Scott Bradlee & Postmodern Jukebox
artist pic

Related projects: Scott Bradlee and Saturday Morning Slow Jams

Scott Bradlee has long had a love/hate relationship with pop music.

Growing up as an aspiring jazz pianist, Scott was not interested in listening to anything that might appeal to those that he deemed to possess a less than refined palette of musical taste. This willful ignorance continued for some time; it was not until he began making YouTube videos (and subsequently receiving requests for modern pop songs) that Scott decided to drop his preconceived notions and examine contemporary pop with an open mind.

What he found is that, despite his initial aversion to the stuff Scott was hearing, he was unable to truly categorize this as “bad music” without first defining a set of arbitrary, culturally-defined criteria. Furthermore, the fact that such a rigorous vetting process exists for the output of major labels indicated that these songs and artists certainly RESONATED with the culture of our times–no easy feat, in and of itself. As a relentless devil’s advocate, Scott then found that by simply altering the context of such songs, he could find quite a bit of artistic merit inside of them.

His goal with Postmodern Jukebox is to get his audience to think of songs not as rigid, ephemeral objects, but like malleable globs of silly putty. Songs can be twisted, shaped, and altered without losing their identities–just as we grow, age, and expire without losing ours–and it is through this exploration that the gap between “high” and “low” art can be bridged most readily.

He wants to contribute to the pop music lexicon in the best way that he can.

He wants to encourage others to push the boundaries of genres, and give them the tools to do so.

He wants to create an alternate universe of popular song. Read more on Last.fm.

last.fm: 38,344 listeners, 1,133,762 plays
tags: jazz, cover, vintage, swing, lounge

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