57
votes
Megadeth drummer hears "Mr. Brightside" for the first time then efortlessly transforms it into his own unique masterpiece, showcasing the value of learning songs quickly for session work
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- Title
- Megadeth Drummer Hears "Mr. Brightside" For The First Time
- Authors
- Drumeo
- Duration
- 11:08
- Published
- Jul 14 2023
I refuse to believe any of these "first time!" descriptions when the tracks are number ones worldwide, or in a lot of cases have been best sellers of <random long period of time up to and including entire decades>.
Yeah same. On face value, never having heard Mr. Brightside seems incredibly difficult to achieve.
But I can believe that he might not have intentionally listened to it, or specifically listened to it as a study of the song.
Professional drummer here. I had to learn Mr. Brightside for a gig I played a few months ago (a private party with lots of covers requested). I had never heard it in my life, at least not that I know of. There were some funny replies in the band's group text, mostly along the lines of "lucky you!"
Anyway, I have to learn songs in a hurry all the time. It's definitely a different kind of skill than what you see in typical "drum cover" videos on youtube. There's a BIG difference between learning a performance note for note and learning a song.
I'm inclined to disagree. There are countless songs that I have never heard that my musician friends consider to be classics, and vice versa. It's just part of there being functionally infinite music out there to enjoy. I have made jokes about songs that I think are classics (eg. Black Betty) to a room full of friends and been met with a room full of blank faces.
As a metalhead and very deliberate music listener myself, I can't remember the last time I put on the UK top 40, or some kind of Spotify hits playlist. It just doesn't occur to me to go there for music that I'll enjoy. I think it's entirely possible to have gone almost 20 years (damn) without hearing Mr Brightside, if you don't tend to listen and move in circles that it's likely to have come on in.
This is a believable and likely title for these sorts of videos.
At the risk of cross-contaminating my copypastas, the titles they go with just smacks of "potato? What is potato?".
Exactly. I think it’s likely intentionally a little misleading. This screams of “do you know this dish?” “No” and everyone immediately jumps to “He’s never eaten mashed potato’s? How is that possible??” But in reality he was saying he doesn’t know how to make mashed potato’s because he’s a sushi chef
Ten Thousand
I remember when the movie Bohemian Rhapsody came out and the amount of 'first time reaction' videos listening to the song 'for the first time' just flooded Youtube. I get if you're not in the music scene and you didn't know something like 'Twist and Shout' was specifically from The Beatles or something like that. But there were videos full blown screaming and yelling about how the song Bohemian Rhapsody was the greatest thing they had ever listened to and "Who is this 'Queen' band?!" discourse.
I'm sure there are people who legitimately had never sat down and listened to Queen and associated the music with the band, but plenty of people had absolutely heard of them before and were being incredibly disingenuous.
Just to add onto this -- there were people who had this same reaction when Wayne's World came out 30 years ago (which features Bohemian Rhapsody when they sing it in the car).
Sometimes people just hear a classic song for the first time and it clicks, and it's a classic for a reason so they love it. There's a Joe Pera Talks With You episode where he hears Baba O'Riley for the first time and becomes absolutely obsessed with it, and everybody is weirded out he's never heard it before.
I can believe people hadn't heard Bohemian Rhapsody before, if only because it's too long to play on most popular radio stations. But never having heard a single Queen song probably means you either don't go out in public, or you live in a non-Western country (for lack of a better classification), where the movie was probably not released either.
The "single version" is only 3 minutes long.
To elaborate a little further on your points though: Queen is too ingrained in pop culture to have literally never heard a bit of before. They get played at pep rallies in schools, they get played at sporting events, they get played at high school graduations. All this said, you could more easily believe not know you're listening to Queen when you hear these things.
It's like saying you're not familiar with Shakespeare. I would 100% believe that even that majority of people have never sat through an entire one of his plays, or read any of them. But I don't believe anyone has never heard a reference to Shakespeare in their life. You'd have to basically not interact with any modern works. My first experience with Shakespeare was the damn Beetlejuice cartoon.
All of this said, Queen is not Shakespeare, and The Killers definitely aren't the equivalent of Queen.
I never knowingly listened to a Beatles song until I was 18. I did not knowingly listen to a Prince song until he died, and unlike the Beatles, there wasn't a bunch of "oh that was them". To my knowledge I had never heard any of them (which my friends were not thrilled with as we went through his many many hits).
Now i'm not a musician in any way shape or form, but I don't only listen to classical music or whatever. I think a lot of people overestimate how exposed people are to music, ESPECIALLY smaller hits like Mr. Brightside/The Killers, which is no where near as prolific as some of my blindspots.
I love these types of videos.
Here's Larnell Lewis, Jazz drummer, playing Enter Sandman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zd_UcjMusUA
This was a cool watch, I always find stuff like this very impressive. And he seems like a very personable guy. Without wishing to diminish what he did in the video (it's certainly far more than I could manage!) I have a suspicion that drums is a much easier instrument to do this kind of thing for. It's purely rhythmic, so without any complex time signatures (which it seems like he would have nailed anyway) you can get away with knocking out juuuuust about anything and it sounding halfway decent. If you mess up you can just fall back on a pretty simple 4/4 beat.
It is much, much harder to do this on a melodic instrument. While there are familiar conventions and patterns that you can follow (scales and chord sequences for example), a lot of very popular songs are the ones which tend to break or bend those rules. I would be fascinated to see a guitarist or pianist try to do the same thing. You don't have the same "fallback" positions for melodic instruments as you do on drums. Which isn't to imply that they're harder! Drums are extremely difficult to get sounding good, and I've played with too many crappy drummers to think it's an easy instrument. But for stuff like jamming along to a track for the first time, you're in a much better position as a drummer than almost any other instrument.
There's an episode where someone has to try the same thing with "Whiplash" from the movie of the same name. It's quite a bit more difficult in structure than the more standard pop/rock stuff and pretty interesting to see the drummer attempt. They go for 3 takes instead of the usual 1.
One thing i really enjoyed was them playing the non-drum track and the original drum track. Some songs the drums aren’t totally crucial but I dont think I realized just how much the drum track really makes this song what it is before this.
I absolutely loved this. What a charming guy. Megadeth isn't on my usual rotation so I've never really listened to their stuff nor am I familiar with any of the band members, but you'd better believe I'll be giving them a listen now. His constant grinning and laughing throughout the video was infectious!
On the having not heard 'Mr Brightside' thing: I totally believe he's unfamiliar with the song. I'm sure he would have heard it at some point or another as the song is so ubiquitous, but that doesn't mean he paid attention or even noticed it. If pop music doesn't make your radar very often, then it's not really shocking to be unfamiliar with a song such as that.