∇
troperville

∇
tools

∇
toys

SubpagesMain
main index

Narrative

Genre

Media

Topical Tropes

Other Categories

TV Tropes Org
new edits
workshops
reviews
YKTTW
tweets
random
In The Style Of
Taking a work that's a member of a certain genre, and doing it just the same, except as a different genre. For example, taking a rap song and getting a barbershop quartet to sing it; or showing a comedy-adventure from the Sympathetic P.O.V. of the villain, making it a tragic drama; or just taking a page from a famous novel and adding in the stylistic quirks of a completely different writer.

Can be applied to any form of art that can be categorized.

Recycled IN SPACE! can be this, but usually isn't. Generally changes the meaning. For music, contrast with Suspiciously Similar Song, where the intention is to resemble the original as closely as possible while still avoiding copyright-breaking. This is one form of X Meets Y.

Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Music 
  • Homestar Runner probably has the silliest possible example: Two Fake Bands, each already a pastiche of a different genre (hair metal and alternative), doing this to each other's songs. Available for listening here; it has the "original" versions of the songs as well, for comparative purposes.
  • Every "Weird Al" Yankovic album (with the exceptions of his self-titled first album, and Even Worse, his fifth album) contains a polka Medley , doing snippets of these for many contemporary songs. These are basically his equivalent to Jeff Foxworthy's trademark "You Might Be A Redneck" bits; the audience feels cheated if they don't get one per album.
    • He also did "Bohemian Polka", the entirety of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" polka-fied.
    • Weird Al says that he tends to pick songs that sound better as polka tunes. He's right.
    • To add an additional layer, his polka style uses traditional instruments, but draws much of its presentation from the style of comedic orchestration found in such things as the works of Spike Jones. Common comedic elements in his polkas include the Minsky Pickup, the traditional vaudeville ending riff (does it have a name?), "Shave and a Haircut", and even a direct reference to Jones via the opening riff of his version of "Der Fuehrer's Face".
    • He also frequently writes pastiches or "style parodies" of specific bands, the most famous probably being his Devo parody/tribute, "Dare To Be Stupid", which Mark Mothersbaugh called, "the perfect Devo song". Mothersbaugh was interviewed for Weird Al's Behind The Music' special and said the song was "beautiful ... and I hate him for it, basically."
      • As further evidence, his online release Internet Leaks consists of one parody and four pastiches. While the exact inspiration for "Skipper Dan" has been debated (it's likely either Weezer or Fountains Of Wayne, possibly both), there's no doubt that "Craigslist" is The Doors (see below), "CNR" is The White Stripes, and "Ringtone" is Queen.
    • In June 2009, Al released his newest song, "Craigslist", which is a Doors pastiche. (Just to add verisimilitude, Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek plays on it.)
      • "Genius in France" is a pastiche of Frank Zappa. Frank's son Dweezil (who has spent the last few years touring the world playing his father's music with painstaking accuracy) provided a guitar solo and backing vocals.
      • Oh, there are way more examples. It's actually somewhat harder to find originals of his that aren't some sort of pastiche or tribute (and some are apparently cleverly hidden so that nobody but Al knows exactly which band he was going for). Here are some more:
      • "Mr. Popeil" = The B-52's, "Velvet Elvis" = The Police, "Dog Eat Dog" = Talking Heads, "Trigger Happy" = Jan And Dean, "You Make Me" = Oingo Boingo, "Everything You Know Is Wrong" = They Might Be Giants, "Pancreas" = Brian Wilson, "Frank's 2000" TV" = R.E.M., "Germs" = Nine Inch Nails... The list goes on.
    • A more occasional habit of his is to take an existing work and adapt it into a parody of another song. His most famous example is setting the theme of The Beverly Hillbillies to Dire Straits' "Money For Nothing". He's also set the theme of The Brady Bunch to "The Safety Dance", Green Eggs and Ham to U2's "Numb", and in more of a stretch, an ad for the board game Twister became a Beastie Boys song.
  • A popular trend around the Disney offices is to take classic songs from the Disney Animated Canon and redo them as pop rock. They're usually included as special features in Platinum/Diamond Edition DVDs.
  • A recurring segment on the Australian TV show The Money or the Gun (written by Andrew Denton) was the singing of Stairway to Heaven in various other styles, including Rolf Harris singing "Stairway to Heaven" in the style of "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport", and the version sung in the style of the Beatles by the Beatnix.
  • This was basically the entire purpose of Richard Cheese and Lounge Against The Machine, who perform pop, rock, metal, and rap hits in lounge-lizard style.
  • Paul Anka does the same thing, taking popular music (Eye of the Tiger, Mister Brightside, etc.) and doing it in a "lounge-lizard" style. But unlike Cheese, he's serious about it (covering Bon Jovi's "It's My Life", he even changes a lyric into a Shout Out to himself: "Like Frankie said, he did it 'My Way'").
  • Nouvelle Vague is a French band that does excellent bossanova covers of songs from the 80s — from Bauhaus' "Bela Lugosi's Dead" to The Clash's "Guns of Brixton".
    • The band's name, by the way, is a fairly brilliant Bilingual Bonus: "Nouvelle Vague" is French for "New Wave" (the genre of the original songs), and "Bossa Nova" is Portuguese for "New Wave" or "New Beat".
  • Madness recently did an album of ska/reggae covers of songs like "Lola" and "You Keep Me Hanging On".
  • Polka Floyd is a band that does polkafied covers of Pink Floyd.
  • Public radio program Performance Today has a weekly feature called "Piano Puzzler", in which composer Bruce Adolph would play an arrangement of a popular song in the style of a classical composer, and a listener on the phone had to guess both the song and the composer being imitated.
  • Dynamite Hack's folk-rock version of N.W.A.'s "Boyz N The Hood".
