Great Job, Internet!: Justin Bieber sounds amazing when he's slowed down 800 percent

By Sean O'Neal | August 17, 2010 | 4:52pm

Music Features Music

Great Job, Internet!: Justin Bieber sounds amazing when he's slowed down 800 percent

You’ve seen it trumpeted in newspaper and magazine headlines, analyzed by new psychological studies, embodied in recent news stories, and even reflected in our very own comment threads: “Anger” dominates the national mood, and especially here in the dog’s-ass end of summer, people seem to be more pissed off than ever. What the savage beast needs is a little soothing music—and who better to provide it than the child who shall lead them, that Botticelli-with-bangs who paints with all the colors of the wind known as Justin Bieber?

And while we normally resort to mordant sarcasm when we talk about Bieber (another side effect of our abiding anger!), this time we actually sort of mean it: Someone figured out how to turn his “U Smile”—a tune that normally only contributes to those feelings of rage—into a soothing, ambient, 35-minute epic by borrowing a trick from Hans Zimmer and slowing it down 800 percent. Suddenly the otherwise innocuous piano ballad becomes a soaring, Sigur Rós-meets-Brian Eno-meets-Vangelis bliss-out. Download the MP3 here, get some headphones, and calm the fuck down as you’re bathed in the Bieber light. [HT to Gawker]

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Here’s the original song:

UPDATE: As someone pointed out in the comments below, a group called "Photon Wave Orchestra" has claimed this song as its own original work. The poster of this MP3, known as Shamantis, has already addressed these claims, saying, "I DO NOT KNOW WHO THESE GUYS ARE: http://photonwaveorchestra.bandcamp.com/ but they are claiming to be the original makers of this song. THIS IS FALSE. take my song and speed it up 8x if you don't believe me." Many Soundcloud users say they have put the original Bieber song into software like Audacity and Paulstretch and gotten the exact same results heard here. So the question now seems to be who did it first—Shamantis or "Photon Wave Orchestra," a supposed musical group whose sole output seems to be the above song, who claims to have posted the track on April 1 on its profile but whose RSS feed reveals that it really did so on August 16, and whose mysterious origins may be answered by some now-deleted 4chan posts—but there is apparently no question that this really is "U Smile" slowed down 800 percent. For once, something on the Internet appears to be genuine.

SECOND UPDATE: And now someone else has sped up Photon Wave Orchestra's "Echoes Across The Astral Wastelands."