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Lyrical Dissonance
She got a new apartment out on the escarpment
And in her glove compartment are my songs
She hasn't even heard them since she found out what the words meant
She decided she preferred them all wrong
Kind of like the last time, with a bunch of really fast rhymes
If we're living in the past I'm
Soon gone
— Barenaked Ladies, "Testing 1, 2, 3"

So, you're listening to this new song you just acquired legally. Nice and springy, sounds like it's gonna be a fun little ditty. Then the lyrics start...

''So with sadness in my heart
Feel the best thing I could do
Is end it all and leave forever
What's done is done, it feels so bad
What once was happy, now is sad
I'll never love again, my world is ending...''

And the worst part is, the happy, upbeat music just keeps going. That's Lyrical Dissonance: when the music and the lyrics are going in opposite directions.

Happy upbeat lyrics set to sad music also qualifies.

This can also be used for comic effect, either by putting serious, dramatic music to silly lyrics, or by simply treating the subject manner as if it did fit the tune.

May lead to Isnt It Ironic, if the song is used in a place where the people who selected it didn't listen to the lyrics very well.

A rather old trope. One of the archetypical examples involves an evil chief of police plotting to blackmail a woman into having sex with him in order to save the man she loves, then having the man killed anyway, while all around him parishioners beg for God's mercy, all set to a gorgeously beautiful Te Deum. That's from Puccini's 1900 opera, Tosca. Not the oldest by any means — but one that can easily compete with most of the examples below.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Please, please make sure that the example you're about to add isn't already on the page. Yes, it's a very long page, but please make the effort. Ctrl-F is your friend.
Examples:

  • The lyrics in the trope entry are a real song; "Komm, Süßer Tod" (in German, "Come, Sweet Death"), from the Neon Genesis Evangelion soundtrack. And yes, it's every bit as disturbing as you'd think — appropriate, given the series, and when the song is played: during the Third Impact sequence in Evangelion. Doubly ironic, the film synchs the line, "my world is ending" with apocalyptic imagery of the The End Of The World As We Know It, in the literal sense of the words.
    • The trance remix doesn't help things.
    • Voltaire's "Come, Sweet Death" is an equally upbeat song dedicated to Death of the Endless from the Sandman comics. But it is completely in-character for Death, of course.
  • The song for the Mercenaries 2 commercial "Oh No You Didn't" is a light hip hop/barbershop chorus set to an upbeat piano tune that wouldn't be out of place at an amateur recital or off-Broadway muscial. The lyrics are about getting revenge after getting shot in the arse by your employer. And it's totally awesome.
  • Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera includes an example of this in the perfectly happy-sounding tune of "Masquerade". Once you realise what it's actually talking about (pay attention to the words, not the tune), you can get rather depressed. 'Masquerade! Paper faces on parade! Masquerade! Hide your face so the world will never find you!'
    • Highlighted at the end of the play, when the Phantom sings a slow, sad version of the chorus.
  • Four Words: Don't Fear The Reaper.
  • Many songs by Steely Dan are good examples of this trope. (Examples: "Peg," "My Old School," "Reeling In The Years," and so on.) The most stunning example in a Dan song is "Chain Lightning." It is a 6/8 jazz shuffle. The lyrics invoke a sense of Orwell. A good formula is, the happier the song, the more twisted the lyrics.
  • On a more general level, pick any extremist movement with lyrics that have a markedly different effect on you than on its members. For an example that's obscure enough to be safe, Finnish hardliner communist tunes from the 1970s are catchy, uplifting and energizing calls for determination and solidarity, both of which will be needed to restart the civil war and slaughter the bourgeoisie, clergy, police, government and everyone else involved in the upper classes' worldwide plot that previously started World War II to destroy the Soviet Union. Trust no one.
  • Pretty much every song ever written by The Shins, but especially the songs on their album Wincing the Night Away.
  • Bruce Springsteen often employs this.
    • "Born in the USA" sounds like it should be about how great being a U.S. citizen is... but it's about a man who's been beat down all his life, gets sent off to Vietnam, loses his brother, and ends up unemployed when he gets back. Some people who should have known better (George Will and Ronald Reagan among them) apparently didn't bother to listen to the rest of the song before talking about it.
    • Similarly, "Born to Run" is all about how horrible New Jersey is and how badly Springsteen wanted to get out of there as a kid. Naturally, it's been nominated as New Jersey's official state song by politicians who haven't listened too closely to it.
      • Though those of us who were born in New Jersey and did get out wonder if perhaps the politicians did listen closely and are just wistfully thinking of when they had the same dream.
  • On Ryoko Asakura's character album from Suzumiya Haruhi, she has her own version of "Hare Hare Yukai", replacing all the happy lyrics from the original with depressing ones while keeping the exact same tune and instruments. This might lead to some confusion about the point of the song to people who don't know Japanese and haven't read the translated lyrics.
    Even if we could map out all of Earth's mysteries,
    I still wouldn't be able to go anywhere.
    I spent my life with anticipations and hopes,
    But no one is there to grant them.
    With a warp, this looping feeling
    Swirls everything together and destroys them.
  • "Every Breath You Take" written by Sting, performed by The Police, is often taken as a love song, but the lyrics are about a scorned man's stalker-like obsession with his ex. It's truly disturbing how many couples dance to this song at their wedding receptions.
    • Which has not gone unnoticed by its author. "People tell me 'Oh, we got married to "Every Breath You Take"'. Good luck."
    • Likewise, "Don't Stand So Close to Me" is about an affair between a teacher and his student. Most people get that one, however, due to a Lolita Shout Out in one verse. ("Just like the/Old man in/That book by Nabokov".) This one's even more disturbing when you recall that songwriter Sting was a kindergarten teacher before hitting it big with the Police.
    • "Synchronicity II" sounds like a pretty typically energetic '80s pop ditty, but the lyrics are about a dysfunctional family (insane/senile grandmother, depressed mom, dad working a job he hates and kids caught in the middle), along with environmental pollution and an otherwise-unidentified "something" that emerges from "a dark Scottish lake." This troper's favorite lines include "Every single meeting with his so-called superior/Is a humiliating kick in the crotch" and "Packed like lemmings into shiny metal boxes/Contestants in a suicidal race."
    • "La Belle Dame Sans Regret" (The Beautiful Woman with No Regrets) sounds like Caribbean-flavored bossa nova, the kind of stuff you'd hear at a poolside bar in Key West. Translate the lyrics, though, and it's about a woman who basically gets off on abusing the men who are entranced by her beauty, as sung by her current victim.
    • "I Can't Stand Losing You" is catchy and cheerful— and about a guy who's planning to commit spiteful suicide after a breakup.
  • "Woman in Chains", by Tears for Fears. A very romantic tune about an abusive relationship. The name of the song itself shows it.
    • How can you mention Tears for Fears without mentioning "Mad world"? it's the original version of the same song by Gary Jules, but originally, it was set to a more upbeat tune. (this troper prefers it)
  • The traditional song "Listen to the Mockingbird" is a trilling, bouncy ditty lamenting the singer's dead sweetheart in lyrical tones. (However, one children's beginning piano book had a Bowdlerised version of the refrain, substituting "singing all the way" for "singing o'er her grave.")
  • Green Day's "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)" is frequently employed at weddings, wistful romantic montages, etc. Of course, no one seems to notice that it's actually a scathing breakup song.
    • Bizarrely inverted, perhaps unintentionally, in an episode of The Sarah Silverman Program: the song plays as Sarah reminisces about all the good times she's had while getting abortions at the free clinic.
    • This one's probably partially due to a tense-altering Mondegreen. This troper only got the song after he read the lyrics and found out it wasn't "have the time of your life", but "had". Completely changes the meaning of the whole song. I was thinking of singing it at my last high school choir concert; I liked high school too much to do so.
      • This troper's middle school decided to make "Time of Your Life" the theme for the eighth-grade class, particularly by playing it at the end of every single assembly. Finding out the real meaning behind the song was rather satisfying and hilarious.
    • This Troper couldn't disagree more. It is a break up song, Billie Joe Armstrong wrote "Good Riddance" for a girlfriend who was moving away to Ecuador. While he had mixed emotions about it, he wrote it as a goodbye to her. "I hope you had the time of your life" isn't meant as 'I hope you never find anything better', it's just saying 'I hope what we had was good'. It's not a negative sentiment. The fact "Good Riddance" is usually the closing song at live Green Day shows only lends credence to this.
  • Bad Religion has a fun time with this.
    • Played with the song "Slumber" from Stranger Than Fiction. It starts out somberly, tries to give hope to the listener, then tells the listen that we're killing the world.