  • The East Coast folk group Modern Man do this in their bit "Inappropriate Song Styles", in which they demonstrate why Pavarotti should not sing Bob Dylan and vice versa, why rap groups shouldn't do Rodgers and Hammerstein, and why the Bee Gees should stay away from folk music.
  • Lore Sjöberg did Nine Inch Noëls, a medley of Nine Inch Nails songs to the tune of traditional Christmas music.
  • Tom Lehrer once did a version of "Clementine" done with each verse in a different style: Cole Porter, Italian opera, Beatnik, and Gilbert & Sullivan.
    • He's also done other songs in various styles, co-opting their lyrical formula as well as their musical ones. The Irish Ballad ("Rickety Tickety Tin") is probably the best example, capturing the often-morbid storytelling done in actual Irish ballads and setting it to very Irish music.
  • Before Portal came out, indie rocker Jonathan Coulton was perhaps best known for his acoustic rock cover of the Sir Mix-a-Lot classic "Baby Got Back".
  • Similarly, mphtower.com's Gilbert and Sullivan rendering of "Baby Got Back".
  • William Shatner has done a handful of So Bad, It's Good lounge covers of pop songs over the years, most famously Elton John's Rocket Man. Futurama took this to its natural extreme, when they got Shatner to parody himself by performing a spoken word version of Eminem's The Real Slim Shady. To anticipate your next question:
    Walter Koenig: How can you do a spoken word version of a rap song?
    Melllvar: He found a way.
  • Scissor Sisters released a disco cover of Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" in 2004, which got mixed reactions from Floyd fans — while some considered it a butchering of the work, others found that the disco beat fits the song's lyrics pretty well.
    • The members of Floyd themselves liked the version according to reports.
  • Alanis Morissette's slow, soulful version of the Black Eyed Peas' "My Humps".
  • Dread Zeppelin, a band that takes Led Zeppelin songs and rerecords them in reggae style (and no, we're not talking about "D'yer Mak'er" here). With an Elvis Impersonator in vocals - at times the songs would even mash-up Elvis and Led, i.e. "Heartbreaker (At The End Of Lonely Street)" ("Heartbreak Hotel"'s lyrics, "Heartbreaker"'s music).
  • The Puppini Sisters perform various pop songs such as The Smiths' "Panic" and Beyonce's "Crazy In Love" in the style of The Andrews Sisters.
  • Every cover performed by Type O Negative is a perfect example of this. The medley of The Beatles covers at the end of World Coming Down, in particular, must be heard to be believed.
  • California punk band Me First and the Gimme Gimmes has made their entire career out of only doing punk covers of... less-than-rockin' songs. Examples include R Kelly's "I Believe I Can Fly", "Tomorrow" from the musical Annie, and "Hava Nagila". Each of their albums has a different theme: Have a Ball is all '60s/'70s radio hits, Are a Drag is showtunes, Blow in the Wind is songs from the '60s, Take a Break is R&B, Love Their Country is country & western, and their live album, Ruin Jonny's Bar Mitzvah, was recorded at an actual bar mitzvah. Yeah.
    • Their cover of "The Rainbow Connection" was actually used in the end credits of Kermit's Swamp Years.
  • British comedian Bill Bailey's version of the "Hokey Cokey" done in the style of Kraftwerk, which has sadly been removed from YouTube.
  • Hayseed Dixie (say it out loud five times fast) and The Pigs both cover other genres in hillbilly/country style. Hayseed Dixie specializes in bluegrass versions of heavy metal and other harder rock genres; their first album, "A Hillbilly's Tribute to AC/DC" was entirely AC/DC covers — from which they drew their punning name.
    • They also have an album called Kiss My Grass. It's an entire album of covers of Kiss songs. Christine Sixteen manages to get even creepier.
  • Similarly, Luther Wright and the Wrongs did an entire country/bluegrass version of Pink Floyd's The Wall, entitled Rebuild The Wall. It is surprisingly good.
    • Poor Man's Whiskey did a similar version of Dark Side of the Moon, entitled Dark Side of the Moonshine. Also surprisingly good.
  • Would you believe Judas Priest did this to a Joan Baez song? They really did.
  • Devo were quite fond of this; the best-known example is probably their cover of Satisfaction.
  • Nina Gordon took the NWA song "Straight Outta Compton" and turned it into a coffee-house style soft rock song.
  • Much of what the people on Overclocked Remix do is take tunes from video games and do them in different styles.
  • The opera version of "Dragosta din Tei", AKA the Numa Numa song.
  • Moby's punk rock and country renditions of his own song "Porcelain" can be viewed here.
  • Yes has turned both Simon & Garfunkel's "America" and The Beatles' "Every Little Thing" into jammed out prog rock epics.
  • Ben Folds has a recurring live song, "Rock This Bitch", where he asks the audience genres or styles to play the same short song.
    • Folds himself did an excellent piano-ballad cover of "Bitches Ain't Shit".
  • Rockabye Baby offers rock songs by e.g. Radiohead, Metallica, Nine Inch Nails, The Cure and The Smashing Pumpkins as soothing (and oddly compelling) bedtime lullaby versions for babies.
  • Much of the music in Super Smash Bros. Brawl are classic Nintendo tunes done in different styles. For example, "Gourmet Race" from Kirby gets turned into a metal song.
    • The version of the Super Mario Bros. Underwater theme also gets an extreme makeover twice in one track. It goes from the original 8-Bit form, to a fully orchestrated version, to a bluegrass arrangement.
  • Social Distortion's punk rock cover of "Ring of Fire" (Johnny Cash).
    • German hard-rock band H-Blockx did a similar one, with a bit of ska thrown in, courtesy of guest star Doctor Ring-Ding.
  • Hard & Phirm's "Rodeohead" is a medley of Radiohead songs, performed in a country style. No, seriously.
  • Señor Coconut is an artist who performs covers of '80s electronica, such as the works of Kraftwerk and Yellow Magic Orchestra, in traditional Latin American styles.
    • And you should hear his samba version of Deep Purple's "Smoke On The Water" — it's glorious!
  • Animetal is a Japanese heavy metal band who perform heavy metal covers of classic and not-so-classic anime and tokusatsu theme songs.
  • The Marilyn Manson version of "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)".
    • And "Tainted Love".
