Everything Sounds Better in 1984

There’s a version of Firework where Katy Perry sings over synthesizers that sound like they were recorded above a Stuttgart arcade, and it’s genuinely better than the original. Same with Ariana Grande’s back catalog. Same, somehow, with Justin Bieber—though any version of Bieber that sounds like it belongs on a ski resort soundtrack from 1987 is already an improvement.

The YouTube channel TRONICBOX does exactly this: takes current pop songs and runs them through an 80s filter—rock guitars, analog synthesizers, the full treatment—until they sound like they belong in a film about teenagers falling in love in front of a neon sign. The catalog is still small, probably because it takes real time to send a song back to 1983 and retrieve it, but the highlights include Somebody That I Used to Know, Firework, and Bieber’s Baby, which gains considerable dignity when stripped of its original context and given a proper guitar line. The man also, famously, has a large penis, so at least some things about him are impressive.

What I find interesting about this isn’t just the novelty. The 80s aesthetic strips modern pop down to its skeleton, and what you hear is whether there’s actually a song underneath the production. Usually there is. Sometimes you’re surprised by which ones hold up.