The Cover Changes The Meaning / Serial Reinterpreters

• Absolutely any cover made by Laibach. One notable example is their version of Queen's "One Vision," which is translated into German to highlight the unintentional fascist undertones of the original. Compare this to this.
  • Another good example is Laibach's cover of "Sympathy for the Devil". While the original Rolling Stones version sounds as if Lucifer is just some sort of Trickster, the Laibach version makes it sound as if Lucifer is just toying with someone before sucking their soul out of their nose.
• Tori Amos's cover album Strange Little Girls is entirely based on this trope—every song is originally male-written and sung and reinterpreted from a female point of view. The musical arrangements are changed wildly but the lyrics are nearly the same — the largest change is a missing verse in "I Don't Like Mondays", and none of the changes are enough to change the meaning of the song without the radical changes to the arrangement. Most notable is a cover of Eminem's "'97 Bonnie and Clyde," done from the perspective of the dead woman in the trunk. It's good but insanely creepy.
  • The results were mixed: she did lovely, lovely covers of "Rattlesnakes," "Enjoy The Silence," "Time," and "Real Men." However, the covers of "Heart of Gold" and "Happiness is a Warm Gun" were... not some of her best work, to say the least. (The cover of "Happiness is a Warm Gun" is something like ten minutes long.). It is worth noting that "Heart of Gold" is practically a garage-rock song in her hands.
    • Her version of "Raining Blood" managed to creep out Slayer. They sent her a T-shirt.
  • And then there's Tori Amos' version of Britney Spears' "...Baby One More Time" which turns it into something sensual and dreamy.
  • Amos enjoys doing this in general: since she can pick up a song just by listening to it, she tends in live concerts to, say, turn "Livin' On a Prayer" into a sensitive piano ballad. Part of the reason her concerts get so heavily bootlegged is that this is pretty much the only way to get those covers.
• "Weird Al" Yankovic's polka medleys deserve an honorable mention.
  • In particular, the line "Dont'cha wish your girlfriend was fun like me?" sounds way different coming from Al than Ms. Fanservice.
  • As do the "I Kissed A Girl" lines from "Polka Face".
• The film Across the Universe (2007) seemed to enjoy doing this to various Beatles hits, the most memorable being "I Want To Hold Your Hand" re-imagined as a tragic song about a closeted lesbian pining for an unrequited crush. "Dear Prudence", following up on that theme, has said character literally locking herself in a closet, with the main characters urging her to "come out". On the opposite side was "Come Together," which was performed just right.
  • The best example has to be "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" from Abbey Road, which John Lennon originally wrote about his obsession with Yoko Ono. Across the Universe had it sung by army recruitment officers (who happen to live right in the middle of the Uncanny Valley) as Max is being drafted. Towards the end of the song, the drafted soldiers are carrying the Statue of Liberty as a battering ram through the Vietnamese jungle while they lament "She's so HEAVY!" It is very symbolic.
• Another Beatles example: The soundtrack to i am sam is full of modern covers of Beatles songs. While most are just straight-up covers, Howie Day's cover of "Help!" and Paul Westerberg's "Nowhere Man" are both slow, sad, minor-key versions of the original upbeat major-key songs, and change the meaning of the songs significantly. Interestingly enough, John Lennon's original take on "Help!" was closer to Day's cover, but he was told to make it up-tempo so it would sell as a single. In that regard, the cover is closer to the song's original meaning, since Lennon was fairly distraught when he wrote it.
• A third Beatles example is In My Life, a Cover Album of Beatles covers produced by George Martin, sung or performed entirely by famous people. Most of the songs are straightforward but a few have their original meaning amplified or even changed entirely:
  • A Hard Day's Night (Goldie Hawn) is turned into a sexy swing song.
  • A Day In The Life (Jeff Beck) amplifies the despair inherent in the original to the point of Tear Jerker.
  • Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite (Billy Connolly) turns the whole thing back into the PT Barnum poster it was, by having Connolly sound like a ringleader and playing up the circus music sound.
  • In My Life (Sean Connery) is turned into a spoken word song, that sounds like an old man reflecting on his long life and on what he has now, effectively reversing the original meaning. This carries some extra weight considering this was the last song on the last album George Martin ever produced.
    • Ozzy Osbourne's cover of "In My Life" is similar - it's slowed down considerably to the point of being a mournful tribute to the people in Ozzy's life who he lost too soon (particularly his first wife, Thelma Riley, who left him due to his drug use, and his guitarist and friend, Randy Rhoads, who died in a plane crash), with the second verse becoming an obvious tribute to Sharon.