    • And "I Put A Spell On You," and "This is Halloween." He seems to have a fondness for this.
  • The unplugged Korn cover of Radiohead's "Creep".
  • Johnny Cash's famous cover of Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt" as a stripped down country song.
    • It's actually a very straight cover, barely introducing stylistic changes (it's pretty much how a regular acoustic performance by Reznor would sound).
    • Another Johnny Cash example is his cover of Soundgarden's "Rusty Cage," putting a country/folk spin on a hard rock/grunge song.
  • Death Metal group Ten Masked Men do nothing but pop songs. Their version of "Blue" has to be heard to be believed.
  • Ozzy Osbourne and Dweezil Zappa did a metal cover of the Bee Gees' hit song "Staying Alive", which you can view here.
  • Coal Chamber and Ozzy Osbourne did a cover of "Shock The Monkey" for the "Chamber Music" album.
  • Disturbed recorded a version of "Land of Confusion" in their signature style.
  • Sonata Arctica did a cover of "Wind Beneath My Wings" in their power metal style.
  • Gregorian is a group that, well, does faux-Gregorian Chant style covers. Amongst their re-works are "Engel" by Rammstein and Belinda Carlisle's "Heaven Is A Place On Earth".
    • Can't forget their version of REM's "Losing My Religion", either.
    • Similarly, a group calling itself The Benzedrine Monks of Santo Domonica released a CD called "Chantmania" which redid a number of pop and rock songs as Gregorian chant, among them "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana.
  • While we're on the subject, Rammstein themselves did a cover of The Ramones' Pet Sematary and Stripped by Depeche Mode. Odd, but they work.
  • The CD When Pigs Fly is composed entirely of songs sung by people you'd never expect, and many of them hit this trope flat on the head — like Devo's version of CSNY's "Ohio", "Shock The Monkey" by Don Ho, Herman's Hermits doing Billy Idol's "White Wedding" and the Oak Ridge Boys doing "Carry On Wayward Son". (And don't miss Lesley "It's My Party And I'll Cry If I Want To" Gore singing "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap", if only for the wonderful cognitive dissonance it induces.)
  • Canadian punk rock group The Diodes recorded a cover of the Cyrkle's "Red Rubber Ball" (written by Paul Simon) for their 1977 debut album. According to liner notes on a later album, they did so because of Paul Simon's vocal disapproval of punk rock.
  • Doowop group Big Daddy is known for redoing songs from the 1960s onwards in the style of specific other songs from the 1950s. Perhaps the epitome of this would be their 1992 CD Sgt. Pepper's, in which they completely recreate The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1950s musical styles. Some examples of their work:
    • "With A Little Help From My Friends" in the style of Johnny Mathis' "Misty"
    • "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" in the style of Jerry Lee Lewis' "Great Balls of Fire"
    • "Being For The Benefit of Mr. Kite" in the style of Freddie "Boom-Boom" Cannon's "Palisades Park"
    • "When I'm Sixty-four" in the style of Billy Ward and His Dominoes' "Sixty-Minute Man"
    • "A Day in the Life" in the style of Buddy Holly (cuing off the "Oh boy" refrain), ending with a plane crash sound effect.
    • From their first (LP only) album: "Ebony and Ivory" by Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis
    • From a different CD, Dire Straits' "Money For Nothing" in the style of "Sixteen Tons"
  • The Estonian early music group Rondellus has a CD, Sabbatum, which consists entirely of Black Sabbath songs sung in various medieval styles. In Latin! For example, here's "Verres Militares".
  • Tori Amos performed a cover of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit," and released Strange Little Girls, a cover album of songs such as Slayer's "Raining Blood" and Eminem's "'97 Bonnie and Clyde" in her signature style of batshit crazy.
    • Tori is known to cover anything in her signature style of batshit crazy. She covered Baby One More Time for crying out loud!
  • Dub Side of the Moon is a dub reggae cover of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon.
    • Radiodread is Easy Star All-Stars' follow-up, a dub reggae treatment of Radiohead's OK Computer.
  • How can anyone forget Travis's famous cover of Britney Spears' Hit Me Baby One More Time?
  • 8-bit remixes have become something of a YouTube fad. You have stuff like 8-bit Halo theme, at least two 8-bit versions of Motteke! Sailor Fuku, 8-bit Through The Fire And Flames... As with all fan-made things, some are better than others.
  • Klaus Nomi's cover of "The Twist," also listed in the Paranoia Fuel article.
  • The Kuricorder Quartet, the group behind the Azumanga Daioh soundtrack, did an entire album of cover songs in the exact same style used for that soundtrack. Highlights include the Ultra Seven theme, "Bohemian Rhapsody", and the Imperial March from Star Wars. Alas, it's only available as a pricey Japanese import, but at least you can hear samples.
  • Snoop Dogg's "Gin and Juice" as done by The Gourds in Country Western/Bluegrass style.
  • The band Frisky and Mannish make their act on this basis, including a "cheeky cockney" version of Pussycat Dolls' song "Beep"
  • Another YouTube fad is redoing music in G Major, which lends a pseudo-demonic air. Among the many examples are perennial favourites-or-not Scaryroll (Never Gonna Give You Up), You Are A Pirate from Lazy Town and Satan Knows (aka God Knows from The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya).
  • Heigh-Ho! Mozart has tunes from the Disney Animated Canon redone in the style of famous composers of classical music.
    • There's also Mozart TV, with various TV show themes treated in the same manner. You might recognize the X-Files theme in the style of Hovhannes as background music in some of Rocketboom's episodes.
  • The 2005 compilation album Policia!: A Tribute to The Police has various contemporary bands performing songs by The Police in their own styles. Some are good, some not so much, and some are just odd.
  • Beatallica: Beatle songs in the style of Metallica. Including Hey Dude and Blood is All You Need.
  • Guns N' Roses covered Bob Dylan's song "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," as well as Paul McCartney's "Live and Let Die".
