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"See, their song goes 'ding-ding-ding da-da ding-ding/ding-ding-ding da-da ding-ding',
and mine goes 'ding-ding-ding da-da ding-ding/ding-ding-ding-ding da-da ding-ding'.
It's totally different."
--Robert Van Winkle, a.k.a. "Vanilla Ice", comparing the bass line to his hit single "Ice Ice Baby" against that of David Bowie and Queen's "Under Pressure"
Want to use a popular song for your soundtrack, with or without the original lyrics, but don't have the money to get the rights? You can always get some studio musician to record The Jimmy Hart Version -- an instrumental version of the tune with a note tweaked here and there, designed to sound as much like the original as possible while being different enough not to break copyright.
A staple of shows that frequently feature parody songs or skits.
Named for Jimmy Hart, who did this constantly during his time as WCW's music director.
Contrast with In The Style Of where the song is covered, in a style as far from the original as possible.
Examples:
Live Action TV
- Used frequently in Professional Wrestling, especially in TNA (though it occasionally shows up in WWE; listen to the Full Blooded Italians' entrance music, and you'll be reminded of "No Sleep 'Till Brooklyn" by the Beastie Boys). WCW was an even worse offender before it got bought out, which is rather odd; they were a Time Warner subsidiary, and Time Warner owned most of the labels that were getting ripped off.
- Sesame Street's parodies almost always have original melodies, as PBS shows do not have the budget for ASCAP fees.
- Myth Busters has a number of songs that fit this trope, most blatantly an off-key version of Queen's "Keep Yourself Alive".
- The Rutles (a fictional band with its own telemovie back in the late 1970s and several "reunion tours" since) have plenty of Beatles sound-alike tunes in their repertoire (not surprising, since they're a Beatles parody), all composed by Neil Innes. However, BMI Records thought they didn't sound different enough, and, one lawsuit later, many of the songs on the original soundtrack were (and still are) legally credited to Innes, Lennon, and McCartney.
- Sometimes this happens when a TV show is released on DVD and the production company didn't manage to secure the license to the original music. For instance, the DVD release of Married With Children uses an instrumental opening song that's very reminiscent of, but not identical to, Frank Sinatra's "Love and Marriage"... unlike the original broadcasts, which actually did use Sinatra's song.
Anime
- For whatever reason, Gojou Shioji from Excel Saga appears to have "Another One Bites the Dust" as his theme song, with a few courtesy notes thrown in. This contributor suspects Vanilla Ice was involved.
- Similarly, Pedro's music is the guitar riff from House Of The Rising Sun, by the Animals.
- Two words: Hotaru California
 .
- As mentioned in the entry for Full Metal Panic, one background theme used in that series is incredibly similar to the theme from The A Team.
- One of Sagisu Shirou's pieces ("Decisive Battle") for Neon Genesis Evangelion is The Jimmy Hart Version of a John Barry composition, "007," used in the early James Bond films.
- The Italian version of Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch, which composed all-new songs, made many of them sound suspiciously like the songs they were replacing. Try comparing Assoluto Amore, Sara's Villain Song, with its original, Return to the Sea, and see what we mean.
- A closer similarity is within the original version of the series itself, and intentional: Tsubasa wo Daite, Michel's Villain Song, and Ashita ga Mienakute, Michal's Image Song. Their names already matched, as did the names of their birds, and they couldn't be active at the same time... but when their songs matched, all bets about coincidence were off.
Film
Western Animation
- The Simpsons hangs a lampshade on the trope when, at the opening ceremonies of a nationwide spelling bee, celebrity moderator George Plimpton announces "And now, our unlicensed knockoff of the Olympic anthem."
- It also played this one straight, in quite a lot of episodes. Who can forget 'Springfield, Springfield', or the whole of the episode 'Supercalifragalisticexpiali(annoyed grunt)tious'? The latter was a parody of Mary Poppins, and had some of the best of these you're likely to see anywhere - particularly Barney's version of 'Feed the Birds' ('Buy Me A Beer') and the family's version of 'Spoonful of Sugar' ('Cut Every Corner').
- The one that sticks in this editor's mind is the end of "Life on the Fast Lane", which parodies the end of An Officer and a Gentleman; you have to listen very carefully to the BGM to notice it isn't really "Love Lifts Us Up Where We Belong".
