YouTube trends come and go, as we all know, and what was once the top contender is now scraping by on 1,000-plus views. While Auto-Tune the News and the newsworthy "shred" videos have fallen on the totem pole, now we have Andy Rehfeldt, a professional composer, "devamping" all your favorite pop hits, from Ariana Grande to Rihanna and more.
Having amassed 130 different videos and 39 million views thus far, Rehfeldt has found something that has struck a chord with his viewers. While some may interpret the pop song as it is -- a mesh of Melodyned vocals in the frontrow while the instrumentation is partitioned to the back of the track -- Rehfeldt sees a composition.
Take his interpretation of Slipknot's "Wait and Bleed." Not exactly your kind of Top 40 drek, is it? To Andy, though, there is an upbeat pop-punk song just aching to get out. He even made Joey Jordson, arguably one of the world's most talented and badass drummers, sound like Ringo Starr trying to hold back.
In an interview at Vice's Noisey, the composer cites the early St. Sanders shred videos as early inspiration. He says, "About five and a half years ago I realized that I could find a capella vocals on the Internet. I'd been watching [shred videos] and I thought to myself, 'I should make funny videos like him, but arrange and play as well as I can, instead of making it sound like they are screwing up.'"
And a good idea it proved to be.
Check out a reggae-dubbed version of Rihanna's "Love the Way You Lie" below:
And my personal favorite, a hardcore version of a "sweet" little Ariana Grande live performance:
