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One of my favorite features from the past couple of years was Andy Crush's 2020 Pitchfork deep dive into "Slowed + Reverb" remixes on YouTube. Andy compares the overall sound to a 45-rpm played at 33-rpm, but add some digital echo and wistful Japanese anime and you'll get a nostalgic gut-punch to the feels. It's been a couple of years, but I'm still discovering some amazing slowed + reverb remixes of some of my favorite songs - and I've discovered some new songs, too. If you have a favorite song, it probably has a slowed + reverb version.

From Pitchfork: "As slowed + reverb videos proliferated, the visual aesthetic became more refined, skewing toward romantic and retro-futuristic nighttime scenes sourced from vintage Japanese anime. Apparently slow music set to looped anime—like violent knock-off cartoons or the whispers and clicking tongues of ASMR—is well-shaped to fit some previously unknown keyhole in the minds of viewers and the algorithms that recommend them content. A slowed + reverb remix of Halsey and Juice WRLD’s “Without Me,” set to a clip of an anime character crying glittery tears, has racked up 7 million views. A version of Tame Impala’s “The Less I Know the Better,” set to animation of rolling waves, has 6.8 million. According to Slater, listeners bond over the sense of isolation and sadness that slowed + reverb edits can bring out, turning loneliness itself into a kind of community."

Here are some of my favorites remixes that got me originally hooked:

One Direction - "Night Changes"

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Sixpence None The Richer - "There She Goes"

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Trippie Redd - "Wish"

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Drake - Passionfruit

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The 1975 - "Somebody Else"

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Speaking of The 1975: Here's a "slowed + reverb plus rain" mix of several The 1975 songs. The 1975 and One Direction multiverse seem especially well made for this kind of melancholy remixing:

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Other popular remix series include "sped up & reverb" a la this sped up version of "About You":

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And finally, for now, a "here's a song but you're in a bathroom at a party" remix:

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I love YouTube.

-b