13 Times the Remix Was Better Than the Original

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There’s a quiet irony baked into the music industry: some of the most iconic songs ever heard were not the original versions. They were the second attempt, the reworked take, the version somebody else insisted on making. Remixing has been part of recorded music since the Jamaican dub culture of the late 1960s, when producers began stripping tracks down to their rhythmic bones and stretching them out for the dancefloor. From those roots, the practice evolved into something far more transformative.

Remixing began in modern music as a means of streamlining potential singles for radio play, with early alternate versions often cut almost exclusively for brevity. The rise of disco culture in the 1970s then inspired producers to cut longer extended versions so club patrons could enjoy songs for more than the usual three or four minutes. What follows are 13 moments when that creative reinvention went beyond improvement and became the definitive version of a song.

1. Suzanne Vega – “Tom’s Diner” (DNA Remix, 1990)

1. Suzanne Vega -
1. Suzanne Vega – “Tom’s Diner” (DNA Remix, 1990) (Image Credits: Flickr)

Vega’s track first appeared as an a cappella opener on her singer-songwriter album Solitude Standing. DNA envisioned something else entirely, pairing her conversational vocal with a thunderous rhythm section and bursts of brass, resulting in a hit unlike anything else from that record. Mashing up Vega’s vocals with the beat from Soul II Soul’s “Keep On Movin’,” DNA…

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Author : Matthias Binder

Publish date : 2026-04-20 11:34:00

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