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Children of Bodom's Cover of "Oops I Did it Again" Official Music Video
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The most obvious difference between the two songs is the timbre difference. Britney Spears has built her career on her looks and her voice. The music that she produces always has very clean melody and harmony lines, and the sound that is produced is sweet and soothing. Children of Bodom take a complete twist on this, and the sound they produce is noisy, grating, and often unpleasant. As a metal enthusiast, even I found the sound displeasing. People who are used to hearing Britney’s version of the song will certainly be surprised. Children of Bodom did not intend for the song to be pleasant however. They chose to have a high contrast between their song and Britney’s song. The song represents what they hear when they listen to Britney’s original piece. Intense is certainly a very good word to describe Children of Bodom’s cover. The song is loud and very “in your face”. The singer is screaming at the top of his lungs while the guitars thrash through distortion pedals. It has a very high intensity, which is in contrast with the smooth, lilting tones found in Britney’s original song. Also, Britney’s song has varying levels of intensity throughout the song, while Children of Bodom stay consistently a very loud intensity. With a lot of metal artists, it’s hard to identify whether or not a melody is present in the song to begin with. Through the rough, gravely shouting of Children of Bodom, a glimmer of the original melody can be found. But the important thing about the melody of this song in comparison with the melody in Britney’s song is that Children of Bodom don’t really care about the melody. For them as artists and as businessmen, they are not trying to “sell” anyone a beautiful melody. Their cover is almost parodic in nature because of the absurdity in premise. Britney on the other hand sells her songs based on how good the songs sound, and she achieves this by having beautiful melodies and harmonies. Both songs have the same lyrics to an extent, but it’s important to note the differences and why those differences are there in the first place. Children of Bodom choose not to mess with the main lyrics to create an affinity between their song and the original version and to ensure that people would get that they are creating a parodic song. The song has spoken dialogue written into it. Children of Bodom chose to instead speak the dialogue in Finnish. While I have yet to identify a significance in choice of language, they actually don’t say the same words that Britney does. Instead, they parody the dialogue that Britney says in her song. Also, while it’s not necessarily a lyric, in the very beginning of the song, you can hear a loud spit. I believe that Children of Bodom chose to do this to represent that they are essentially spitting on the song. It sounds bad and they know it, but that’s part of the parodic nature of the song. Finally, both songs use tension and release. After the dialogue, the songs return to the lyrics in the refrain, but choose to sing a slightly different melody. It creates a tension with the rest of the song that is resolved by harmonizing with the rest of the music that is being played.
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