    • Axl Rose says that Sweet Child of Mine was intended to be In The Style Of Lynyrd Skynyrd.
  • Roy Zimmerman's track What If The Beatles Were Irish? is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. And hilarious.
  • Butthole Surfers have actually done this to one of their own songs: "Something" (not the Beatles song) originally appeared on their first EP in their typical noise-punk style, then was unexpectedly revisited 7 years later and turned into a melodic Shoe Gazing song (one that was suspiciously similar to The Jesus and Mary Chain's "Never Understand" in fact).
  • The Moog Cookbook covered rock songs entirely on moog synthesizers, in an Affectionate Parody of the kitschy moog cover records of the 70's, tackling 90's alternative rock with their self-titled album and classic rock staples on the followup Ye Olde Space Bande. Notably, their version of Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun" gets a bossa nova arrangement very reminiscent of "The Girl From Ipanema".
  • Pick any cover song by The Residents. Any of them.
  • Ray Stevens had a big hit with a country/bluegrass version of the jazz standard "Misty", and later covered Sammi Smith's "Help Me Make It Through the Night" in the style of Spike Jones.
    • He also did a bluegrass cover of "Bad". Yes, the Michael Jackson song.
  • Blind Guardian seems to enjoy doing metal covers of old pop songs, including "Surfin' USA", "Mr. Sandman," and "Dream A Little Dream of Me."
  • German comedy band Excrementory Grindfuckers does it frequently by covering many popular songs like "The Final Countdown" and "Stayin' Alive," grindcore style. Interestingly enough, their cover of Metallica's "Enter Sandman" sounds entirely blues.
  • All of Richard Thompson's self-released live album 1000 Years of Popular Music is him doing songs ranging from 11th century ballads to Prince tunes in his own unique folk-rock style (the concept of the album is Exactly What It Says on the Tin, a sampling of the prior 1000 years of song), but for the coup de grace he introduces "Marry, Ageyn Hic Hev Donne Yt," supposedly a "medieval ballad from Brittany" but actually a medieval-styled version of "Oops, I Did It Again", complete with lyrics in Old English.
  • Dolly Parton and Nickel Creek collaborated on a bluegrass cover of Collective Soul's "Shine". Many accolades ensued.
    • Parton also released a bluegrass cover of Stairway to Heaven.
  • On their Aenima album, Tool takes the guitar riffs from their own song "Jimmy", plays them on a cheesy, ballpark-esque organ, and uses it as the "Intermission" that segues directly into the original song.
  • Jenny Owen Young's folk-rock version of Nelly's "Hot In Herre".
  • Joey + Rory did a bluegrass version of "Free Bird".
  • Big & Rich did a straight-up country cover of AC/DC's "You Shook Me All Night Long".
  • Pat Boone's 1997 album, In a Metal Mood: No More Mr. Nice Guy, in which he performed various hard rock and metal songs big band/jazz style. One of his songs, Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train", became the theme song for The Osbournes.
  • The Mike Flowers Pops, a tongue-in-cheek easy listening/lounge revival group, released a cover of Oasis' "Wonderwall", which actually reached #2 in the UK Singles Charts months after the Oasis version did the same. A BBC DJ jokingly announced it as the original version when it was first released, and subsequently Noel Gallagher was asked by a record executive if he'd actually written it. They have also done similar covers of The Doors, The Velvet Underground, and Bjork.
  • Dwight Yoakam has done this a lot, most notably with a rockabilly cover of "I Want You to Want Me" and alt-country take on "Suspicious Minds".
  • Garth Brooks re-wrote Aerosmith's "Fever" as a country-rock song about a rodeo star. He also had hits with countrified versions of two Billy Joel songs: "Shameless" and "To Make You Feel My Love", the latter of which was written by Bob Dylan.
  • The Kentucky Headhunters have been doing this for ages. Their first three albums included edgy, country-rock versions of Bill Monroe songs (as well as a cover of Don Gibson's late 1950s hit "Oh Lonesome Me"), as well as a Beatles cover ("You've Got to Hide Your Love Away"). Later on, they released a covers album that included Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Roger Miller, Bob Dylan, and the Beatles, all done just as amped-up as their early work.
  • On The Muppet Show, the show's band, Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem rendered Chopin's Polonaise in A flat major... in funk, much to the dismay of Sam the Eagle.
    KERMIT: You can't beat the classics; you can only destroy 'em.
  • Reel Big Fish have a schtick of playing their own song "Suburban Rhythm" live, but multiple times in many different styles, such as punk rock, country, garage rock, death metal, emo, old school rap and disco.
    • Funnily enough the 'country' mosh pit is just about the most riotous of the lot.
    • They also did a euro-dance-style version of "Gigantic" for a The Pixies tribute album.
  • Mark Kozelek does this for every non-original song he touches. He released a solo EP of deconstructed acoustic AC/DC covers, and his band Sun Kil Moon released an entire * album* of acoustic Modest Mouse covers. Red House Painters did the same with "Silly Love Songs", "I Am A Rock", and The Cars' "All Mixed Up".
  • Great Big Sea (a Canadian East Coast band who play a cross between pop and traditional Newfoundland songs) redid R.E.M's "It's The End of the World as We Know It And I Feel Fine" in a super-fast-paced, upbeat folk style. It's really good.
  • Cadillac Sky's Bluegrass version of Green Day's "Basket Case"
  • Jagpanzer's power metal cover of Gordon Lightfoot's "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald".
  • Ace Combat uses the Agnus Dei as BGM in the final mission of its fourth game, Shattered Skies, but the "Megalith" mix is different enough that you have to strain your ears to recognise it. "Zero" from Belkan War also reused the lyrics from the eponymous song of Unsung War, but given that the former re-rendered the latter with Hispanic guitar and castanets, it's a bit hard to tell.
  • The Boss Hoss. Famous for country and western covers of various songs, among them Eminem's "Without Me", Outkast's "Hey Ya" and The Cardigans' "My Favorite Game".