- This editor had to be told that the rambling song Homer sang in hopes of becoming a food critic was based around West Side Story's "I Feel Pretty".
- Hysteria, an educational cartoon about history, parodied a lot of songs with similar, but original, melodies. In the episode on Teddy Roosevelt, adapted versions of "Wooly Bully" (as "Bully Bully") and "Ghostbusters" (as "Trustbuster") were both used, altered enough to be free of royalties.
- Family Guy used to do this in its early seasons - e.g. "Give it Up" from the toad-licking one, which was a pastiche of "You're the One That I Want" from Grease. Lately they seem to be able to afford any song they want, and they've been going with straight lyrical parodies.
- The apotheosis: Peter singing about his Diplomatic Immunity with Can't Touch Me!, which includes the line "so Hammer you can't sue!" while talking to an animated MC Hammer.
- Jimmy Neutron does this all the time with their montage sequences. One notable one is a couple notes off from "Hey La" by the Black-Eyed Peas.
- Chowder has done this twice so far. In the episode "Grubble Gum", where Chowder's gigantic, all-consuming wad of gum starts picking up everything in its path: the background music, appropriately enough, is a lawyer-friendly version of the Katamari Damacy theme. The episode "Sniffle Ball" also has one scene blatantly parodying the classic Super Mario Bros fight with Bowser, to the tune of a variant on the classic underground theme.
- An early sketch in Robot Chicken features Voltron in a dance-off against a Robeast to an obvious parody of DMX's "Work It Out on the Floor". On the DVD version, the song is replaced with a horribly generic, lawyer-friendly take on the song.
Web Animation
- When a Web Animation series reaches a certain level of success (typically when it starts selling DVDs), the creator often goes back and removes any copyright infringement that was safe when the series was unknown. Bonus Stage is a good example: Matt eventually removed a multitude of unauthorized cameos from his earlier episodes (such as one by the Homestar Runner cast) and replaced the ska song in the credits with an instrumental facsimile called "Total Soundalike."
Video Games
- For some reason, the first-level theme from God Hand sounds a great deal like the theme song from Hawaii Five-O (odd, considering this is a Western-themed level).
- In Diddy Kong Racing, TT's theme bears more than a passing resemblance to Kool and the Gang's hit song Celebration.
- Guitar Superstar is a plug-'n'-play unit that's a complete and utter knockoff of Guitar Hero, complete with songs that are not only bad MIDI renditions, but Jimmy Hart Versions at that. Just to give an idea, one of the songs is called "Granite Man", which is somewhat reminiscent of "Iron Man". Watch this video just to see how awful it is.
- The Little Busters! soundtrack features a track entitled "Mission Possible," which is pretty much as close as they could get to the Mission Impossible theme song without actually being said theme song.
- Parts of the Doom and Doom II soundtracks were Jimmy Hart Versions of metal songs, but executed in such a fashion that few people really noticed. See this page for some comparisons.
- It should be noted that the guy that did most of the music for the games used to be a lawyer.
- Weirdly, the Nintendo DS game based on Futari Wa Pretty Cure Max Heart used Jimmy Hart Versions of several themes from the anime (most noticeable is the Marble Screw music). What's weird about this is that they used the real version of the show's opening theme song. That, and the whole "same franchise as the original music" thing.
- Even weirder, some stages in Super Mario Land used a theme that was The Jimmy Hart Version of the original Super Mario Bros. theme.
- The original arcade version of Taito's Rainbow Islands uses "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" (yes, the song from The Wizard Of Oz!) as its background music. Needless to say, there were some issues with licensing the music when the game was released on home systems. Many home computer ports of the game got away with using the original tune, but the American NES release uses a very noticeable Jimmy Hart Version; the European NES release uses an entirely different tune altogether; and re-releases on more recent systems, including the recent PC re-release, are back to Jimmy Hart Versions again.
- In a possibly unintentional case, the music in Tourian in the original Metroid resembles the music from Bowser's Castle in the original Super Mario Bros, especially the opening notes of the bassline. The resemblance is further notable in that Tourian is roughly the Metroid equivalent of Bowser's Castle, since the final boss confrontation takes place there.
