Pop Songs Get Old Hollywood Sound With Postmodern Jukebox

It's time to turn the radio dial back to your grandparents' generation.

Postmodern Jukebox posted a video in February featuring a woman with her hair in 1940s-style victory rolls and a polka dot dress crooning into the microphone while a jazz band plays a bouncy melody behind her. But a few bars in, you notice that she isn't singing an Ella Fitzgerald or Billie Holiday song. Instead you hear, "I'm gonna pop some tags / Only got twenty dollars in my pocket ..."

It's Macklemore's "Thrift Shop," of course, reworked into an elegant vintage arrangement. While most of Postmodern Jukebox's songs garner a respectable couple hundred thousands of views, their cover of "Thrift Shop" is by far their most popular, with a cool two million views on YouTube and counting.

Scott Bradlee is the mastermind behind Postmodern Jukebox, a project that rearranges modern pop songs into jazz, swing, ragtime, and bluegrass renditions. His chops are mostly self-taught; as a kid, he borrowed cassettes of ragtime and New Orleans jazz from his local library and spent hours learning to mimic them on the piano. In addition to Postmodern Jukebox, he is the music director of the immersive theater show Sleep No More and recently arranged and performed tracks for the video game Bioshock Infinite.

When the band's vintage, Irish tenor cover of Daft Punk's "Get Lucky" caught our eye last week, we decided to sit down with Scott Bradlee to learn more.

Mashable: What was the inspiration behind Postmodern Jukebox?

Scott Bradlee: When jazz first hit mainstream in the 1920's, a very common practice was to take popular melodies from Broadway and such and reinterpret them as jazz. Postmodern Jukebox is really just a continuation of that tradition. We're essentially trying to create an alternate history of modern pop music by imagining what songs by contemporary artists would sound like if they were written in the first half of the 20th century — the so-called "Golden Age" of Hollywood.

Who else contributes to Postmodern Jukebox?

Scott Bradlee: On the creative side, I do all the arranging, but the musicians I work with contribute a lot of great ideas. Adam Kubota (our bassist) came up with the idea of a bluegrass take on a techno house build in our Ke$ha cover. Robyn Adele Anderson (our vocalist) came up with most of the melody for our "Thrift Shop" cover on her own. Allan Mednard (our drummer) not only created our signature minimalist drum sound but also has become a fan favorite, thanks to his intense staring contests with the audience.

On the production side, my YouTube channel (ScottBradleeLovesYa) is a one-man operation. I record the audio in my living room home studio and set the camera on a tripod. It's a no-frills, "what you see is what you get" set up, but I think the lack of slick production values and Auto-Tune is part of what appeals to our audience. We even spent a day as the number one selling jazz album on iTunes, despite the fact that I accidentally left the air conditioning on during one of the recordings.

What are some of the challenges of adapting pop songs to older styles?

The big one is that chord progressions that are used in modern pop songs are much less sophisticated than chord progressions from the '30s and '40s. To get around this issue, I'll typically re-harmonize the songs a bit to prepare them for adaptation. Another challenge is that a lot of pop songs from any given era tend to be very similar to one another. We've taken care to offer a sampling of genres to prevent our covers from becoming too predictable.

You've admitted you didn't use to like pop music very much. Has your experience adapting pop songs to fit older styles changed your views?

I think I've learned that it's not particularly instructive to label a song "bad" without first supplying a context. My previous project, "A Motown Tribute to Nickelback" (exactly what it sounds like), was really a learning experience, in this regard. Although it started as parody, I was determined to really take the project seriously and try to translate Nickelback's music into motown styles as faithfully as possible, without any editorializing or blatantly tongue-in-cheek moments. Now, I still might not seek out Nickelback for listening, but I can appreciate where they're coming from a lot better as a result of this project.

What's your favorite pop song right now? Are there any songs you'd love to cover with Postmodern Jukebox?

I'm digging the new Daft Punk album, Random Access Memories. Macklemore's The Heist is also great. I might do some '50s style remakes next. After all, that era saw the birth of pop music as we know it.

What's one memorable moment from your experience with Postmodern Jukebox?

My favorite YouTube comment — one that's actually an excellent and succinct job at summarizing our goals — read, "This is the only band that I enjoy that my grandparents also enjoy." When I read that, I realized that we were unknowingly bridging the generation gap. Older folks were watching to enjoy a bit of nostalgia from their youth, and younger folks were watching to hear the music of their generation put into a time machine.

Has Postmodern Jukebox ever performed live, or do you plan to in the future?

Yes. Currently, we're doing a lot of event work, both in New York City and out of state. We'd like to do a bit of touring when the time is right, but for now, we're having fun using YouTube as our concert venue.

Anything else we should know about you?

I was born on Long Island, raised in Jersey, and live in Queens. Despite this, I don't have any tribal tattoos.

Image courtesy of YouTube, ScottBradleeLovesYa