    • The upbeat song "Sorrow" is all about the Book of Job, which is basically a story of Job playing the Butt Monkey to God and the Devil.
    • The incredibly catchy "Television" is all about a kid who relies on his TV as a babysitter, parent, and information source exclusively.
    • "Infected"... this troper has seen people dedicate this song to their boyfriends and girlfriends. ... um. Yeah.
      • Oh yeah. This troper can just imagine the great scene of having their significant other hearing the lyrics "you and me have a disease. You affect me, you infect me. I'm afflicted, you're addicted. You and me. You and me."
  • Misfits: Last Caress. 'nuff said.
  • The traditional French song "Alouette", often taught to children, actually is about removing a lark's feathers in order to cook the bird.
    • This editor was taught a children's tune from her mother's childhood in the Philippines, which not only also describes the sighting, shooting and eating of a bird, but in both Tagalog and English.
      • And this Puerto Rican editor, from a very early age, learned at least two Christmas carols that have to do with roasting pigs on a spit. One of them even begins "You get the pig, you kill it, you skin it . . ."
      • An Australian editor here, who spent a large portion of her young life cheerfully singing along to the first few verses of "Waltzing Matilda" until being rather startlingly informed that the main character who steals sheep and camps under trees eventually commits suicide.
  • The band Of Montreal employs this trope to an extreme level in their latest album, "Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?" Almost every song on said album mixes very happy instrumentals with lyrics about religious confusion, anti-depressants, and other such themes. (The lead songwriter was going through a nervous breakdown and marital troubles at the time.)
  • The first hint that Dai Mahou Touge is not a normal Magical Girl series is when the opening Theme Tune, while remaining traditionally bubbly in harmony, suddenly mentions death and destruction halfway through the first verse — and goes on in that vein for the next forty seconds.
  • The song "One Tin Soldier" (occasionally misattributed to Joan Baez or Bob Dylan, but best known in a version by the band Coven from the soundtrack to Billy Jack) uses an upbeat, triumphant tune to tell the story of a nation committing genocide for a "treasure" of no material value.
  • A lot of stuff from Tom Lehrer is like this ("So Long Mom," "Poisoning Pigeons In The Park," et cetera).
    • Especially "We Will All Go Together When We Go'', a cheery melody with lyrics saying there won't be any funerals after World War III because everyone will be dead.
    • Because it's comedy. Bill Oddie of The Goodies stole a lot of tropes from Lehrer and came up with songs like "Mummy, I Don't Like My Meat" (a cheerful song about eating the family pets to avoid starvation).
  • Despite its lyrics telling you to have a very merry Christmas, "The Carol of the Bells" has a pretty creepy tune. However, the lyrics are often incomprehensible when sung, so the only real dissonance you hear is with the fact that it's supposed to be a Christmas carol. Home Alone used this one while managing to avoid Isnt It Ironic — it was used for a creepy Christmas scene. Though there weren't any bells involved.
  • Bokusatsu Tenshi Dokuro-chan, similar to Dai Mahou Touge, has a cutesy, upbeat J-Pop tune. Then it gets to the parts where Dokuro starts singing about extreme violence and body mutilation before ending it with "but that's just how I show my love for you".
  • Type O Negative loves to do this, from "We Hate Everyone" being sung deliberately in a dispassionate way to the upbeatness of "Dead Again."
  • A hallmark of Randy Newman's songs. "Sail Away" for example, is a rousing paean to America, meant to be sung by a slave trader.
  • "I Can't Decide" by the Scissor Sisters, made famous to geeks everywhere by its recent use in Doctor Who, is an excellent example. The bouncy, upbeat song's chorus actually starts, "I can't decide whether you should live or die..." and the middle eight describes various methods of murder.
    • "Intermission" by the same (with Elton John), is a vaudevillesque tune cautioning the listener to make something of himself as soon as possible, since "not everyone has lambs to slaughter" and "we were born to die."
    • And also "She's My Man" off the same album is arguably an example of this. And "Kiss You Off". And... pretty much every song on that album.
    • And on their debut album, they did a disco version of "Comfortably Numb." Let me repeat that. A disco version of "Comfortably Numb". The most disturbing part of the effect is how freakishly right it sounds.
  • The Pogues are occasionally fond of this. "Rake at the Gates of Hell" is an energetic Irish jig featuring a very nasty narrator, and "Fairytale of New York" is a sweet-sounding Christmas song about a bitter couple whose dreams are all dead.
  • "99 Luftballoons" / "99 Red Balloons" by Nena is a (mostly) perky-sounding pop song about the titular 99 balloons accidentally starting World War III.
    • In fact, "Safety Dance" and "The Future's so Bright, I've Got to Wear Shades" fit too, due to singing about an impending nuclear holocaust.
  • "Better the Devil You Know" by Kylie Minogue is a Family Unfriendly Aesop about going back to the guy who treated you badly because "better the devil you know" (than the devil you don't). Nick Cave called it the most disturbing song he had heard, in part because of Kylie's innocent image.
    • While we're on the subject, those two collaborated on a duet called "Where The Wild Roses Grow". Not until the end of the song do we realize that it isn't a nice love song, because Nick's character bashes Kylie's character to death with a rock.
      • Of course, Nick Cave is known for dark subject matter, and the song was part of the album "Murder Ballads", so it shouldn't be a complete surprise.
  • Tom Waits has a song called "Table Top Joe", that starts out with a relaxed, jazzy piano line. Once the words start, you learn that the titular Joe is a circus freak with no body below the waist. Even stranger is the fact that he was a real guy. Although, with a voice like Tom Waits', it may be difficult to trick people into thinking you're just being happy.
  • They Might Be Giants have countless songs like this, including:
    • "I Palindrome I", a bright, cheery rock song about matricide.
    • "No One Knows My Plan", a vibrant Latin Jazz piece about a convict plotting his revenge.
    • "The Statue Got Me High", about a statue that hypnotizes you and then causes you to explode.
    • "Mink Car", about being run over by said car.
    • "The Shadow Government", a bright rock song about a meth dealer having a bad day and then getting killed by a corrupt government official.
    • "I'm Your Boyfriend Now", a soft rock ballad from the perspective of a stalker. It helps that the song title was originally a Freddy Krueger quote.
    • "Turn Around", a song in the style of a 1950s crooner, but about zombies and things.
    • "Sketchy Galore" could be mistaken for a sad love song. It's about a creepy neighbor.
    • "Twisting", a catchy pop tune about the torments a random guy endures after his breakup; he can't even get his ex-girlfriend to care about him enough to want him to give her albums back.
    • "Lucky Ball and Chain", an up-tempo song about a guy whose fiancée walked out on him at the altar.
    • "Bastard Wants To Hit Me" is deceptively peaceful and up-tempo for a song about a guy running in blind paranoid terror from someone they don't recognize.
    • "They'll Need a Crane", a bright rock song about a tragic breakup, related largely in Buffy Speak.
    • Their breakout hit "Don't Let's Start" has the words "No one in the world ever get what they want, and that is beautiful. Everybody dies frustrated and sad, and that is beautiful," sung to one of the most cheery tunes ever composed.
      • The song itself is about a pessimist telling his daughter how crappy the world is.
    • "Kiss Me, Son of God", a perky little number that sounds like it belongs at the Happy Ending of a musical — about a totalitarian, theocratic regime. ("I built a little empire / Out of some crazy garbage / Called the blood of the exploited working class...")
    • "Spiralling Shape" is a rather cheery tune about the pointlessness of using drugs to make someone happier, which was used further for Soundtrack Dissonance in the movie Kids In The Hall: Brain Candy
    • Even the songs that aren't about depressing subjects have moments of this. Take, for example, "Birdhouse In Your Soul," in which the titular nightlight cheerfully notes how it couldn't cut it as a lighthouseman, "Though I respect that a lot/ I'd be fired if that were my job/ after killing Jason off/ And countless screaming Argonauts"
    • And then we have the songs like "Damn Good Times" which is a happy, upbeat song about a girl who is a "natural dancer". So of course the music video comes out like this.
    • Don't forget "The Bells Are Ringing" which at first hearing sounds like a positive, jolly, Christmas song but is actually about mind control:
      "The bells are ringing and everyones walking
      With arms extended in a trance
      Forgetting their washing
      Neglecting the children
      They're dropping all businesses at hand
      A voice is telling them to act a different way"
    • Bed Bed Bed is slightly more comedic than the other TMBG examples: it's a noisy, rocking song with irritating sound effects thrown in about going to sleep.