• In the 1978 film Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Paul's bouncy tribute to his father "When I'm 64" is turned into a creepy song sung by the evil old Mr Mustard as he kidnaps young Strawberry Fields.
  • Later, the Big Bad, played by Steven Tyler, sings "Come Together" about his Evil Plan to brainwash the planet.
• Jad Fair and Daniel Johnson's cover of "Tomorrow Never Knows" turns what was merely a trippy ode to LSD into a song about demon possession. The lyrics fit unsettlingly well.
• "I Wanna Be Your Man", a Lennon-McCartney "throw-away", was written as Ringo's signature song for live performances, but also given to The Rolling Stones. The contrast between the two recorded versions nicely sums up the classic Beatles vs. Stones debate: the Beatles version is bouncy, cheerful and up-tempo, while the Stones version is darker, brassier and more insistent.
• The Beatles themselves did this with Ringo Starr's cover of the song "Boys", a case of The Cover Changes the Gender. The original, by girl group The Shirelles, was about how great boys are. Their version is from a male perspective, but it's about how great his own gender is, coming off as a tongue-in-cheek number about the singer and his friends attempting to pick up girls. The lyrics are changed slightly to support this ("Mama says when you kiss my lips / I'll get a thrill through my fingertips" becomes "My girl says when I kiss her lips / She gets a thrill through her fingertips"). It arguably works far better than the original.
• Several of the cuts on the album that Tom Waits did Heigh-Ho for (Stay Awake: Various Interpretations of Music from Vintage Disney Films) is made up of these:
  • Sun Ra and His Arkestra do a cover of Pink Elephants On Parade that's positively surreal. (As if the original wasn't already??)
  • Buster Poindexter and The Banshees Of Blue do Castles In Spain. Their version sounds like it's being sung by a completely amoral monster.
  • What Sinéad O'Connor does to Someday My Prince Will Come has to be heard to be believed. "Cynical" doesn't even begin to describe it.
• The Residents have made not one, but four albums consisting of experimental covers of music from the '50s and '60s, including The Third Reich 'n Roll. Most of the material on these albums either make the song sound darker or more ridiculous or actually amplify the original's true meaning.
  • The King And Eye alternates Cover Versions of songs made popular by Elvis Presley and narration consisting of a cynical, simplified version of Elvis' career as told to children, implying the songs are being reinterpreted as being about Elvis himself. The most obvious example is "Love Me Tender", coming near the end of the album, where it's re-contextualized from being a love song to being about Elvis pleading for the adoration of the public; as the singing keeps getting more desperate sounding, the music starts getting drowned out by clashing samples of The Rolling Stones, The Animals, The Yardbirds, and Music/The Beatles (covering "Blue Suede Shoes", a song that was covered earlier on the album) - the idea being that Elvis became eclipsed by similar blues and rock and roll-based British groups during The British Invasion.
• They Might Be Giants have done this to their own songs, "Robot Parade". The original is a synth-filled kid-friendly song, while the "Adult" version is pure heavy metal that makes you figure that the cyborg in the said song annihilates the world. Or at least runs around blowing up bad guys.
  • They also redid "She Thinks She's Edith Head". Long Tall Weekend has the original, angry, slightly grating version - the singer is obviously very frustrated by the girl's pretensions. On Mink Car, though, the singer is scornful, but not angry, and the melody and vocals are much smoother.
  • And on the same album, the rerecording of "First Kiss". The new version is a touching ballad love song. The original, as featured on their live album Severe Tire Damage, is hard rock and is rather jarring if you heard the studio remake first.
    • Alternatively, if you heard the live version first, the lust and passion seem to have gone out of the song and it sounds a little wistful and nostalgic (though contented enough).
  • They also have a song called "Pet Name" which does this within the same song. It starts out sounding unhappy and frustrated about the ebbing of the tenderness in the relationship and ends up upbeat and happy that the couple have gotten past the lovey-dovey stage and on to something real. This is all conveyed through the arrangement and delivery, not the lyrics.
  • In a more traditional version of this trope, John Flansburgh recorded an eerie, drum machine-heavy version of Gary Glitter's "Hello Hello, I'm Back Again" with Joshua Fried that makes the song sound almost like a death threat.
