“Shout” was Tears for Fears‘ breakout single. Though it didn’t get as high on the UK charts as “Mad World” or “Change,” it did top the charts in at least seven other countries, and unlike those earlier UK hits, it went Gold in multiple of those countries. Along with its follow up, the even bigger hit “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” “Shout” defined Tears for Fears’ sound for the masses, and helped establish a rockier side to the Second British Invasion.
Tony Pops is an LA-based musician who has been putting out music for nearly a decade. He seems to have asked himself, what if “Shout” was powered not by the sounds of ’80s synthesizers but by the sounds of ’90s big beat with, um, auto-tune?
The drums to Pops’ cover of “Shout” just screams The Prodigy or another group from the big beat era. The underline bassline feels out of step with that scene, but those drums are of a very particular age and movement.
But instead of using the punk vocals or rap of The Prodigy or the soulful (usually female) guest vocals so many of their contemporaries relied on, Pops’ vocal is very 21st century. He embraces that now passe sound of full-on auto-tune on almost all the vocals, except for very brief backing vocal bits which sound pitch-shifted. Eventually the drums drop out of the mix for a brief part of a verse, leaving just some keyboards and Pops vocal, and that’s the only point at which the unrelenting drums let you take a, ahem, break.
The result is the sound of an American singer from the late aughts singing over the drums of British electronica act from the mid to late ’90s, only the song is from the mid ’80s. It’s a fun mashup of styles.
