Sam Smith and Kim Petras’s Unholy is one of the more unusual pop hits of 2022; it’s fair to say that it doesn’t sound quite like anything else on the radio right now.
Its quirkiness has been no barrier to success, though. The song has hit number one in both the US and the UK, plus multiple other countries around the world.
Now the folks at online DAW Soundation have broken the track down and rebuilt it. What’s more, they’ve created a sample pack that includes remakes of Unholy’s hyperpop percussion and bass sounds, and had a go at recreating the Gregorian choir sound that’s one of the song’s hallmarks.
There’s also some discussion around Unholy’s unusual music theory: it’s in C# but switches between Phrygian and Phrygian dominant scales. These are commonly used in Gregorian chants and Middle Eastern music respectively, and help to create Unholy’s dark, slightly foreboding sound.
You can read more on the Soundation website, where you can also access both the full project and the Beatmaker kit used for the remake.