  • Eighties legends the Talking Heads also did a lot of these. Their lyrical style usually leads the uncareful listener to mistakenly assume that the band is trying to put across a positive message; one must pay close attention to the lyrics to see the songs' true nature.
    • The cheerful melody of "Don't Worry About The Government" counterpoints the lyrics, which sound similarly cheerful — until you realize how intentionally, sarcastically inane they are.
    • "Road To Nowhere," which implies that the inevitable death of everybody who's ever been born isn't such a depressing thing after all.
    • "Psycho Killer," which dramatizes the title character's neuroses amid chunky guitar riffs. Not your typical pop song material.
  • The opening song of Disgaea 2, "Sinful Rose", is a cheerful, upbeat song about betrayal and slaughter. This is what happens when we let demons sing theme tunes.
    • Disgaea 3's opening song, "Maritsu Evil Academy", has about the same content, being the theme song of a school for demons. However, what with the A Nightmare Before Christmas vibe the music has, it's probably less of an example.
  • The Weird Al Yankovic song "Do I Creep You Out" sounds like (and is a parody of) a thoughtless power ballad, whereas it describes the tendencies of a stalker in a humorously over-the-top fashion.
    • Many other Weird Al songs use this technique as part of their humor, as well. "Christmas at Ground Zero," about celebrating Christmas in the middle of a nuclear war, is probably the most blatant example, as it manages to use this trope within the lyrics themselves: "We can dodge debris / While we trim the tree / Underneath a mushroom cloud!"
      • And "The Night Santa Went Crazy", arguably his darkest song to date.
      • The final verse of "I Remember Larry" is another contender, with these snippets: "broke in Larry's house", "tied his mouth with a rag", "stuffed him in a big plastic bag", "If the cops ever find him". It puts a different spin on the rest of the song, such as the chorus repetition of "I'll never forget about Larry, no matter how I try".
    • "Good Old Days" from Even Worse sounds like a pleasant reminiscence of lost childhood innocence, but the lyrics are about a childhood delinquent who grows into a psychopath. "I remember sweet Michelle / She was my high school romance / ... / I tied her to a chair and I shaved off all her hair / And I left her in the desert all alone / Sometimes in my dreams I can still hear her screams / I wonder if she ever made it home / Those were the good old days"
    • "Trigger Happy" is a Beach Boys/surf music inspired tune about a gun obsessed paranoid.
    • "Happy Birthday" from his self-titled album is a spirited, up-tempo birthday song. It encourages the celebrant to enjoy this birthday because everyone dies, and the world is probably going to end soon.
    • And then there's "Bohemian Polka", Weird Al's cover of Bohemian Rhapsody sung as a goofy polka song.
    • Hell, all of his polka medleys fall into this. Popular songs about sex, rape, masturbation, murder, and suicide all done to a cheery polka beat.
  • "Bad Moon Rising", by Creedence Clearwater Revival, is a rather famous example. It's a peppy, upbeat little ditty that purports to prophesy Armageddon from portents in the sky.
    • John Fogerty seems to like the whole thing as "Vanz Kant Dance" off "Centerfield" has an upbeat backing to lyrics that are rather unflattering to Saul Zaentz owner of Fantasy Records who sued John Fogerty for plagarising himelf
  • Speaking of which, this editor is still not sure whether R.E.M.'s song "It's The End Of The World As We Know It" fits into this category, because he can't be certain, even after reading the lyrics, whether that's actually what the song is about.
    • It's at least partly about Leonard Bernstein; I know that much.
      • It starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes, an an aeroplane... Lenny Bruce is in there, too, and is somehow not afraid.
    • Well, it doesn't help that the song beings "That's great!"
  • The true subject matter of "Steal My Sunshine" by Len is debatable, but most suggestions certainly don't match the bouncy tune.
  • "Walking On Broken Glass", by Annie Lennox, is a cheerful song about the suffering that follows a bad breakup.
  • Barenaked Ladies have done quite a few of these, including but not limited to:
    • "The Night I Fell Asleep At The Wheel" is surprisingly bouncy, considering it's about exactly what the title implies, and the narrator is dead before the last verse.
    • "Pinch Me", described in the liner notes for All Their Greatest Hits as "Another one of our happy little songs about chronic depression."
    • "The Old Apartment" is a hard, high-energy rock song about a guy breaking into the apartment where he and his girlfriend used to live and trashing the place while speculating on its new owners.
    • "Fun & Games" has lyrics cynically describing the politics behind the Iraq war ("We knew your sons and daughters would be blown in half") set to a poppy, catchy tune.
    • "Alcohol", which is a poppy little ditty about, well, rampant alcoholism and with lyrics like "While I cannot love myself, I'll use something else".
    • "Angry People" is a pretty bare-bones version; a catchy, cheerful tune about people being jackasses for no apparent reason.
    • "Jane" mixes a sweet melody and a catchy chorus with some beautiful harmonies, and adds in some wistful lyrics in which the narrator remembers his romance with a free-spirited woman that unfortunately didn't work out. That is, until you pay closer attention to the words and realize that he's actually portraying Jane as a self-absorbed drama queen and he's still really bitter about the whole breakup.
    • They even hung a lampshade on it in "Testing 1, 2, 3"; see the quote at the top of the page.
  • Smokey Robinson, in "Tears of a Clown", sings of a man hurt by a lover who left him comparing himself to the characters in the opera Pagliacci, comedians/clowns who hide their hurt and anger behind empty smiles, complete with a distinctive circus calliope riff. (Notably, the circusesque melody was written — by Stevie Wonder — long before the lyrics; Robinson went with the Lyrical Dissonance intentionally after being reminded of the characters in Pagliacci.)
  • Used by Marcy Playground's "Sex and Candy" — the lyrics seem innocuous enough, but the tune is strange, and the singer sounds kind of stoned. The music video is borderline Nightmare Fuel with such images as the singer standing up to his chin in a hole while a huge spider crawls towards him and two men tearing apart a woman's dresser. It ends with the singer being pushed to the ground, uttering the final lyric "Mama, this must be my dream" as green blood oozes out from under him. According to Word Of God, the song and music videos were intended to be about someone having a wet dream.
  • Jonathan Coulton has produced a number of songs that combine soft rock tunes with lyrics about things people don't usually combine with soft rock.
    • "Skullcrusher Mountain" is about an Evil Overlord in love.
    • "Re: Your Brains" is a song about a zombified office worker trying to negotiate with his still-human co-workers ("All we want to do is eat your brains / We're not unreasonable, I mean, no one's gonna eat your eyes").
    • "Chiron Beta Prime" is a Christmas song set in the aftermath of a Robot War
    • "Shop Vac" is about post-suburban marital problems. Seriously.
    • "I Crush Everything", an extremely sad tune about the loneliness suffered by... a giant squid. Who hates dolphins.
    • Coulton also penned the lyrics and tune to "Still Alive", the ending song to the game Portal. It's a cheery little pop tune sung by the insane AI GLaDOS, with lyrics congratulating Chell in a very passive aggressive manner, as well as implying things are much, much worse on the outside of the Enrichment Center. ("While you're dying I'll be still alive / And when you're dead I will be still alive...")
    • And let's not forget Coulton's tender, romantic ballad rendition of "Baby Got Back".
    • Nor should you forget "The Future Soon", about someone dreaming of a future where he can build a robot army on a space station to conquer the earth and force the love of his life to be his bride...
    • A case of this done deliberately is "I Feel Fantastic". Coulton wrote the song after reading a Scientific American article about mood-altering medication. The song is a cheery tune about how great life is, but it quickly becomes clear the singer doesn't feel a genuine emotional state at any point in the song, instead letting medication control all of his moods.
    • Another rather deliberate instance is his song "Not About You", in which he insists that he's over his previous relationship and that he doesn't obsess over his ex, even though it's obviously not true.
  • Sting's "Brand New Day" is a bright, shiny, upbeat song about people mindlessly embracing bright, shiny things without examining whether or not they possess any real substance. Naturally, it's the current title song of The Early Show and is constantly used in commercials for "The Next Big Thing™".
    • This editor actually always thought it was a love song. Which also has nothing to do with its use in television.
    • It was also used in a promotional video for Compaq not long before the HP merger. "I'll sell the stock, we'll spend all the money" indeed.
  • Merengue singer and songwriter Juan Luis Guerra tends to include a song about social issues in each album he releases... and those songs also tend to be very catchy and upbeat, leading to dancers everywhere happily dancing to songs about people applying for an American visa as their last hope ("Visa para un sueño"), being confronted with high prices, higher corruption and lack of essential items ("El Costo de la vida"), or being victims of an truly awful medic care system ("El Niagara en bicicelta").