  • Their song "Black Ops" from Nanobots is a slow, ominous song about secret agents. An alternate version from Dial-a-Song 2015 and Phone Power is much peppier and faster-paced, and sounds more like an ode to the Tuxedo and Martini style of spy fiction, much like their earlier song "Spy".
• Blue Öyster Cult has also done this with a few of their own songs; a country song called I'm on the Lamb But I Ain't No Sheep was re-recorded with heavy metal instrumentals for their second album as The Red and the Black, and Subhuman and Astronomy on the Secret Treaties album both received mellower, synthesizer-heavy redos for Imaginos.
• Puncolle Voice Actress' Legendary Punk Collection is a collection of covers of punk and grunge songs by J-pop idols, turning songs like "Anarchy in the UK" and "Smells Like Teen Spirit" into something rather surreal. Samples here.
  • And on the flip side to that, the Punk Goes... album collection is arguably trying to evoke this trope. Such as Punk Goes Pop, or Punk Goes Crunk.
• All of the Disneymania CD's where Disney music, from ballads to comedy routines are re-imagined as jazzy speed-pop music. It's surreal to say the least and in many cases ruins the gentle flow of the music. Ironically enough, the covers of 'Cruella De Ville' mostly avert this trope.
  • Notably, the Jonas Brothers' cover of "Poor Unfortunate Souls" gets a lot creepier with a gender flip. When a noticeably villainous female is telling you to "hold [your] tongue" to get guys to like you, you know it's not true. (Well, except that in Real Life it sometimes is....) When hot boys are singing it, and the hot boys are supposed to be virgin icons of teen hormones... yeah. And the slight change of lyrics in the first verse ("well, a witch" being changed to "kinda strange", "switch" being changed to "change", and "magic" being changed to "secret") makes the song sound like a drug dealer talking about his customers. Of course, the video makes the changes more positive - what was a song about making a Deal with the Devil becomes a song about how adults are forbidding kids to play in a pool, making them poor unfortunate souls.
  • The additional lyrics of Emily Osment's version of "Once Upon a Dream" from Sleeping Beauty seem to change a song about a princess finding the prince of her dreams into a song about a girl wishing to get back together with a boy she went on at least one date with.
• Metallica has a habit of covering songs and making them... somewhat darker.
  • For example, Bob Seger's "Turn The Page" - the original was a slightly bitter lament about a musician's life on the road. Metallica's version sounds like said musician is one bad gig away from turning a shotgun on somebody. The music video turned it further by showing us a day in the life of a sex worker trying (and failing) to shield her daughter from the hardship and desperation of their lives. The song becomes a cry of rage against a world that locks her in such a life and then has the gall to look down on her for it.
    • For added Mood Whiplash, watch the video, then listen to "No Leaf Clover".
    Then it comes to be, that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel, is just a freight train coming your way.
  • Their cover of Garbage's "Only Happy When It Rains" drains all the irony from the original song. What was once a mocking look at the pretentiousness and self-absorption of the grunge scene is now a completely straight-faced emo song.
  • Queen's "Stone Cold Crazy" is certainly tongue-in-cheek ("walking down the street/shooting people that I meet/with my rubber tommy water gun"). Metallica's version is certainly sociopathic ("walking down the street/shooting people that I meet/with my fully loaded tommy gun"), with some Precision F-Strike thrown in because why not? ("try fuckin' gettin' me/Gotta fuckin' get up and run")
• The entire "vocalese" subgenre of jazz does this by necessity, as it consists in adding lyrics to songs that were originally instrumentals.
• Modern jazz trio The Bad Plus has made some mainstream success in doing this. Some of their covers capture the same energy as the original, but some defy the original intention. For example, their take on "Iron Man", for the most part, is loud and doom-y like the original, but the last time they play the famous riff, they change the key from minor to major, giving it a finish-line-style feeling of triumph. Maybe their best example of CCTM is the Bee Gee's "How Deep is Your Love", in which they employ vocalist Wendy Lewis to turn the lovey-dovey disco hit into a quietly psychotic plea from an obsessed woman to her love interest.
• Recent Disney stars cover other Disney songs. However, it's possible that they don't really fit under this trope since they don't change the meaning — they rip it away completely.
• Susanna and the Magical Orchestra's album Melody Mountain was a whole album of these. Their cover of AC/DC's 'Long Way to the Top' is positively tragic.
