Tiësto‘s takeover of the western world is already a decades-deep endeavor, but it looks as though he doesn’t plan on stopping there. The Dutch EDM icon has released the official music video for a Mandarin version of “Change Your World,” an original track from his Club Life Vol. 4 mix album that now features vocals by Mandopop sensation Jane Zhang instead of the original contributions by Nashville-based Morgan Karr.
The track – which was created as the official theme song for the Budweiser Storm Music Festival – features the same surging progressive house arrangement as the original, but with updated verses and choruses. As with most Asian pop music, a single English phrase in the chorus is preserved, anchoring the track to the tone of the original. The music video depicts a surrealist’s fantasy interspersed with clips of Tiësto and Zhang performing the song.
For the sake of comparison, the original “Change Your World” with Karr’s vocals is below:
Although many regions of East Asia have not taken to EDM as quickly as much of Europe and the Americas, many of its markets were exposed to it as early as the ’90s, when Lee Burridge helped launch Hong Kong’s underground club scene. While it’s great to see a major artist like Tiësto sharing the music with that part of the world, I have to wonder why he couldn’t have contributed an original track or at least an actual remix; EDM suffers from a reputation of being a culture of borrowed material, and releases like these do little to reverse that attitude.
Listen to Tiësto and Jane Zhang’s “Change Your World” above and let us know what you think of the reimagining in the comments section below.