How 1 Song Can Be Transformed in 4 Ways 💿

“Achilles Come Down” is the gift that keeps on giving.

There is a trend on YouTube and Tumblr that keeps getting bigger: Specific music edits. You might have been recommended a few of the videos. They are pretty hard to miss due to the creativity of their titles and the aesthetics of their thumbnails. They tend to follow some general templates as well, so they can be divided into categories such as “But” edits, “From another room” edits, and “POV” edits.

Essentially, these are all videos that distort or otherwise alter a piece of music using a whole array of effects, such as ambient noise, static, and a low pass filter, and (usually) combine it with some accompanying visuals. This is all done to build a certain atmosphere or recreate a memory for the listener. One example would be some piece of music that has been altered so that it sounds like it is coming from a car radio, with the pitter patter of rain on the car roof and the whoosh of highway cars added to amplify the effect.

Here is a taster to get you started… 🍡

You might soon be hooked on finding the edit that is just right for your favorite song, or stumbling upon the one mood that you did not know how to put into words. The following list is a good place to start experiencing what some altering can do to a piece of music.

Your classroom is taking a test while the class next door is playing Kahoot very loudly ✏️

Le festin by Camille but you’re in gusteau’s restaurant 🥘

“i’m god by clams casino” but you’re in a bathroom at a party 🥳

Once upon a dream by Lana Del Rey but you’re in an eternal dream 💤

Lacrimosa but you’ve drank the last drop of poison in your big mansion 🍷

Physical by Dua Lipa but you’re in a nightclub in 4077 🕺🏻

Here are a bunch more organized into a playlist for your browsing convenience!

As you can see, there are some here that absolutely no one was thinking about before they got the video recommended to them — at least I hope not — along with others that are scenarios which most of us have built up in our heads already while previously listening to a song. Finally, many others make up what I like to call the memory vault of Generation Z, portrayed through songs and sound effects. This last one comprises all of those moments from our childhood that we haven’t thought about in a while, which would probably make the world a better place if we did.

Those moments and emotions, reignited by the specific music edits, allow us to realize that we have been holding in memories of vibes that were not unique to us at all, but rather shared among a whole generation. We just didn’t have an occasion to mention it to each other — until, that is, we came across the video that brought it all back, and finally had our occasion to share that one singular mood from the last day of 5th grade. It’s a beautiful, intimate thing, disguised in the packaging of a YouTube trend.

The Edit that I Am Hooked On 🎧

Now that you have had an introduction to the internet phenomenon known as specific music edits, it is time to mention the one song that I see a lot of YouTubers focusing their creative efforts on these days: “Achilles Come Down” by Gang of Youths.

“Dying Achilles” (Sculpture in Corfu, Greece)

Once you listen to the song, you might start to understand why people are so captivated by it. The vocals are raw and close to the bone, while the instrumentation is heavenly. Yet I think that it is the lyrics which speak most, and tell a fascinating, modernized snippet of a dilemma that takes place in Homer’s Illiad. Yes, kids these days are into Greek mythology, and have been since the start of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians craze. I should know; I am one of them!

The catalyst for the popularity of this song can be associated with a book that has had an astronomical growth in readership during the pandemic: The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. There are no better words to describe the tender relationships in this book than the ones that Miller has chosen, so I highly recommend it to everyone who has even the slightest interest in mythology, historical fiction, the ancient world, or LGBTQ representation in literature.

Anyway, back to the point. There have been many creative takes on the song which highlight the mental health issues portrayed in it. I want to share with you the experience of listening to a set of renditions of the same song, to demonstrate how powerful these specific music edits can be — but especially, how powerful this song can be.

P.S. You will want to have headphones on for this, because there is some awesome split audio.

It is heavy stuff, for sure. I love creating little scenarios in my head when I listen to stuff like this. I have also been trying to analyze my feelings more (after I simply bask in the music once or twice, of course) to see what might cause me to feel a certain way about one of the edits and not another. For example, in the first edit, the audio seemed to favor the negative voice in the head of Achilles, instead of equaling them out, so “jump off the roof” was clearer to me than “get off that roof”. It really puts a more negative spin on the song than the original version, where the positive voice takes over prominently. It makes sense, given that the edit promises a loss of sanity.

In the second edit, while the tone is more neutral, it also hits home. I think this is because it reminds me of a time before the pandemic, when the constant buzz of the world existed around me in everyday goings on, without me having to seek it out. While the song itself is obviously depressing, the feeling of having the world at my fingertips is something that I have started to romanticize during the multiple lockdowns that we have had here.

A Special Treat! 🍬

Although this is not technically a specific music edit, it is amazing at expressing the song in a beautiful way, so it belongs in this article!

This first one has affected a lot of people, judging by the comments. On top of the powerful illustrations, the imagery is incredibly imaginative. It is full of thoughts that I had to unpack by rewinding the video. It also has a very clearly negative bent to it, which I don’t think is the case with the original song. The ending here is poignant yet hopeless.

I hope you enjoyed going on this auditory ride with me! Even if these edits weren’t exactly up your alley, I can assure you that there is an edit which speaks directly to your soul — you just need to find it. There is too much of an outpouring of this stuff for that not to be true… How about starting with your favorite song? Another good idea is to search for an oddly specific mood that you are confident no one other than you has experienced, and see how close people on YouTube have come to describing it through audio — you might be surprised!