We can’t decide whether to laugh or cry at this depressing “Smash Mouth” remix

People make remixes of songs all the time. It can be a fun way to show how inspired you were by the original song to create your own spin on it. After all, basically half of late ’90s hip-hop began with someone yelling, “Remix!” at the top of the track. But usually the remixes make a song more upbeat or playful. The occasional acoustic remix of something might slow it down a little, but typically never completely transform the tone and feeling of the song.

Yet that’s exactly what DJ Cummerbund has done in his latest YouTube upload. And he’s done it to one of the most classic upbeat songs of the ’90s: Smash Mouth’s All Star. It’s, well, definitely something. By slowing down the track, changing the tone, and adding a dramatic underlying piano chorus (à la Simon & Garfunkel’s The Sound of Silence), the song suddenly transforms from a fun, pump-up party jam to basically four minutes of intense life-questioning, soulful-sounding ballad.

Of course, for the perfect finishing touch to such a remix is to create the perfect music video for it. Using mostly visuals from the original All Star video, the DJ made some obvious changes to better reflect the tone of this remix. First of all, rather than the vibrant colors of the original video, it’s in a more subdued black and white. He strays from the original video by inserting some pretty conspicuous dramatic shots showing intense emotions between people just to bring home the emotional roller coaster he’s trying to elicit. Plus, he includes some pretty dark moments from otherwise happy films (as in, prepare the tissues because there’s a clip from the opening montage of Up and a moment from The Lion King… you can probably guess which.)

It could be that he’s just playing around and making this as a joke to make you laugh at seeing and hearing Smash Mouth in a way you’ve never even thought of before. Or, it could be that he really wants to show some of the more serious underlying tones of their lyrics.

Either way, watch the whole thing for full effect. But just know you’ll never again be able to listen to the lyrics, “I said ‘Yup,’ what a concept. I could use a little fuel myself and we could all use a little change,” without starting to really question some life decisions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=

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