  • Beatles tribute band the Fab Four have issued a couple of Christmas albums, in which they perform popular carols in a Beatlesque manner.
    • Sweden's Rubber Band also did the "Christmas a la Beatles" thing with their 1996 release Christmas! The Beatmas.
  • Mark Ronson (of Amy Winehouse producer fame) released "Version" comprising various pop covers in his distinctive brass-led arrangements.
  • Thin Lizzy and, subsequently, Metallica covered the traditional Irish folk song, "Whiskey in the Jar."
  • White Stripes performed the traditional English-Scots ballad "Black Jack Davey."
  • A number of Celtic Punk groups — Pogues, Dropkick Murphys, etc. — perform their share of traditional Irish folk music in a punk style.
  • Uncle Tupelo recorded at least two versions of The Stooges' "I Wanna Be Your Dog" — a country/punk version and a folk version.
  • Anya Marina's cover of T.I.'s "Whatever you Like" is performed in her typical style, that of a singer songwriter, creating hilarious levels of Lyrical Dissonance when one factors in the original's blatant Intercourse with You lyrics.
  • The Spiderman theme song got reworked a few times, by Joe Perry of Aerosmith for the 1994 cartoon, the band as a whole for The Movie (it's on the soundtrack), The Distillers for the game based on the movie sequel, The Ramones for an album of alternative covers of Saturday Morning Cartoon theme songs, and by Michael Bublé for fun.
  • American heavy metal band Prong recorded a heavy metal version of The Doors' "Strange Days" for Strange Days movie, with Ray Manzarek (Doors' keyboardist) on keyboard.
  • Would you believe that there's a techno cover of Fear of the Dark? And that it's actually good?
  • J. S. Bach had such a distinctive style that a common exam question for high school music students is: here is a totally random melody. Orchestrate it in the style of J.S. Bach.
  • Robert Newman had a routine where Robert Smith of The Cure tried to sing various cheerful songs, all of which came out as Girlfriend in a Coma style dirges.
  • Sepultura's cover of Public Enemy's "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos. There are covers of "Angel", "Mountain Song", and "Bullet the Blue Sky" on the same EP, Revolusongs.
  • An Elvis Presley impersonator named "The King" recorded several albums with song by other bands and artists, usually with the main criteria being that the original singer also had to be dead. such as Nirvana's "Come as You Are" and Queen's "Crazy Little Thing Called Love". The latter song was already an homage to 1950s Rock 'n' Roll in its original version, but the King version Elvis-i-fied it even more.
  • Four German comedians perform as a Queen tribute "band" named "Burger Queen", with very... unique interpretations of their songs, such as a Bruce Springsteen version of "Hammer to Fall" (including a brief "Born in the UK" outro), a reggae version of "Crazy Little Thing Called Love", a country version of "Fat Bottomed Girls", a polka version of "We Will Rock You", a bellydance version of "Mustapha" and an AC/DC version of "I Want to Break Free" (using the bassline of "Under Pressure").
  • The Shins' version of The Postal Service's "We Will Become Silhouettes".
  • Matthew's Celebrity Pixies Tribute is a collection of Pixies covers done by one person in the style of various unlikely artists, such as Prince, The Bee Gees, and The Beach Boys. The results are generally more silly than convincing, but apparently the Jimi Hendrix version of "Vamos" had a few people fooled up until it quoted The Simpsons theme during the solo.
  • Merry Gear Solid 2 uses various backings made up of Christmas songs In The Style Of Metal Gear songs:
    • "Sleigh Drive" is a cover of "Sleigh Ride" in the style of "Old Snake" from Metal Gear Solid 4.
    • "Jungle Bells" is a cover of "Jingle Bells" in the style of "Caution (Jungle)" from Metal Gear Solid 3.
    • "You Gave My Position Away" is a cover of "Last Christmas You Gave Me Your Heart" in the style of Intruder 3 from Metal Gear Solid.
  • The Alex Skolnick Trio primarily performs jazz versions of hard rock and heavy metal songs.
  • Slaughter of the Bluegrass performs country/bluegrass covers of Melodic Death Metal songs
  • The Baseballs is a German group that does 50s rockabilly covers of modern pop songs. Really excellent 50s rockabilly covers of modern pop songs.
  • Toots and the Maytals did a reggae verson of John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads", even substituting "West Jamaica" for "West Virginia".
    • They may also be responsible for "Jamaican In New York", which surely needs no explanation.
  • The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain have performed "God Save The Queen" by the Sex Pistols at least once.
  • Bim Skala Bim once did a ska version of Pink Floyd's "Brain Damage" (aka "Dark Side Of The Moon").
  • Here is a video of Swedish a cappella band The Real Group singing a couple songs in unrelated styles: "Yesterday" as a samba, and the operatic version of "Take The "A" Train". Even better, they are evidently improvising these on the spot.
  • Adrian Edmondson's act The Bad Shepherds is based on the idea of playing punk songs with folk arrangements. It's played totally seriously and surprisingly well.
  • Mindless Self Indulgence has a speed metal version of Rush's "Tom Sawyer", that's barely more than half the running time of the original, but still a complete cover.
  • Gerry Rafferty's "Baker Street", noted for its sax lines (a favorite of Lisa Simpson's), has been redone a few times in different styles, usually without a saxophone. The Foo Fighters version uses an electric guitar in place of the sax, with a bass guitar replacing the "whistling" synthesizer opening/bridge.
  • Each of Edward Ballantine's variations for piano on "Mary Had A Little Lamb" was written in the style of a different famous composer.
  • The entire purpose of power metal supergroup Northern Kings, who cover mostly 80s pop songs, but a range of other material, in power metal style.
  • Amanda Palmer Performs the Popular Hits of Radiohead on her Magical Ukelele, which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
  • Todd Rundgren did this with his own songs on the album With a Twist, which offered bossa nova tiki lounge versions of his most familiar hits.
  • Patti Smith has a cover of "Smells Like Teen Spirit". With banjos.