    • He's not the only one, either! The Brazilian group Paralamas has songs like that as well, depicting the poverty and hopelesness of Brazilian low class people with happy, upbeat melodies. An example is "Alagados", which speaks about the hard life conditions in Rio ("The city, with its open arms in the postcards and its tightened fist in real life, denies you opporunities and shows you the face of evil.").
  • The 1967 song "Sunday Will Never Be The Same" by Spanky and Our Gang has a upbeat tune with beautiful harmonies, but the lyrics describe how breaking up with her lover has forever destroyed the singer's enjoyment of Sunday morning walks in the park.
  • Johnny Cash seemed to have had a fondness for toe-tapping up-tempo tunes for his dark and lonesome lyrics. Just think of "Folsom Prison Blues" and "Cocaine Blues".
    • Also how many times have you seen a demonic scene were the upbeat love song Ring Of Fire is playing.
      • The music is upbeat. The lyrics are about destructive love:
        "I fell into a burning ring of fire
        I went down, down, down, and the flame's getting higher
        And it burns, burns, burns
        The ring of fire
        The ring of fire."
      • No it's about passionate not destructive love. It was written by June to describe her relationship with Johnny:
        "The taste of love is sweet
        when hearts like ours meet
        I fell for you like a child
        oh, but the fire went wild."
    • "Cocaine Blues" is a traditional song, so it wasn't really his fondness to create such moments there.
      • The 1948 country hit version of "Cocaine Blues" by Roy Hogsed (one of the all time great country music names) from which Cash picked up the song is even more dissonant than Cash's: Hogsed sings it in very clean-cut, singing cowboy-type voice, and the lead instrument in his band is a perky, bouncy accordion!
      • However, when Mark Lanegan recorded the song under its alternate name, "Little Sadie," he picked a mournful tune to go with it.
  • The 2005 [The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy film opens with "So Long, and Thanks for All The Fish", a catchy showtune about how the dolphins are leaving because Earth is about to be blown up:
    The world's about to be destroyed
    There's no point getting all annoyed
    Lie back and let the planet dissolve around you
    So long, so long, and thanks for all the fish!
    • This editor has always been baffled by this song being trotted out by fans of Adams as the first sign of the movie going against the spirit of the books. This editor can completely imagine Adams throwing something like that in.
      • Share and enjoy!
    • Speaking of which, the "Share and Enjoy" song from the Radio series is a cheerful little ballad, sung out of tune by a badly-programmed choir of robots. The lyrics are about how, when malfunctioning Sirius Cybernetics robots tear off doors and rape cats, the company's complaints department won't give a fig.
    • Disaster Area's song "Only the End of the World Again" can be heard on the now-rare Hitchhiker's Guide EP (with the rubber duck on the sleeve). It's a heavy rock ballad about a guy who kills his best friend to be with his girlfriend, takes her for a crash in her daddy's car, and then makes out with her as the moon explodes for no readily explored reason.
  • The Def Leppard album-only song "Gravity" is a great example of this, with rather sinister-sounding lyrics ("I can't sleep at night / The darkness enslaves me")...and it's an upbeat song in a spritely major key. This may be more understandable with the knowledge that the song was originally incarnated as a rather formulaic and forgettable pop-rock piece called "Perfect Girl," as revealed by bootleg recordings of the demo. This editor rather likes the dissonant version better.
  • Architecture in Helsinki. Full stop.
  • "LDN" by Lily Allen borders on a Lampshade Hanging. It's an upbeat song about how the back alleys in London are nowhere near as nice as the rest of the city...
    • Actually, quite a few of Lily Allen's songs are like that. "Smile" is about a girl getting revenge on her boyfriend, "Alfie" is about her brother doing drugs...
  • Nobody's mentioned Amy Winehouse's "Rehab" yet?
  • Outkast's "Hey Ya!" sounds like a happy, upbeat hip-hop song — there's a famous YouTube video of the Peanuts characters dancing joyfully to it — but the lyrics are a moody meditation on whether it's worth staying in an failing relationship: "If what they say is that nothing is forever, then what makes love the exception? Why are we so in denial when we know we're not happy here?"
  • Warren Zevon liked to use this. Examples are "Excitable Boy", an upbeat song with electric guitar solos that tells the story of a mad killer who is apparently "just an excitable boy", and "Werewolves of London", a bright little tune about, well, werewolves. Not to mention "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner", which about...Roland...the...you get the idea.
  • Third Eye Blind's "Semi-Charmed Life" has a nice, upbeat pop-rocky tune, yet it's about a guy struggling with crystal meth addiction.
  • The Clash's "Somebody Got Murdered" is about... well, somebody getting murdered. While the tone of the singer himself is pretty somber, the music sounds more like peppy new wave than punk rock.
    • This goes for a lot of their songs. "Clampdown", which is similarly peppy, is either about the Nazis or just fascist regimes in general ("Taking off his turban they say is this man a Jew"). "London Calling" (about the city's destruction and the end of the world), "Train in Vain" (their only love song, which is a break-up song) and "Julie's Been Working For The Drug Squad". "Rock the Casbah" is frequently requested in the Middle East by armed forces members, despite it being about revolution via rock and not inciting American bombing of Middle Eastern countries.
    • Let's not forget "Spanish Bombs", which is an upbeat, poppy rock song about the horrors of the Spanish civil war.
  • The upbeat rock song "Hey Sandy" by Polaris is the theme song to The Adventures Of Pete And Pete, and is also originally about the Kent State shootings.
    • There was another song called "Hey Sandy" about the Kent State Shootings, done by Harvey Andrews. This editor can neither confirm nor deny whether or not that song is an example of lyrical dissonance or not, as she has never heard it before.
    • This troper owns the soundtrack album. He has the lyrics sheet. While the two "Hey Sandy" songs are by different artists and have different lyrics, they are both about the same event.
  • The Decemberist's song "Sons and Daughters" is Squee-level happy, in mood and most of the lyrics. However, a few phrases scattered around the song as well as the repeated last line make it clear that it's being sung in a bomb shelter, presumably to cheer up the survivors.
    • Alternatively the song’s about a group of settlers escaping a war and arriving on a new land, doomed to failure because they have no idea what they’re doing.
      “We’re make our home on the water /we’ll build our walls aluminum/ we’ll fill our mouths with cinnamon.”
    • While another of their songs, "O Valencia!" sounds rather upbeat, the chorus mentions the blood of the singer's lover being 'still warm on the ground' and burning the city down. The last verse has the lover being shot in the singer's arm, 'and an oath of love was your dying cry.'
  • Although The Beautiful South have a rep for this, most of their songs actually have pretty wistful tunes, but there are definitely some which combine bouncy tunes and depressing lyrics. "You Keep It All In" is about a violent domestic argument, "My Book" is about the singer's entire life being a disaster. "We Are Each Other" is a particularly nasty example, since on a casual glance the lyrics appear to be about a perfect couple (it's actually about a couple whose co-dependency is destroying them).
  • Subverted in "Happy" by Liam Lynch, a uber-upbeat song which is occasionally broken in with things like "I can't do this, man, I'm not happy".
    I'm special, I'm happy
    I am gonna heave
    Welcome to my happy world
    Now get your $#!+ and leave!
  • Five Iron Frenzy's "Blue Comb '78" puts humorous lyrics (eulogizing a comb that singer Reese Roper lost when he was five years old) to dramatically overwrought music (dramatically overwrought for a ska-punk band, at least). Subverted in that the song is actually a metaphor for his parent's divorce and his own lost innocence: Reese has stated that the lost comb incident was the last memory he has of his parents prior to the divorce. He chose to write indirectly to avoid falling into Wangst.
  • Kelly Clarkson's "Because of You" sounds like an empowering chick-ish ballad... but its words reflect someone emotionally scarred from a horrible relationship. In fact, this editor thought for a long time after hearing the words that it was about someone coming to terms with a lover's suicide.
    • This editor always thought it was about child abuse.
      • This troper thinks she remembers Kelly saying that it was about her parents' divorce.
      • This troper had the odd experience of attending a series of compulsory "inspirational lectures" at school last year, which involved motivational activities. One of these was a large group sing along to a series of empowering and fun songs such as "We Are The Champions" and "It's Raining Men", which then weirdly ended with "Because of You", leading most of us to become quickly confused.
  • This trope is the entire basis for the comedy act "Richard Cheese and Lounge Against The Machine." They take songs such as "Baby Got Back" and "Closer" and perform them in the style of Frank Sinatra.