- The second-level bosses in the Ninja Gaiden arcade game are a Lawyer Friendly Cameo of legendary Professional Wrestling tag team The Road Warriors, and their background music is even The Jimmy Hart Version of the Warriors' entrance theme, Black Sabbath's "Iron Man".
- Amidst the current Rickroll craze, some astute retrogamers have realized that Robo's theme from Chrono Trigger is actually a Jimmy Hart Version of Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up". That's right, Square Rickrolled us before Rickrolling was cool.
Commercials
- A commercial for gold coins has a recognizable parody of Morricone's "Ecstasy of Gold" (Tuco in the graveyard), while yelling the word "GOLD!" repeatedly.
- One commercial (I think it was for Levi's Jeans) wanted the rights to Tom Waits' "Step Right Up", apparently unaware that the song was an indictment of advertising in general. When they failed, they resorted to use of The Jimmy Hart Version, but it was close enough that they got sued.
- For some reason, the theme from the Old Spice commercials opens with two bars of "Scotland the Brave" and then goes off in a completely different direction.
- This troper just saw an American Express ad with a backing track that sounded suspiciously like ELO's "Mr. Blue Sky", except for the fact that it wasn't. The ad's even on YouTube, and several others have commented on the similarity as well.
- Commercials for proactiv.com, which sells facial cleansers, have a song in the b/g that sounds suspiciously like Bruce Hornsby's "The Way It Is"
- The Danup ad in Mexico features the Jimmy Hart version of "Good Vibrations" from the Beach boys.
- A chicken noodle soup commercial this troper remembers included a song which has a chorus very similar to the part of Green Day's American Idiot.
Live Action Comedy
- Comedian Frank Sidebottom once performed a sketch in which he claimed that 'after the first six notes you have to pay royalties'. He proceeded to perform a cover-version of the Star Wars theme tune, with a handful of notes played a semitone off at the times in the tune where they would sound the most agonisingly painful.
- Similarly, a Saturday Night Live sketch featured Jon Lovitz as the host of a program presenting an unauthorized adaptation of Disney's "Snow White", who explains that it's legally not plagiarism as long as every third note is different.
- Parodied by Harry Hill in Harry Hill's TV Burp in a segment where he mocks a wildlife show for using a cheap rendition of the James Bond theme, as shown here.
Music
- In a hilarious-but-serious example, rapper Vanilla Ice tried to play off his obvious plagiarism of a Queen and David Bowie song by adding one note to the bass line of one of his songs, which you can see at the top of the page. Not everybody bought it.
- Seriously? This troper just thought he sampled it, which is common pratice in hip-hop songs nowadays. Of course the difference between sampling and plagarism is uh......
- David Hasselhoff's "Crazy For You" all but shares its tune with, of all songs, "YMCA".
- David Bowie tried to do a lyrically less-than-faithful glam rock version of "Comme d'Habitude," but Paul Anka took the rights from under him for "My Way." He changed the tune slightly (but not the chord progression), and the result was "Life on Mars."
- When you've got some time, sit down with Rage Against The Machine's ''Wake Up'' and Led Zepplin's ''Kashmir''.
- Australian musical comedy group Tripod have, on occasion, included a version of the MASH theme in their concerts. When the concert was being recorded to be put on DVD, the song had to be changed - the last note of every phrase goes in a different direction (the final note in the first line, for example, goes up rather than down.)
- In the musical Dames At Sea, "That Mister Man Of Mine" has a melody mostly copied from "The Man I Love".
- The "Nightingale Lullaby" from the musical Once Upon a Mattress includes an obvious pastiche of the Lullaby from Stravinsky's ballet music for The Firebird.
- Linkin Park's "Shadows Of A Day" was rather heavily criticized for it's uncanny resemblence to U2's "With or Without You".
- Metallica's "The Four Horsemen" and Megadeth's "Mechanix" bare a massive resemblence. The reason? Dave Mustaine while a member of Metallica wrote the song "The Mechanix" which is included in some of their early demos. However when he was kicked from the band's roster they kept the song and rewrote the lyrics and some parts and made "The Four Horsemen". Later when Mustaine formed Megadeth he dropped the "The" in the same and sped up the main riff and included the track on his debut album.
- There's a youtube series called "Metal that sounds like other metal" based all around this trope, pointing out the similarities between songs intentional or not.
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