  • Apocalyptica is a heavy-metal cello quartet whose first album consists entirely of all-cello Metallica covers. Their second album also included cello covers of Faith No More, Sepultura, and Pantera. After this, they moved on to focusing on original material.
  • Trance duo Mythos 'n DJ Cosmo did this with several tunes, including "Heart of The Ocean" (the Titanic theme tune), Real Life's "Send Me an Angel", and "Unchained Melody" from Unchained.
  • DJ Sakin & Friends's trance rendition of the Braveheart theme.
  • The South African rock band Seether did a heavy metal cover of George Michael's "Careless Whisper".
  • Pet Shop Boys did dance-pop covers of such things as the slow ballad "Always On My Mind", the very much rock "Where The Streets Have No Name" by U2 (medleyed with "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You" by Frankie Valli), "Somewhere" from West Side Story, and the Madness ska track "My Girl". And then, just for fun, they did a swing version of their own hit "Can You Forgive Her?".
  • Max Raabe is a German singer who, with his orchestra, remake pop songs to sound like 1920's Weimar Republic Jazz. Covers include "Lucky" by Britney Spears, "Kiss" by Prince, and "Sex Bomb" by Tom Jones.
  • Liquid 360 turned Erasure's mellow synthpop track "Chains of Love" into a bouncy Euro-house tune.
  • Front Line Assembly's Darker and Edgier take on Madonna's Justify My Love, featuring Kristy Thirsk of FLA's side project Delerium.
  • The Talking Heads song "The Overload" was an attempt to imitate the style of Joy Division. However, none of the members had heard any of Joy Division's music; they were basing it on how they thought they might sound based on descriptions in the press. Because "The Overload" isn't a Joy Division song, it's not strictly this trope, but it's very close.
  • Friday the way MeatLoaf or Bob Dylan might have done it.
  • YouTube user CakeJarey played this trope with Final Fantasy songs... in the style of other Final Fantasy games. Now, given the series' usual pattern, what could the result be? Still awesome.
  • Clara Moroni, better known for Eurobeat, recently did a metal cover of A-ha's "Take on Me".
  • Dudley Moore did "Little Miss Muffet" as Benjamin Britten would have composed it for Peter Pears to sing, and, on Not Only But Also, Tom Jones songs in a classical style.
  • Rap Is A Man's Soul, better known as "That rap from Gurren Lagann that goes 'Row Row Fight the Pow-wah!'" gets a couple of versions throughout the series. There exists a heavy fanfare version, a sadder, somewhat contemplative version, and perhaps most memorably, an epic opera version whereupon Dies Irae is sung as a One-Woman Wail.
  • As mentioned above, Paul And Storm, formerly part of the a cappella quartet DaVinci's Notebook, did a medley of various hip-hop songs in barbershop style. They called it Hip-Shop.
    • Prior to their split, DaVinci's Notebook also had a medley of heavy metal songs in barbershop style called Metal Shop.
  • The Aquabats! did a cover of Operation Ivy's "Knowledge" in the style of an acoustic campfire singalong (complete with backup vocals imitating little kids) for a tribute album. It may now be Hilarious in Hindsight since much later one of their members would co-create Yo Gabba Gabba.
  • Beck has had fun doing this to his own songs a few times: "Burro" is "Jackass" in the style of mariachi (complete with Spanish lyrics), "Saxx Laws (Night Flight to Ojai)" is "Sexx Laws" in the style of Kenny G, and "MTV Makes Me Wanna Smoke Crack (Lounge Version)" is self-explanatory.
  • The Ramonetures are a band that covers Punk Rock songs in the style of instrumental Surf Rock (their name being a mashup of The Ramones and The Ventures, of course). Their self-titled first album covered The Ramones, while their second, Johny Walk Don't Run Paulene, covered X. Johny Walk Don't Run Paulene even has contributions by X members Billy Zoom and D.J. Bonebrake.
  • Puffy Ami Yumi did this a LOT on their early albums, thanks to the influence of producer Andy Sturmer. "Asia no Junshin" is an homage to Electric Light Orchestra, "Kore Ga Watashi no Ikiru Michi" does The Beatles, "Jet Keisatsu" is The Who, "Tokyo Nights" is The Buggles, and more.
  • A Hawk and a Hacksaw did a particularly obtuse version: they took "Foni Tu Argile", a Greek Rembetika song (i.e. traditionally performed on bouzouki and other string instruments), and recorded it as an accordion-and-brass ensemble.
  • Orbital wanted a remix of "Style" (a song originally performed almost entirely on a Stylophone synthesizer) by Stereolab, in their unique style. When they couldn't get ahold of Stereolab in time, Orbital just did a Stereolab-esque remix themselves (which they named "New Style").
  • An amateur cover of A Flock Of Seagulls' "I Ran (So Far Away)" in the style of American Recordings-era Johnny Cash has been making the YouTube rounds. As already mentioned, Johnny Cash himself has done this sort of thing before, so it's been mistaken for the real thing a few times.
  • Iron Horse are a bluegrass band who have put out a couple of albums of original material, but are mainly known for their Cover Albums - they have two albums of bluegrass Metallica covers, as well as albums that take on Modest Mouse, Ozzy Osbourne (including a few Ozzy-era Black Sabbath songs), and Guns N' Roses.
  • The English Beat did a lyrically dissonant ska cover of The Miracles' "Tears of a Clown".
  • Similar to the Tom Lehrer example above, Victor Borge did "Happy Birthday" in the style of... well, pretty much every serious composer.
  • Stacks Of Wax and Nicolas Wells have turned Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe" from modern pop to 70's disco.
  • Jimmy Cliff's album Rebirth included reggae versions of "Guns Of Brixton" by The Clash and "Ruby Soho" by Rancid. Though it could be considered taking things full circle, since both are punk songs but were clearly influenced by reggae to begin with. Rancid's Tim Armstrong actually produced the album.
  • The Decemberists' "Down By The Water" (on 2011's The King Is Dead) was stated by frontman Colin Meloy to be a tribute to the style of R.E.M., and it shows: it sounds exactly like what you expect the Decemberists doing an R.E.M. song would sound like. It helps that Meloy and Michael Stipe have a shared love of cryptic lyrics (albeit for different reasons—Meloy is a big fan of Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness, while Stipe is just cryptic).

