Youtuber Bill McClintock's latest mash-up is a double-dose of 80s cheese as he sets Iron Maiden's The Trooper on a crash-course with Maniac, the iconic song from 80s-dance flick Flashdance. Amazingly, it works.
But then, considering McClintock's past projects have included chimerical creations featuring Hank Williams/Van Halen (Vank Williams), Aerosmith/Aretha Franklin (Aerotha Franklin) and Leo Sayer/Metallica (Leotallica) perhaps we shouldn't be too surprised.
Watch the video below.
We can forgive the fact that The Trooper's iconic riff is noticeably absent from the mix considering just how prominent Bruce Dickinson's vocal lines are in the song (and how bizarrely well they fit), though it does beg the question - were Maiden wrong to duck the synth? [no, they really weren't].
Originally released as part of the soundtrack for the teen dance movie Flashdance, Maniac became synonymous with the movie and has since been covered a number of times (including in 2008 by Greek power metal troupe Firewind) but became something of an albatross around the neck of its writer, Michael Sembello who found people expected him to write similar hits in future.
Elsewhere, The Trooper was the second single from Iron Maiden's seminal Piece Of Mind album, itself becoming an iconic track and spawning cover versions by everyone from Motorhead and Sentenced to Coheed and Cambria and Trivium.
Both Maniac and The Trooper were released in 1983, but while Maniac may have gained chart supremacy (topping the US Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks), The Trooper ultimately helped cement its songwriters as one of heavy metal's most iconic groups, still filling arenas nearly 40 years on from its release.
Iron Maiden headline Download Festival in 2022.