  • Stephen Lynch bases his entire career around this trope as well, singing happy, upbeat tunes about venereal diseases, Satan, Nazis, schizophrenia, and many horrifying things he does to children. And that's just in one album.
  • Freddy Cole once sang an upbeat version of "Send in the Clowns," telling a radio interviewer that no one else had done it. He didn't seem to understand why no one else had done it.
  • Dead Or Alive (yes, the "You Spin Me Round" guys) had a more minor hit back in 1986 called "Brand New Lover". It's a joyful, dancey, Hi-NRG tune... about the singer telling his girl/boy/whatever (with Pete Burns it's hard to tell) that he's bored with her/him and wants to leave.
  • Pearl Jam's done this a couple times:
    • "Even Flow" is a very intense-sounding song...about life through the eyes of a homeless person, who sleeps on the streets ("Freezing / Rests his head on a pillow made of concrete"), is illiterate (Even / Looking through the paper though he doesn't know how to read) and possibly mentally ill, as he "looks insane" when he smiles and struggles to keep coherent thoughts (Even Flow / Thoughts arrive like butterflies / He don't know / So he chases them away)
    • "Alive" sounds like a rousing anthem about life but is about a mother falling in love with her son, who looks just like his dead father, and sexually abusing him;
      • Word Of God however states that the positive fan response has changed the meaning of the song into a rousing anthem about life.
    • "Jeremy" comes off as a fairly upbeat song but is about a kid who killed himself in front of his high school English class (made even more disturbing by the video for it);
    • "Better Man", another song grievously misinterpreted by its listeners (as a love song), is actually a song about abusive relationships from the woman's point of view, and Eddie Vedder himself said it's "dedicated to the bastard that married my Momma";
    • And, in an inversion, "Spin the Black Circle" sounds very dark and the vocals in it border on screaming at parts, but it's actually about vinyl records.
  • Those tropers who grew up in the late '90s will recognize these as the opening lyrics of one of the happiest-sounding songs of the decade: "Mmm Bop", by tow-headed, teenaged Oklahoma trio Hanson:
    You have so many relationships in this life
    Only one or two will last
    You go through all the pain and strife
    Then you turn your back, and they're gone so fast...
  • Some songs by DragonForce arguably fall under this in a weird way, in that not only does the music (generally upbeat, fast, and even uplifting) disagree with the lyrics, but the lyrics don't always agree amongst themselves. "My Spirit Will Go On", in particular, has both a catchy tune and extremely depressing lyrics that suddenly get contradicted by the final line of the chorus. See also: "Black Winter Night", which is a triumphant-sounding tune (complete with brass section) about sailing on endless seas of sadness as the world ends and all of humanity dies out. Then again, the band has implied that they write their lyrics based on the Rule Of Cool, so...
    • "My Spirit Will Go On" has the darkest intro of any of their songs.
    • "Disciples of Babylon" is their only song that doesn't directly imply the inevitable death (usually in a war that apparently lasts forever) of the protagonists. What the song is about instead is a matter of heated debate.
    • In a less severe version of this trope, all of their songs are set in winter, usually during a snowstorm, despite their style being summery.
      • They also tend to be set at night, and usually while waiting for a "brighter day" that never seems to come.
    • "Scars of Yesterday" is one of their most upbeat songs, and it's sung from the perspective of a rapist.
  • "Shooting Star" by Bad Company is an up-tempo rock song that tells a story about a rock star's fame, loneliness, and, eventually, suicide.
    • This troper felt that the song was a tribute to all the real rock musicians who died too young.
      • Doesn't make the tune any less cheerful, and makes the lyrics even more tragic.
  • "Bleed it Out" by Linkin Park has a uptempo beat and catchy groove to it featuring uplifting rapping during the verses. About suicide and self mutilation as a method getting attention for ones problems. Including opening wounds, blowing your head off and using grenades. Then again they often use dark themes in their music but it's usually not so catchy.
  • "Christmastime Is Here" from A Charlie Brown Christmas. It has lyrics that describe how wonderful Christmas is ("Fun for all that children call their favorite time of year") but has a very slow, almost melancholy feel to it.
    • Personally, this troper feels that it makes it more effective as a song.
  • Elsewhere in the Downer Christmas Carols department, we have "I'll Be Home For Christmas" — a lovely crooner's ballad about being deployed overseas at the holidays, and only able to pretend you're at home celebrating with your family.
  • There's also "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen." The minor-key melody is more likely to inspire a vague sense of unease than the "tidings of comfort and joy" prescribed by the lyrics.
  • Happened a lot with Ayumi Hamasaki via Executive Meddling. Her gimmick is that she writes her own lyrics (often based in the angsty experiences she had), but she rarely composes the music. While in the studio albums this trope is hardly noticeable, it become notorious in the Eurodance and Trance remixes of her first albums, where angsty songs about abandonment where given extremely happy new melodies. Memorable offenders are the remixes from "Trauma" and "Kanariya".
    • One example from an actual album, however, is "Memorial Address", a song about a sudden abandonment (probably because of the other person's death), who begins with a sweet and sad melody... and suddenly the music switch into a energetic rock tune.
  • From German television, two women singing a cheerful song — about a brother and a sister dying from AIDS and drugs.
  • Except for some oddly haunting bits, the melody of "Uninstall", the OP to ''Bokurano, could pass for an upbeat, soaring mecha series theme. The lyrics discuss how all human life is insignificant, and the main characters' plight of being trapped in a meaningless battle where the only escape from the pointlessness of their efforts is self-delusion or their inevitable deaths.
  • When Johnny Comes Marching Home sounds incredibly depressing and ominous for a song about the cheerful celebration of a returning soldier. This may have something to do with how the song's tune originally came from the Irish ballad "Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye", which told the story of the return of a horribly maimed soldier to his family and love. He's so badly injured they hardly recognise him, and he won't be able to work. "You've lost an arm, you've lost a leg. You'll have to be put with a bowl out to beg."
  • The opening credits music from Rurouni Kenshin, entitled (in English) "Freckles," is frantically happy and bouncy, but features lyrics such as "all the memories that I have are beautiful in my mind, but they can't hide the sorrow deep inside my soul."
Here's an excerpt:
I brush against the freckles that I hated so,
But life goes on and I heave a little sigh for you.
It's heavy, the love that I would share with you,
Then it dissolved like it was just a sugar cube.
Now the little pain sittin' in my heart,
Has shrunk in a bit, but it really does hurt me now.
Those silly horoscopes I,
Guess I can't trust them after all.
  • The Dance Dance Revolution version of this song has different English lyrics (better ones at that, in this troper's opinion) but the exact same meaning, and ups the ante by removing the heavy guitar riffs in favor of a whimsical toy piano sound.
  • ALL of JUDY&MARY's songs are incredibly ubpeat and catchy, their lyrics notwithstanding. But with Sobakasu it's little bit more complicated — an anime version is, as usual, shortened to just one stanza to fit into the episode. The full version has a second stanza with exactly opposite meaning, somewhat balancing it out.
  • Used by the Tool song "Die Eier Von Satan" ("The Eggs of Satan"), a song whose heavy industrial guitar grinding and angry german vocals makes it sound like it would fit right into a German Satanist heavy rocker Nazi rally... The lyrics turn out to be a recipe for cookies. Without eggs.
    • Additionally, "Die Eier Von Satan" can also mean "The Balls of Satan", which obscures the true meaning even more.
  • This is pretty much the entire gimmick of Dethklok on Metalocalypse, as they render everything, from the blues to a jingle for a coffee shop to a birthday song, as over-the-top death metal.
  • Whose Line Is It Anyway's "Irish Drinking Songs", "Hoedowns", and "Scenes to Rap" usually have this. Bizarre, funny, sometimes bleak lyrics to the tune of a cheerful (you guessed it) drinking songs.
  • The 1963 song "Ue o muite aruko" by Kyu Sakamoto (better known to English speakers as "Sukiyaki") has a cheerful-sounding tune, but is in fact about a man whose heart is broken, and who walks in the rain looking upwards so that his tears are disguised by the rainwater running down his face.
  • "It's Not Unusual" by Tom Jones has a tune that swings in Jones' usual manner, but tells the story of a man with an unrequited love who suffers jealousy when he sees the woman he desires with other men.
    • Well, he does say "I wanna die", which clues a few people in.
  • "Vide Infra" by Killswitch Engage is a loud aggressive metalcore song that is filled with harshly screamed vocals and thick and pounding guitars. But lyrically the song is about preaching equality, tolerance and respect to people different then you.