    Anime & Manga 
  • Pluto is Astro Boy in the style of Monster. Yes, really. And, if that weren't enough, it's actually really good.
  • An omake chapter of the Keroro Gunso manga shows the series as a chapter of Monster. The Keronians are somehow even sillier-looking when drawn in the style of Naoki Urasawa.
  • The Hungarian-American composer/paedogogue Denes Agay did a series of variations on "Happy Bithday" in the style of various composers. He wasn't the only one to do so, but he deliberately wrote it at the upper beginner/ early intermediate level so ids taking piano lessons can learn it for a parent's/grandparent's/friend's birthday.

    Comics 
  • R. Sikoryak's Masterpiece Comics is a collection of famous works of literature in the style of classic newspaper comics, including Kafa's Metamorphosis in the style of Peanuts, Wuthering Heights in the style of Tales from the Crypt, an abridged version of Waiting For Godot staring Beavis And Butthead, and other weirdness.
  • The Great Comic Strip Switcheroo of April 1, 1997 was this. Forty-six nationally syndicated comic strip artists traded strips for a day, so that you had, for example, Bill Keane doing Dilbert in his own style and Scott Adams doing the same for Family Circus.

    Fan Works 

    Film 
  • Fan Vid "trailers" for movies that make them out to be an entirely different genre have become popular lately. Such works have a home on the Web at The Trailer Mash.
  • A hybrid film-music example appears in one scene of Amadeus, in which Mozart, as a party entertainment, plays "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" in the styles of various composers suggested by onlookers, with a humiliating Take That at Salieri.
    • Victor Borge must have seen that play.
    • Mozart did, in fact, write a series of piano variations on the tune of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," though the words we know hadn't been written yet. Don't remember if they're meant to be imitating specific composers, or just different musical styles.
      • Just a standard set of Mozart variations on a theme. "Standard" for Mozart being "Masterwork" for anyone else, but there you have it.
      • It did have lyrics, but different ones. It's a Christmas song in German.
  • At the end of The Hangover, a soft rock band at a wedding does a cover of 50 Cent's "Candy Shop."
  • The surrealist Bob Dylan biopic I'm Not There uses five actors (and one actress) to portray different characters inspired by Dylan's ever-changing persona, each of whom is in a separate storyline shot in a different, sometimes self-consciously imitative style:
  • Does anyone notice that the second opening song that accompanies "Bella Notte" in the intro to Lady and the Tramp ("Peace on Earth") sounds like a harmony for "Silent Night" by Joseph Mohr and Franz Xaver Gruber?
  • The Simpsons movie has Green Day perform the theme music... um... a capella? Or would that be considered in the style of Beavis And Butthead?

    Literature 

    Live Action TV 
  • Kamen Rider Den-O's "Double-Action" has seven different versions, each in a different musical style; Eurobeat, ska, enka, hip-hop, pop music, death rock, piano instrumental, Arabian-sounding and a remix for the Reunion Show. One can only wonder what "Double-Action Plat Form" might have been like...
    • Not to mention the remixes of the show's opening "Climax Jump" centered around each of the Imagin — Momotaros gets rock, Urataros gets ska, Kintaros gets enka, and Ryutaros gets hip-hop, the last of which is actually used in show when Ryuta is busting moves.
  • A regular feature of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, in which the genres would be suggested by the audience, immediately before (or during) the skit.
  • A regular feature of Shooting Stars, in which Vic Reeves would sing a song in the "Club Style", to be guessed by the panellists. The resulting lyrics would be unintelligible, and only slightly less so when sung in the "correct" manner.
  • Not exactly this, but Jeopardy! occasionally has a category of song lyrics, which are read in regular speaking fashion by Alex Trebek or Johnny Gilbert. It's harder than you'd think.
  • Bill Bailey delivered a (since removed from youtube) classic pub gag in the style of Geoffrey Chaucer.
  • In early seasons of Saturday Night Live (not to be confused with Howard Cosell's failed show of the same name), Bill Murray would play "Nick Silver", a lounge singer who would 'loungify' anything - even the theme to Star Wars , making up lyrics if there were none.
  • On Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, Fallon as Neil Young covered The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air's theme song as a moody travel song.

