Search - Lady Gaga :: Alejandro the Remixes

Worst. Remixes. Ever.

Braden Pickering | Maricopa, AZ | 06/28/2010

(2 out of 5 stars)

"Lady Gaga's last single, Telephone, was a cheap, abysmal song that was mercifully (if not shockingly) redeemed by the awesome variety of remixes contained on its maxi-single release. For her newest single, Alejandro - a song I've loved since the very first day the Fame Monster EP came out in stores, the complete opposite holds true. For the most part, these remixes are horrible and I'm almost offended the record company took the time to manufacture this drizzle, much less has the gall to charge unsuspecting consumers money for it.



Listen, I'm all for experimentation if you have a vision in mind, a direction, but a good HALF of this CD sounds like the end result of a 3-year-old child breaking into a recording studio and going to town on a 1980's synthesizer. If you're into random, ear-shattering blips and bleeps with next to no vocals, then you should really enjoy this single, the mixes by Afrojack, Kim Fai, Rusko, and Skrillex in particular. The Kleerup mix is somewhat better, as it takes an entirely different approach and turns the song into a mellow, mid-tempo electro jam and actually uses more than three words from the original track. Really though, the only mixes here that even vaguely come close to being what I would call "good" are the ones by Dave Aude and Bimbo Jones as they seem to be the only ones with any kind of structure. Jones' is pretty much your standard club fare but manages to keep the underlying Latin vibe of the original, and I'm pretty sure Aude just took Gaga's vocals and pasted them over the instrumental to Madonna's Get Together, but as the original Alejandro is sort of a ripoff of another Madonna song (La Isla Bonita) to begin with, this works fine as well. (Amazing how that works out, isn't? Hmm...lol) The Sound of Arrows mix is okay, if not basic, but gets lost and forgotten amongst the noisier, longer tracks.



I don't mean to come off as though I'm criticizing Lady Gaga herself, when in reality, to me, Lady Gaga's music (in its original form, for the most part) is the definitive of good pop. That just makes it all the more difficult for me to understand why her songs are apparently so hard to remix, because of the hundred or so remixes that have been commissioned over her short career thus far, only a handful are worth repeat listening. I know these up-and-coming producers think that they're doing Lady Gaga justice by being as bizarre and out-there as possible, but the truth is, despite her image her music is pretty normal and accessible and these ill-conceived mixes just suck all the integrity right out of it. Unfortunately the Alejandro maxi-single, which I was really looking forward to, has fallen victim to the same fate. Where's Junior Vasquez when you need him?"

Almost the ultimate Lady GaGa remix maxi-single

Daniel W. Kelly | Long Island, NY United States | 06/19/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"SO glad the record label is making a smart choice here and releasing a maxi-single with more than half a dozen FULL LENGTH club mixes of GaGa's latest single. I'm so sick of these single releases with 20 minutes of music on them and just a couple of 'radio' edits of CLUB mixes.



while most of GaGa's songs still sound best in their original form since they are already slamming dance trax, Alejandro is a slower groove, and therefore, a couple of pumping mixes are welcome. It's really no surprise that two of the strongest mixes on here are the Dave Aude and Bimbo Jones mixes. These two remixers have turned pretty much everything they've touched in the past decade into gold. Many of the other remixes offer a variety of styles, including a lot of slow jams and some club friendly mixes that are more like dubs than vocal remixes.



So the ONLY thing I think is wrong with this release? The version I want MOST of all of this song is the EXTENDED mix of the original track as used in the Alejandro video. That version is like a classic old school extended 12" version where they don't remix the song to sound totally different, they simply enhance the track by bringing out various moments of the song in more isolated, 'solo' moments. Tragically, I don't think the "video mix" will ever see the light of day for CD buyers."