‘Green Onions’ by Booker T & The MGs is one of the greatest instrumental tracks of all time and it turned 60 last year. Ever since the pandemic, anniversary plans have become somewhat “elastic”, so it is only now that Rhino Records, the catalogue arm of Warner Music Group, is marking this anniversary with a digital recalibration of the track.
Working with AR music app Minibeats, Rhino is allowing users to remix the song – not just a standard remix but rather via a series of Snapchat lenses.
They can turn their heads, should they wish to, into a green onion (or a “scallion”, depending on where you are from) and by dancing they can trigger the organ part from the track. Or the users can put their face in the centre of a spinning vinyl record and use their mouths to play the music (the results of which are, frankly, terrifying).
Minibeats has already worked with acts like LP Giobbi and San Holo, but this is the first real use case of its technology around a deep catalogue track.
The whole point of it is to offer up something weird and fun that younger listeners will want to create and share with their friends. In that regard, creating a Snapchat lens feels more interesting and a bit different from just doing, for example, a TikTok dance challenge.
Yet we are left with a nagging worry that a presumption is starting to emerge in marketing whereby old music can only ever be introduced to younger listeners as part of some sort of “fun” gimmick. It risks talking down to the audience and also belittling the music they are supposed to be celebrating.
No one wants a non-negotiable stony faced reverence in regard to classic music from decades ago, but equally over-emphasising the frivolous and the superficial risks prioritising short-term viral benefits at the expense of the long-term value of the catalogue tracks in question.
Maybe we are being po-faced, old and humourless, but playing everything for “LOLs” – and assuming that this is all younger audiences want – is not always the best route to take and it becomes a catalogue marketing Pyrrhic victory.