    Magazines 
  • Amiga Power had frequent sections called 'In The Style Of', normally depicting Amiga games in the style of other Amiga games.
  • New York magazine used to have competitions for the readers which often featured this trope. One famous example asked the readers to retell a joke (about a kangaroo in a bar) in the style of a famous writer. Contributions included Poe's "The Raven" ("At these prices? Nevermore.") and Ingmar Bergman ("The action is set in a bar or any spiritual wasteland. The bartender is underlining in a copy of Hegel when a kangaroo enters ...") And then there was the Henny Youngman version, which simply retold the original joke provided by the competition editor, word-for-word.
  • In Mad magazine #289 (September 1989), an article wondered how the "waiter, there's a fly in my soup" joke would sound as told by different stand-ups popular at the time. The writer nailed the styles of David Letterman, Sam Kinison, George Carlin, Robin Williams, and others. A similar article appeared twenty years later (#489, May 2008).

    Radio 
  • I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, as well as having its One Song to the Tune of Another round, has also taken various topics and performed them in the style of various types of music (e.g. blues, calypso, even madrigals). They've also taken songs and performed them as a duet, with one team member singing normally and the other playing a role and commenting on the action. For example:
    Barry (as Lee Marvin): #I was born under a wand'ring star#
    Graeme (as his hairdresser): No! I was born under a wand'ring star!
    Barry: #Wheels are made for rolling#
    Graeme: Mules are made to pack, always pop a pair in me suitcase...
    • There's also a rarer round in which they sing a singer's song in the style of "his distant relative", with the same surname. For example, Louis Armstrong's What A Wonderful World in the style of Neil Armstrong:
    Barry: I see trees of green (mike scratch) red roses too (beep) I see them bloom (mike scratch) loving you (beep) and I think to myself, what a wonderful moon...
    • There's also the round Stars In Their Ears, where one panellist sings a song in the style of a celebrity. Willie Rushton once sang a song in the style of Eartha Kitt, mixing in snatches of "Santa Baby" and an impression of Orson Welles.
  • Radio station jingles are often designed to resemble the music played on the stations they're designed for. While sometimes the similarities are more vague, there are other times when a specific jingle is obviously inspired by a particular song or artist. For example, in 1964, PAMS Productions produced a series of jingles for New York's WABC based on Beatles songs, and JAM Creative Productions would later produce some of Beatlesque cuts as part of their 1987 "Rockin' For America" series for WLS in Chicago (which also features a cut with that lyric based on James Brown's "Living In America").

    Tabletop Games 

    Theater 
  • There exists a one-act play entitled De-LEAR-ium which replays the opening scene of Shakespeare's King Lear multiple times — the first time as written, and each subsequent time in the style of an entirely different work or genre, including Star Wars (featuring the evil Kingth Learder) and The Rocky Horror Picture Show (with Lear as Frank N. Furter, and Gloucester and Cordelia as Brad and Janet).
  • The play American Ma(u)l (sic). The show opens on Thomas Jefferson's plantation, with all of his slaves at work in the fields, singing a mournful-sounding work song... and after a moment, it becomes apparent that what they're singing is actually a re-do of Nelly's "Hot In Here".
  • The Musical of Musicals takes a classic theatre plot (a woman can't pay her rent) and presents it in the styles of Rogers & Hammerstein, Stephen Sondheim, Jerry Herman, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Kander & Ebb.
  • Two Gentlemen Of Lebowski can be briefly summarised as The Big Lebowski in the style of William Shakespeare.

    Video Games 
  • Bigfoot from MapleStory sounds quite a bit like Kevin Schilder's work from the Heretic and Hexen games. This would count as a Jimmy Hart Version except that while it fits the style of Schilder's music, it does not seem to sound like any specific song.
  • Pursuit of Truth from Halo 2 is more or less Leela from Marathon (Bungie's previous FPS) rearranged in the style of Kraftwerk's The Robots.
  • At the very end of the credits for Syndicate (2012), you hear an all-too-short jazz take on the theme.
  • The Super Mario Bros series has had tunes from past games remade in various styles over the years, both within and outside of the games. The well-known overworld theme from the original NES Super Mario Bros has gotten the most attention, including an "a capella" version made with synthesized "voices" for Super Mario Sunshine (which would subsequently be covered by actual a capella singing groups).
  • A side effect of the "tears" in space-time in Bioshock Infinite is Columbians picking up on songs from the future and writing their own versions. This leads to stuff like a ragtime version of "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" by Tears for Fears and a barbershop quartet singing an a capella rendition of "God Only Knows" by The Beach Boys.

    Webcomics 

    Web Original 

Ink Stain AdaptationDerivative WorksInspired By
Instrument of MurderMusic TropesIsn't It Ironic
Idiosyncratic Album ThemingAlbums IndexLive Album
new edits
workshops
edit page
view source
random
TV Tropes by TV Tropes Foundation, LLC is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org.
Privacy Policy
145742
0