  • Alanis Morissette once did a cover of "My Humps" by The Black Eyed Peas... in her usual style. It was calculated to cause exactly this effect, and succeeded to a both horrifying and hilarious degree.
  • This happens frequently with political songs, particularly of a satirical nature. Apart from "Born in the USA" (see above) Neil Young's "Rockin' in the Free World," and John Fogerty's "Fortunate Son" were mistaken for proud, jingoistic rock songs by those who listened only to their melodies and choruses, and not their verses.
  • The Japanese "Song of Ashley" from Wario Ware intentionally used this, having an ominous melody, but fluffy pop lyrics about how wonderful Ashley is.
    • The US version substituted mock-sinister lyrics to match the melody... then ran into this trope itself when a more upbeat remix was done for Super Smash Bros Brawl.
      • The mock sinister lyrics of the US release were further complimented by the fact that, despite it being a parody of such dark and ominous songs, if you sped the song up to maximum speed by spinning it, she said, in a cold voice, something along the lines of "I will condemn all the children to torture in hell." Yeah... wow.
  • "Luka" by Suzanne Vega is a peppy little song... about an abused little boy.
    • The similarly-themed "What's the Matter Here" by 10,000 Maniacs is disconcertingly cheerful; thus the maximum creepy points during the line sung from the father's point of view.
  • Venerable English songwriter Richard Thompson has done this on occasion. The best example is probably "Read About Love," an innocent-seeming upbeat dance tune with lyrics about a little boy who learns what "making love" is from magazines because his father won't talk to him about it; he ends up raping a girl because he thinks it's "supposed to feel nice" and doesn't know any better.
  • "Little Brown Jug" by Jospeh Winner, a drinking song whose lyrics are about a man and his wife experiencing a hard, alcoholic life. The tone and melody of the song however, are bright and cheerful.
  • Though they have a reputation for songs of the sort, Simple Plan's "I'm Just a Kid" is a somewhat angsty song sung by a unpopular school-age loser. Most people seem to fixate on that and not notice that the song's actual music is suprisingly upbeat and cheerful.
  • Stone Sour's "Through Glass" provides the listener with a light acoustic rock song with a good vocal melody and little agression. Of course the song is actually a scathing lashout on the plastic nature of the world of pop music.
  • Flight Of The Conchords semi-parodies it with The Humans are Dead — It's meant to be a serious ballad to the plight of robots killing humans and taking over. It's played totally for laughs, especially in the monotone the duo get.
  • The Ramones wrote several songs about Joey Ramone's Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. However, they had the same upbeat power chord sequences as every other Ramones song. For example, the peppy "I Wanna Be Sedated" is about a nervous breakdown right before a show in England.
    Just get me to the airport, put me on a plane
    Hurry hurry hurry, before I go insane
    I can't control my fingers, I can't control my brain
    Oh no no no no no!
    • That song is about the fact that London goes on lockdown when it's Christmas Eve, and the band was stuck in the hotel for the entire day when they got there for a concert on Christmas Day; hence, the opening lines:
      Twenty, twenty, 24 hours to go
      I want to be sedated
      Nothing to do, nowhere to go
      I want to be sedated
  • Just about any Smiths or Morrissey song: Upbeat music, gloomy lyrics.
    I was happy in the haze of a drunken hour
    But Heaven knows I'm miserable now!
  • Belle and Sebastian often have wistful songs to wistful music, but "Stay Loose" is almost ridiculously singable, though the lyrics are about the fragile relationship between a boy with depression and a girl who won't discuss anything serious. With creepy results. "The lights are out in the house tonight / Gonna creep around, gonna creep into your head..."
    • Also, one of their most serene instrumentals (from the Storytelling soundtrack), complete with lovely violin, is called Fuck This Shit. Title Dissonance?
  • Same thing goes for nearly every song on Thao Nguyen's latest album. With her gleeful, indie-folk style, loss and uncertainy never sounded so fun.
  • Janet Jackson's "Together Again" is a cheery, upbeat song... about her friend who died of AIDS. The song was originally intended to be a ballad, but was changed to a dance song in order to celebrate that friend's life instead of death.
    • In a similar vein, Garth Brooks' song "Good Ride Cowboy" is an up-beat cowboy twang tune memorializing his late friend, singer and rodeo rider Chris LeDoux.
  • "Lullaby" by The Cure. If you've seen the music video, you know the creepy and satirical lyrics are intentional.
    • Hell, half of the musically cheery tunes of The cure have extremly dark or creepy lyrics.
      • To make matters worse, his declaration of love to his wife (albeit being a beautiful song and probably one of the msot sincere love songs ever), aptly named Lovesong, does NOT have a happy tune. At all.
  • How can we forget "Die Moritat vom Mackie Messer/Mack the Knife?" Especially, say, the Bobby Darin version...a swinging, catchy, toe-tapping pop standard about a murderer, kidnapper, arsonist, thief, rapist, etc. that can't be beat. That said, the lyrics were often sanitized in some translations... it is much nastier in the original German version, generally, than say the Blitzstein lyrics. That said, "Mack the Knife" is still an awesome song.
    • Among other things, you can blame Ella Fitzgerald for this; she admitted that she forgot half the lyrics and scatted the missing portions.
    • Several other songs from The Threepenny Opera have similar lyrical dissonances. This troper still snickers at one song where the frequent refrain of "Yay! Hooray!" is performed in as deadpan and monotone a manner possible.
    • Brecht in general depended on Lyrical Dissonance in his music in other plays. For instance, in Mother Courage and Her Children, there is a lullaby that Mother Courage sings over her daughter Kattrin's dead body, with lyrics of an obviously materialistic nature. This sort of thing is key to verfremdungseffekt of the Epic Theatre.
  • The Beatles did this with "Maxwell's Silver Hammer", about a nice young man who, halfway through the first stanza, turns out to be a serial killer who clubs people to death with the titular hammer. It's actually a pretty fun song. [Troper's note: I've moved this entry here because I felt these two songs deserved mentioning in the same paragraph.]
    • The folks at Newgrounds gave us this nifty disturbing video.
    • The Beatles song "Lady Madonna" is an incredibly cheery song...about a family so poor they don't even know how they're going to pay for the food they need.
      • Actually the singer knows how momma is paying the bills. She's turning tricks. And it definitely fits the trope.
    • Another Beatles song: "Run For Your Life" is a happy, peppy tune whose lyrics are, in essence, "BITCH IMA CUT YOU IF YOU EVER LEAVE ME!"
  • Sonata Arctica has its fair share of melancholic love songs played to the fast, upbeat bombast of power metal.
    • It also has "The End of This Chapter" which sounds mostly like a powerballad, has most of the lyrics of a melancholic love song, but is actually about a stalker.
  • The Feeling. Just... The Feeling. Cheerful, unashamedly cheesy pop music with lyrics about loneliness, loss and frustration. Although it's then used in the reverse form by their songs "Strange" (a very downbeat song with a positive message that can be summarised as "don't let the bastards grind you down just because you're different, because there are people who will always love you.") and "Same Old Stuff" (equally downbeat song addressing a fretful partner who's worried about the people who say their relationship won't work out). So Yeah.
  • Good Charlotte's My Bloody Valentine is a cheery pop-punk song about a stalker murdering the boyfriend of his crush. Until the last line("All I know is that I love you tonight"), where the vocals turn into a scream and the tune crashes hard into a minor key.
  • Reel Big Fish's best songs are depressing songs over cheery ska-punk including "She Has A Girlfriend Now", "She's Famous Now", and "Sell Out".
  • Subverted by Nirvana's "You know You're Right" which switches between a melancholic and edgy feel and a introspective and contemplative mood. But the lyrics seem at first to be a calm admission of fault and how great things are going for him. But in typical Nirvana fashion there is a underlying angst in them.
    • This troper had been under the impression that this song was about someone getting dumped, admitting defeat and trying to hide the fact that they are totally devastated.
      • "Sliver" plays it more straight, as the melody is cheerful, but the lyrics are about a boy having an awful night at his grandparent's (though not only the song is clearly comedic, Cobain's voice shows the boy's "suffering" often).
  • Practically anything off of Supertramp's Breakfast In America. Just one example is "The Logical Song", a happy tune about how growing up and going to school will crush the joy of youth and fill one with existential dread.
    • This troper has always felt that The Logical Song's pleading, almost desperate vocals more than negated the song's upbeat melody. Though I guess they might sound different if you don't make out the lyrics.
  • Gilbert And Sullivan are all over this.
