Remixes That Work as Distinctive Songs in Their Own Right

Tracey Thorn's story of going back to a familiar street still feels private. Todd Terry puts it over an unfaltering house beat and gives the chorus a little lift with strings and bass. The floor keeps moving while Thorn lingers on the person who is gone.

A voice that can sound almost suspended on the Homogenic album has to make its way through broken little bursts of percussion here. The gaps help you hear the breath at the ends of Björk's phrases. Funkstörung leave the melody intact enough that those interruptions feel like part of the conversation.

Rakim's account of trying to get paid remains at the center of a much busier record. Coldcut let Ofra Haza's singing take up space alongside stray spoken voices and the looping beat. The pleasure is in hearing a concise rap track open out into a place where unexpected voices can answer it.

Skream says he already had the instrumental when he found the right voice in La Roux's single. You can hear why he waited. The low notes and wide spaces let her vocal hang in the air, which makes the late rush of drums feel as if the floor has dropped out from under it.

Cowley keeps the pulse that makes Summer's vocal feel weightless, then spends long stretches exploring the sounds around it. The little runs and arcs of synthesizer get enough room to become events in their own right. By the time Summer's voice returns, you have had a chance to miss it.

Mad Professor sends fragments of Tracey Thorn's vocal out into the echo. A line that once had the security of a verse can surface and vanish while the bass keeps going. The dub has its own drama in the stretches where you are waiting for the voice to reappear.

The original wonders what is going on between two women who keep getting compared. Lorde gets a verse to reply here, and her account changes how Charli's opening sounds in retrospect. The beat can stay familiar because the new voice changes who has the floor and where the song ends emotionally.

Norman Cook speeds up the easy strum and puts a forceful beat beneath it. The song still sounds like somebody happily naming the records and singers they love. The extra momentum gives those names a different life, as though they were being passed around a room already dancing.

MK chops the sung words into a pattern short enough to feel like another instrument. The voice and the bouncing synth figure lean into each other's accents until a scrap of the original vocal has become the main event. That loop is the reason to choose this dub.

Jamie xx gives Scott-Heron's low, deliberate voice a quick pulse and a piano figure that keeps lifting up into the space around it. The voice can still take its time with the offer of comfort. The beat makes it feel as though that offer has to be made while everything else is moving.

Karen O's command to dance comes through cleanly amid the mess of synths. A-Trak gives that command its own setup, with room for the anticipation and a rough, insistent riff when the beat hits. The swagger of the band recording survives in a form that works through long buildups and releases.

The original's recurring responses already give the lead vocal somebody to push against. Masters at Work give those answers a house pulse and enough space to run through several rounds. Listen for how readily the short responses can carry the groove even when Simone steps back.

The original uses a gathering band and strings to let its request for help swell into the open. Four Tet keeps more air around the vocal and lets the small repeating rhythm do the work. That gives the phrases somewhere to hang without committing them to the original's big crescendo.

The melody still takes its long climb. Corsten builds an expectation of the beat underneath it, then lets that pulse fall away so the sustained notes can take over. When the rhythm returns, it answers a tension the melody has kept alive through the break.

The band's recording gives Kelli Dayton's voice a slinky setting. Armand Van Helden puts a rough, outsized bass figure under the repeated vocal, with drum accents that keep making it sound as if it might tip over. The song's insinuation turns into a dance-floor dare.

The remix takes a song with a stark, clanging pull and gives it a brighter repeating chord figure and a straighter dance pulse. The vocal still sounds as if it is being drawn somewhere without quite choosing to go. The new rhythm makes that feeling move with the ease of a pop chorus.

Lone sets the choppy vocal against chords that spread wide and hang around. The little rattles and clipped sounds still keep the surface restless. The calmer harmony gives those fragments a place to land, making the short original feel like the source of a more expansive track.

Madonna takes over the second verse and adds backing vocals, and Missy Elliott arrives with a sharply different rhythmic delivery. The Blessed Madonna makes room for both against a fast club pulse. Listen to the second verse for the moment when the familiar song starts to feel like a relay.

The original already plays with getting stuck inside a repeating section. Soulwax give the loop a harder drum attack and let repeating fragments pile up over a groove that seems determined to go somewhere. The track can stretch out for this long because the details keep changing even when the pulse holds.