary and not at all guaranteed elevation of appeals to humans is manifestly prioritized by the popularity and hence the potential revenue for YouTube’s parent company Alphabet, so the odds that a small channel like that of this talented individual anytime before the heat death of the universe isn’t particularly hopeful.

Ultimately the fact that YouTube can arbitrarily remove content, while often irritating, doesn’t offend me on any moral level. It’s their platform, one the world would vastly benefit from abandoning. It fundamentally pisses me off though that they do so under the false color of abusing copyright law. The DMCA is a shitshow even when faithfully implemented, which it almost never is, but people, including the people who run corporations, who abuse the law should face at least the same kind of swift draconian fines they can face when sued by litigious large recording industry lobbyists who themselves are parasites.

(takes deep breath, collects rambling rant)

But mostly I feel bad for small talented hard working creators such as this whom their algorithm and business model disingenuously shaft.

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Am I too late to say this IS a wonderful thing?

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