    • Trial by Jury — This one's about a trial, so when the plaintiff arrives to the tune of "Comes the cheated flower / Comes the broken maid", it's made catchy, upbeat and fun, to make it thoroughly clear that despite said lyrics, this is all part of a grand scam.
    • The Sorcerer has a bawdy drinking song about tea, then later we get the song "Oh joyous boon / Oh mad delight" — which is appropriately upbeat — and continues upbeat through lyrics like "Alas! that lovers thus should meet:/ Oh, pity, pity me!"
    • 'H.M.S. Pinafore: As the protagonist works himself up to suicide in the Act I finale, all sorts of cheery and patriotic tunes get thrown in, even while Ralph sings, "The maiden treats my suit with scorn,/Rejects my humble gift, my lady;/She says I am ignobly born,/And cuts my hopes adrift, my lady." Of course, it eventually turns appropriately sombre, just in time for Josephine to rush in and admit she loves him after all.
    • The Pirates of Penzance: The loudest song in the entire operetta is the one about sneaking quietly into the Stanley home: "With Catlike Tread/Upon our prey we steal/In silence dread/Our cautious way we feel/No sound at all/We never speak a word/A fly's foot-fall/Would be distinctly heard." Sung fortissimo with heavy use of cymbals and brass in the accompaniment.
    • Iolanthe: Parts of the Act I finale, but also "In vain to us you plead", which is a flirty little song about how much the women hate the men they're singing it to.
      • Actually part of the joke is that they're in love with the men, but have to do their duty in telling them to buzz off. Lelia's line before the song is: "But we can’t stop him now. (Aside to Celia.) Aren’t they lovely! (Aloud.) Oh, why did you go and defy us, you great geese!"
    • Princess Ida: "When Anger spreads its wing" is about going off to war, but sounds kind of like it should be about Bertie Wooster and his smashing adventures.
    • The Mikado. No, just the whole thing. Beheadings, descriptions of grisly executions, lists of people to kill off — all fodder for a cheery little operetta. Though, of course, "Brightly dawns our wedding day/Joyous hour we give thee greeting" ends with everyone in tears.
      • Isn't this the song that starts with three women shouting "three little maids from school are we"?
    • Ruddigore: "I shipped d'ye see" is a cheery patriotic naval ballad about fleeing from the French. "Happily coupled are we" has a cheery melody befitting a song by a sailor about his forthcoming marital bliss. It keeps this melody when Rose comes in with her verse, about him sailing off and having affairs with women in every port, while she's left behind to wait for him. Oh, and another cheery song about upcoming death, this time the rapid-fire patter song, "My eyes are fully open" (First verse ends "But I have to die tomorrow, so it really doesn't matter!") Oh, and I'm not sure if it counts, but the lyrics of "You understand? I think I do" is about how horrible it is to have to betray Robin's secret identity, but duty requires it. However, doing so lets one of them steal back a woman from Robin, and gets the other out of the family curse, so the cheery, bouncy music is actually highly appropriate.
    • The Yeomen of the Guard: "How say you maiden, will you wed/A man about to lose his head?" is, as you should guess by now, one of the most upbeat, fun, cheery numbers. Meanwhile, "Oh, a private buffoon is a light-hearted loon", of course, turns out to be about how the jester's being torn apart and has to remain cheerful throughout it all. Later, "When a wooer goes a wooing"'s most heartbreaking line is "Oh the happy days of wooing" — sung in emotionless monotone by the person that the plot has set out to break, taking everything from him. Oh, and it ends on a grand, energetic chorus while that person dies.
    • Utopia, Limited: "First you're born" is about how a character's life is one big joke played on him by the universe. It's done as a comic number. "A tenor, all singers above" is a classic tenor ballad — about how the tenor can't sing, complete with intentionally flubbed high notes. Oh, and "It's understood, I think all round" and "In every mental lore" are both cheery songs with lines about about grisly deaths (by duelling and being blown up by dynamite, respectively), but do I really need to mention that at this point?
    • The Grand Duke: "Won't it be a pretty wedding" savages the bride's taste and sense of fashion, and then everyone goes on to savage the groom in "Pretty Lisa, fair and tasty". Several other examples, which would take too long to explain.
    • Sullivan also tends to drop down to a lower note for words like "high", "top", "above" and so on, and vice-versa for words like "bottom" and "low". And, by the way, all of these were Victorian, so this is Older Than Radio.
      • That might have something to do with the fact that G&S's genre is called "Topsy-Turvy" (also the title of a movie about them.)
  • "Batti, batti o bel Masetto" ("Beat me, oh lovely Masetto") from Mozart's Don Giovanni is a calm and tender love song in which a woman begs her fiance to beat her.
  • Nobody's mentioned Pulp yet? Their best-known songs are "Common People" and "Disco 2000", both textbook examples of this trope, and they've provided countless others.
    • Britpop in general has quite a few of these. Other famous examples are "Cigarettes and Alcohol" by Oasis and "Country House" by Blur, to name but two.
  • The cover band Ten Masked Men specialize in destroying pop classics by interpreting them all as straightforward no frills Death Metal regardless of the origin. So this trope is to be expected.
  • J-rock band Flow did a mostly upbeat ska cover of "Okuro Kotoba"... which is a song about painful goodbyes.
  • Gnarls Barkley's Charity Case and A Little Better are both like this (on the same album). The former about a lonely man confessing to an equally lonely woman, and the latter... about feeling a bit better after a massive bout of sadness. There's also Who Cares? on the previous album about a man talking contradictorily.
  • You wouldn't tell just by listening to the music (it's all Foreign Sounding Gibberish), but if the music video is any indication, The Real Tuesday Weld's cheery song "Bathtime in Clerkenwell" is about Nazis taking over England.
    • Bah, those birds were much too cute to represent Nazis. Even though they were wearing Nazi symbols.
  • Used for comedic value by Psychostick whose metal-tinged modern hardcore sound is used as a vehicle for them to bitch about (as well as other things) very mundane and silly topics such as itchy balls (Scrotal Torment), a piece of shit car (Two Ton Paperweight), how much they hate doing laundry (I Hate Doing Laundry), and other things even what they should name they're album in skits in between the songs, but that's going off topic.
  • The ending to Protest The Heroes "Turn Soonest To The Sea" has a Disneyesque sing-song group chorus with the following lyrics:
    Maybe someday when, when this bloody skull has dried
    (I'll) know our city is in ruins
    When our greatest source of pride
    (is) a monument of dicks and ribs and the gender crown we wore
    Where underneath, a plaque will read, a plaque will read, "No woman is a whore"
  • Martina McBride's "Beautiful Again" has a cheerful melody, but the verses tell about a girl's rough childhood and teenage pregnancy. Then the chorus is about optimism in the face of everything else: "But when it rains / The past gets washed away and then / She smiles 'cause she knows in the end / The world gets beautiful / Beautiful again"
  • Aqua, oddly enough, has some fairly depressing lyrics in some of their upbeat synthpop songs:
    Misery deep in the royal heart
    crying at night, I wanna be a part
    Prince, oh, prince, are you really sincere
    that you one day are gonna disappear
  • To this editor, the lyrics to Hoobastank's Born To Lead demonstrate that the person singing is most emphatically not born to lead.
  • The Dixie Chicks' "Goodbye Earl". It's got a reputation for being, well, 'empowering', but seriously. Listen to it while paying no attention to the lyrics. Then listen again. The titular Earl is an abusive deadbeat, and as the narrator relates with alarming relish, he just had to die. Fairly typical for a vengeful country song, but the fact that the most joyous chorus is the part describing his wife murdering him, wrapping him in a tarp and keeping him around for kicks and giggles.
    • The second chorus does involve them getting rid of the body...
  • "Chemical Bomb" by The Aquabats is a delightful, lighthearted tune in which the narrator expresses his lack of objection to his visions of world hunger, war, and Biblical apocalypse.
  • Sublime's "Wrong Way" is about a teenage prostitute. Although it's pretty blatent what the song is about, the cheery beat contrasts with the dark lyrics.
    • "Santeria", a cheerful song about a jealous ex-boyfriend attempting to reclaim his girlfriend, promising to kill the guy who took her ("and I won't think twice to stick that barrel straight down Sancho's throat") and possibly "slap her dead", applies.
    • And of course there's "Date Rape," a bouncy ska ditty about the titular crime that culminates with the perpetrator being convicted and having what he did to his victim done repeatedly to him by his cellmates.
  • The meaning of Rammstein's biggest hit depends on its spelling. If it's "Du Hasst Mich" (You Hate Me), then the song is suitably angry. However, it's also been spelled, "Du Hast Mich" (You Have Me), making it a love song. The lyrics work either way.
