Review Summary: A decent collection of both terrible and terrific remixes, leaving fans to sift through the ga-garbage to find the good stuff.
To put Lady Gaga’s massive influence into perspective, one doesn’t have to do much more than search her name on Youtube and view the thousands upon thousands of people putting their spin on “Pokerface”, “Bad Romance”, and literally dozens of other Gaga songs. Her music has become so momentous and celebrated in the current music scene that it’s influencing people by the droves, so it makes total sense that a remix album, aptly titled
The Remix, would surface to keep the Lady Gaga hype machine rolling. Question is: does Lady Gaga’s collection of remixes constitute a worthwhile release, or is it just a simple cash grab?
First, not surprisingly, there are plenty of enjoyable interpretations to be found on
The Remix. Plenty of songs, such as “Pokerface (LLG vs. GLG remix)”, Chew Fu’s “Love Game” remix and Deewan’s “Just Dance” remix are all fresh and creative takes on the Gaga songs that have been floating around for the past couple of years. Some of the best songs on the disc, however, are the ones that threaten to be the superior version of the tune: Stuart Price’s remix of “Paparazzi” adopts the melodic, slower sensibility of the original and puts more of a drive to it, while Robot To Mars’s mellower take on “Love Game” is incredibly well-done and changes the feel of the original song completely. Along with other favourable, more run-of-the-mill cuts,
Remixes has enough enjoyable content to justify it’s release.
But, not surprisingly, there are also plenty of questionable tracks to be found. Songs like Richard Vission’s “Just Dance” remix and Passion Pit’s “Telephone” remix are long, meandering, and largely pointless, as they lack any momentum and are void of any anticipation or fun. The Pet Shop Boys’ remix of “Eh Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say)” really doesn’t have any good ideas, while “Bad Romance (Grum remix)” sounds like it was just thrown together. The “Alejandro” and “Dance in the Dark” remixes are decent, but they sound very elementary and don’t really warrant more than one listen. For every good song on the album, there’s probably a bad song elsewhere on
The Remix to drag down the overall quality.
And lastly, the most questionable aspect of this remix album is the song selection. I realize that most the tracks focus on her singles, but some songs don’t really deserve to have dual remixes (The two “Bad Romance” and “Telephone” remixes, for example, are both pretty bland). Also, I would have liked to have seen other songs from
The Fame album included here, most notably “Beautiful Dirty Rich”, “Starstruck” and “Money Honey”, since they have a lot of potential to become some interesting remixes. Casual fans of Gaga will find a lot of familiar tracks here, but anyone who’s enjoyed her full albums will be left wanting a bit more.
So, like most remix albums, I would have to say that Lady Gaga’s
Remixes is absolutely nothing special, as there are plenty of average tracks and a handful of stinkers to drag down the overall quality of the album. Combined with the fact that the song selection and lack of variety in general is largely disappointing, you’re probably better off just checking out the individual tracks rather than purchasing the whole lot. And, like most remix albums, you’ll probably just end up putting a couple of remixes on your playlist and throwing out the rest. A decent release for sure, but you'll have to have the patience to sift through some duds.
