Taking disco back 400 years works surprisingly well.
Popular songs get covered all the time by both major musicians and lesser-known artists, each giving the tunes their own individual flair. But some song covers are more unique than others. For instance, you may have heard someone cover a Bee Gees song before, but you've likely never heard anything like Jonas Wolf's rendition of "Stayin' Alive."
Wolf teaches music theory and ear training in Germany and the Netherlands, but in his spare time, he creates arrangements of famous songs in the style of 16th-century madrigals, including the Saturday Night Fever favorite. Sung a cappella, his polyphonic arrangement of "Stayin' Alive" has a very different feel than the disco-pop original, but it's no less enjoyable. The pitch-perfect recording is a delight to listen to, even if it takes listeners a minute to even recognize the song.
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Isn't that something? Wolf tells Upworthy that Renaissance music is one of his areas of expertise and says the melodic structure of the "Stayin' Alive" chorus lent itself surprisingly well to the genre.
"The hard part was the verse and build-up sections," Wolf says. "I had to make rhythmic and, in some places, melodic adaptations that it fits the style of Renaissance music. But now I'm pretty convinced that, apart from the modern lyrics, a composer of that age couldn't tell that this is a song that has been written 400 years later."
On the technical side, even though it looks like four people singing, it's actually just Wolf and his partner, Tabea Bös, with two videos spliced together to look like a quartet. Wolf says he always pre-records and edits the singing parts of his arrangements (sung by himself, Tabea, and sometimes Tabea's brother, Valentin Bös) before making the videos that go along with them. He also has videos of madrigal versions of "Let It Be," "Bridge Over Troubled Water," "One Night in Bangkok," and "Enjoy the Silence" on his YouTube channel.
Stayin' Alive GIF by Bee Gees Giphy
People are loving the "Stayin' Alive" madrigal, and the comments on the video are filled with both musical admiration and hilarity.
"This is very funny. It's also stunningly beautiful."
"Holy Crap … that is absolutely amazing. I love when people have the vision and creativity to transcend music genres and periods. Proof that just about any song can be successfully crossed over. So much respect for the vocal talent."
"Not only are these singers great, but whoever arranged the harmonies is brilliant! Someone who clearly knows music."
"In 1577, Europe was dealing with major outbreaks of bubonic plague, so 'Stayin' Alive' meant a whole different thing."
"Staying alive back in the 1500's was probably more of a challenge than today, so singing about the achievement would have been quite fitting back then."
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One person celebrated finally being able to understand the words of the song, and another joked that their "ability to do CPR is now ruined." (A common tip for pacing compressions while doing CPR is to use the beat of "Stayin' Alive.")
Of course, creating a cover starts with having a great song to begin with, and the Bee Gees are famous for writing beloved songs. Not only did they write their own hits, but they also wrote hits for other artists. In fact, here's a compilation of 100 songs the Gibb brothers wrote that reached the Top 10 in various music charts around the world.
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Just one Top 10 song is an accomplishment. A hundred is legendary. The Bee Gees' songwriting prowess combined with their perfect familial harmonies and signature falsetto-driven sound have created a musical legacy that's pretty hard to beat.
And now, thanks to Jonas Wolf, that legacy not only reaches into the future but appears to stretch back hundreds of years before their births. What fun.
You can follow Jonas Wolf on his YouTube channel for more rockin' Renaissance remixes.