Review
Genre and Mood
Melody Gardot and Bakermat meet in Same To You - Bakermat Remix: a jazz singer’s soul song, remade by a Dutch producer whose music Wikipedia describes as a mix of dance, soul, jazz, funk, gospel and pop. This page files it under house, remix and soul, and as groovy and warm, a reading of where Bakermat takes the song rather than a description of each bar.
Song Summary
Same to You first appeared on Currency of Man, Gardot’s fourth studio album, released by Decca on 1 June 2015 and produced by Larry Klein. Gardot wrote it. The remix came out as a single on 22 July 2016, and its credits keep much of the original team: Klein as producer, Maxime Le Guil as recording engineer, Jerry Hey as horn arranger and three background singers, with Bakermat as remixer and, under his own name Lodewijk Fluttert, as programmer.
Musical Breakdown
No published review describes the remix part by part, so this review gives the frame rather than a map. The original’s elements are listed in the credits: Gardot’s lead and background vocals, the three backing singers, a horn arrangement. A house remix typically sets such parts over a new programmed beat and repeats and rearranges them for the dancefloor; listen for which of the original’s parts survive and how often they return.
Concepts in Focus
A remix reworks the parts of a recording, and here the distance is long: from a Larry Klein album that JazzTimes described as having meaty arrangements with plenty of horns and even a gospel choir, to a four-minute track by a producer known for melodic house. Compare Bakermat’s own later Bakermat – The River, also built from soul and gospel material.
The backing singers bring vocal harmony into the song. The album’s personnel list the Waters Sisters as its choir, and the remix’s credits name Maxine Waters Willard, Julia Waters Tillman and Clydene Jackson-Edwards as background vocalists behind Gardot; how much of their part the remix keeps is a good way to hear what Bakermat chose.
Artistic Context
Gardot, born in New Jersey in 1985, began writing songs as therapy after being struck by a car while cycling in Philadelphia at 19. Wikipedia describes Currency of Man as a shift toward blues and soul with themes of social awareness. Bakermat, born Lodewijk Fluttert in 1991, broke through in 2012 with Vandaag, built on a sample of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, and often plays with live musicians.
Impact and Reception
Currency of Man was nominated for the Grammy for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical, and Gardot performed Same to You on the BBC’s Later… with Jools Holland. The remix went on to the German compilation About: Berlin Vol: 15 in November 2016. Hear it after the album version, and listen for what moved.