    • Actually, taken as part of the larger sentence "Du hast mich gefragt und ich hab nichts gesagt" ("You have asked me and I have said nothing.")it's definitely NOT a love song. The song's chorus is a shouted "Nein" to a German wedding vow. (Made quite starkly apparent in meaning in the video) However, the progressing nature of the lyrics probably mean "du hast mich" is a doubled hate/have leading up to the rest. To muddy the waters the english translation takes the "hate" meaning only and alters all the rest, leading to idiots on youtube "correcting" the accurate tranlation.
      • There's another pun in said German wedding vow: read as Willst du bis der Tod, der scheide . . . ? it means "Do you want, until the death which would separate . . . ?" Read it as . . . bis der Tod der Scheide and it becomes "until the death of the vagina," since Scheide (literally "separation") is German for "vagina." Rammstein loves its wordplay.
    • Rammstein also makes sure to prevent Lyrical Dissonance in their song "Amerika", by pointing out in English that "this is not a love song... I don't speak my mother tongue/no this is not a love song."
  • Gackt's "Kono Dare mo Inai Heya de" (In This Empty Room) slowly builds to ninety seconds of cheerful humming reminiscent of "Hey, Jude"...as the increasingly angsty lyrics make it clear that the singer is losing his mind after his lover's murder. Just to drive it home, the cheery music ends in a few ominous-sounding violin measures.
    • "Kalmia". While having a rather soft melodic rock sound to it with some minor and basic guitar solos that don't really hint at anything evil, the translated lyrics depict hearing (and apparently seeing) headless dolls laughing while staring at an otherwise destroyed town from afar, and a recalling of an apocalypse of sorts wherein everything vanishes and gets sucked up into the sky in what sounds like a killer tornado/hurricane. All while Gackt sings along, his voice giving no hint of terror of the situation, or any hint for that matter that this isn't just another one of his kooky rock ballads. However, a botanist, or even a seasoned gardener could tell you that the kalmia is a beautiful yet extremely poisonous flower.
  • The controversial "Read A Book" Video by T*Mite gained a lot of attention on BET for it's supposedly racist and stereotypical depiction of black culture, claiming it should be censored for children. Of course while the beat, rhythm and style of the song is modeled after dirty south (or crunk) rappers like Lil Jon, the lyrics tell positive messages and promote healthy lifestyle choices as well as a rejection of mainstream hip-hop excess in favor of reading, cleanliness, drinking water, parental responsibility and such.
  • Omoide was Oku Sen Man ("Memories are 110,000,000") is a song made of Japanese lyrics fitted to the Mega Man 2 Wily Castle theme and originally with that set as the background. The lyrics are of a man reminiscing about his childhood, wondering where his friends are, lamenting that all the seasons have passed him by, and continually nostalgizing about his childhood hero.
  • When this editor first heard Pikmin's "Ai no Uta" (Song of Love), he thought it was just a cute J-pop song. Then he saw what the lyrics translated into. Turns out that it's about the Pikmin loving Olimar despite doing his dirty work and probably getting eaten in the end. That they don't ask for Olimar's love in return puts this song in a whole new light for this editor.
    • Which makes a lot of sense really. The game itself is a version of this trope. Cutsey characters, in a horrible dog eat dog world. Pikmin 2 rams this home with it's oddly bittersweet feel and depressing back story shown in Olimar's letters. It's pretty much Miyamato's take on Darkerand Edgier.
  • Several songs from the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds album are beautifully composed AntiLoveSongs, particularly "God Only Knows" ("The world could show nothing to me / So what good would living do me? / God only knows what I'd be without you"), "Here Today" ("Well you know I hate to be a downer / But I'm the guy she left before you found her"). Additionally, "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times" is a rather upbeat tune about not fitting in with the rest of the world. Outside that album, there's the song Rhonda which, in a chirpy, catchy style, tells Rhonda that the singer is really wrapped up with this girl who dumped him, but would she like to be his rebound?
    • To chip in another $.02, since "Wendy" is on the same record, it seems like "Wendy left [him] alone," and thus he turned to help from Rhonda. There were owls pooping in his bed, after all.
  • Joe Jackson's Be My Number Two is similar — tender love-ballad melody, lyrics about how he wants a pliable girlfriend to comfort him after breaking up with a Tsundere. "Every time I look at you / You'll be who I want you to." At least the singer admits that "it's really not fair of me."
  • Then there's Never Learn Not To Love, which is a relatively inoffensive ditty in its own right, but turns several shades of creepy once you realize the lyrics were written by Charles Manson.
  • "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" by Monty Python could be taken either as disguised sarcasm (as in Life of Brian, where it's sung by guys who are being crucified), or as a slightly fractured inspirational song (as in Spamalot, the musical adaptation of Monty Python And The Holy Grail).
    • Add to that "Brave Sir Robin" from Monty Python And The Holy Grail and the musical Spamalot, in which Sir Robin's bard sings a cheery, Renaissance-sounding tune about Sir Robin getting horribly mutilated in battle. "His nostrils raped and his nozzle burned off", indeed.
  • Judas Priest's "Painkiller" is an immensely heavy metal song which could rival the very dark "Master of Puppets"... and it talks about a savior who helps mankind survives and basically ensures a happy ending. Halford screaming the vocals in a pretty insane tone probably doesn't help. Still, this troper is of the opinion that this only makes the song better.
    • Considering that the chorus says that the “savior” is “Faster than a lazer bullet/Louder than an atom bomb/Chromium plated boiling metal/Brighter than a thousand suns”, I don’t think he’s a savior at all. The rest of the lyrics can be found here
    • What about the "With Mankind resurrected/Forever to survive" bit?
  • The odd drone/monotone voice (er, it's better than it sounds) of The Magnetic Fields' lead vocalist makes everything sound dissonant, from "I Wish I Had an Evil Twin" (exactly what it sounds like) to "I Don't Want to Get Over You" (listing all of the things he could do to forget a lover).
  • Avenue Q. All of it. The musical styles you loved on Sesame Street, applied to topics like racism and pornography!
    • Lampshaded in "It Sucks To Be Me":
      Christmas Eve: Why you all so happy? [sic]
      Nicky: Because our lives suck!
  • Sugar Ray poke fun at this with an album intro called New Direction. The track's hard metal sound stands against lyrics like "Don't play ball in the house. Don't run with scissors. Be nice to cops."
  • Blink-182's "Adam's Song" is practically a suicide letter (except the last verse, in which the boy appears to have given up killing himself).
  • Most people think "I Second That Emotion" by The Miracles is a happy song. It's actually about a man leaving an unfaithful woman, and telling her that if she wants to commit, he'll take her back.
  • The first few verses of "Sort of Haunted House" by Too Much Joy seems like a wistful love song, with an upbeat, albeit slightly creepy, tempo. Then we find out that it's about a man who killed his girlfriend and her lover, and then hangs himself. Puts a whole new spin on the chorus.
  • Del Amitri much?
  • Queen's song "I Want To Break Free." Good beat, upbeat melody ... then we get to the lyrics, which describe leaving one lover for another even though "I can't get over the way you [the dumpee] love me like you do."
    • This editor had always heard that the song was about Freddie Mercury coming out, which made him wonder what on Earth Coca-Cola was thinking when they used it for a Diet Coke ad a few years back.
    • It recently struck this troper as she was listening to a Queen album, that the song "Fat-Bottomed Girls" is about preferring fat prostitutes over other women. Yes, this actually came as a surprise.
      • Worse, it's about preferring fat women due to the singer being abused by his fat nanny when young O_o
    • Speaking of Queen, there's Somebody to Love. The music is an upbeat, sweeping rock opera...about a man so lonely that he can barely get through his day without suffering and is begging for someone to love him.
  • The jaunty, upbeat Red Dwarf theme: "It's cold outside, there's no kind of atmosphere, I'm all alone, more or less..."
  • "Dead!" by My Chemical Romance. On it's own, a spiteful song telling someone they deserve the painful death they're experiencing, in the context of the The Black Parade story; it's the main character spitefully telling himself he deserves the painful death he's experiencing. And it's easily the most upbeat and catchy melody they've ever done, aside from maybe "Teenagers" though it's more upbeat in a punkish way that fits the lyrics.
    • Come to mention it, a good cross-section of "The Black Parade" concept album is like this.
    • Headfirst for Halos is really peppy too. It's about suicide.
  • At least half of Spring Awakening, although "My Junk" is a really cute upbeat song about masturbation. The fact that it's sung by twenty-year-olds playing fourtee