• The Kid Stuff Repertory Company recorded this album in which they sang their own version of the songs from You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. Among their weird interpretations of the songs, the most notable is that their version of the title song goes from sounding fun and boisterous to something you'd expect to hear at a funeral.
• Hong Kongers use this trope very frequently.
  • Green Water, Clear Breeze, Hong Konger cover for Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind's Ending Theme Tori no Hito, not only changed the style from a light classical that resembles Ode of Joy into a majestic 1980s pop With Lyrics more fit of a National Anthem:
    With you we prospect
    and new paths we'll pave
    May it shine, this new light and spirit
    together we create the glorious and resounding!
  • Another example: Luis Miguel's Culpable o no? cover Who hasn't been wrong? were of completely different content. The former is "just tell a lie to me that you haven't cheated" while the latter is mainly "why do my life sucked so hard?"
• Neofolk group Death in June covered some songs from a gospel album recorded by Jim Jones's People's Temple Choir. It got creepier.
• Richard Cheese cover of The Killer's Somebody Told Me turns the song from the angry, in your face Brit-pop styling to a melancholic reflection by a washed-out alcoholic with no game. Richard Cheese in general is known for taking songs of various meanings and turning them into lounge-type music, often to hilarious results.
• Glee does this regularly:
  • A mash-up which only uses the chorus "Young Girl" changed the meaning from a man struggling with attraction towards a woman who ends up being an underage girl^note "Young girl get out of my mind/My love for you is way out of line" to a man reprimanding an underage girl for trying to seduce him.^note "Young girl, you're out of your mind/Your love for me is way out of line". The verses were from "Don't Stand So Close to Me", which is also changed from a teacher being accused of a relationship with his student to a teacher stressing to said student that such a relationship would be inappropriate.
  • They managed to turn "Poker Face" into a bittersweet duet between ingenue Rachel and her biological mother about how it's best that they keep their distance from each other.
  • They also managed to turn "I Want to Hold Your Hand" into a solo about a son's love for his father. It is heartbreaking. (The Glee version of this song is based on the cover from Across the Universe (2007), where it's about one girl's inability to tell another that she's in love with her.)
  • They also turned "Landslide" from a song about a woman questioning whether she would break up with her childhood sweetheart into a song about a young woman realizing that she is in love with her (female) best friend. It is utterly insane how the lyrics fit both these scenarios.
  Well, I have been afraid of changes, / because I've built my life around you / But time makes you bolder, and children grow older / And I'm getting older too!
  • "Only The Good Die Young" goes from a song about wanting to get into a Catholic girl's pants to a song about ignoring religious restrictions and enjoying life.
  • "Losing My Religion" is an Obsession Song in the vein of "Every Breath You Take", as lead singer Michael Stipe has often explained. The title is a Southern expression (R.E.M. are from Georgia) for losing one's temper and behaving violently. Glee, on the other hand, seem to have taken the title literally since they made it into a song about Finn questioning his faith in God.
  • Their cover of "Isn't She Lovely?" changes it from being about the singer's newborn daughter to Artie serenading Brittany in order to apologize for accidentally calling her stupid the previous episode. They whack a giant lampshade on it by having Mercedes point out "I thought this song was about a baby." to Kurt.
  • "I Kissed A Girl" is originally a song about a girl simply fooling around and kissing other girls because she thinks it's fun. The second time it was used on Glee (the first being as Tina's audition song), it was a Take That! against the entire concept: all girls in the show, gay and straight, get together to sing it in public to support a lesbian student who was being bullied. ^note "Screw you. I kissed a girl, and I liked it."
  • The Warblers' performance of "Glad You Came" by The Wanted. The original song is just about how the singer is glad they ran into a beautiful girl. However, Sebastian and the Warblers' performance comes after Dave Karofsky is the victim of homophobic bullying that leads to him attempting suicide, and Sebastian himself feels responsible since he himself had been mean to Dave when they first met at the gay bar. With that context, it's clear that the song is now about being glad somebody is still around, and that the world is better with them in it.
  • Their cover of Gotye's "Somebody That I Used To Know" tried to change the meaning from a Break-Up Song to a song about an unfulfilling platonic relationship between two brothers. Of course, it still sounded a lot like a Break-Up Song, and the fact that it was sung by Blaine (a gay character) and his brother (played by Matt Bomer, who is gay) really didn't help things.
  • The acoustic cover of Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream" manages to do this for both the original and the first cover Glee did. Back in season 2, it was as happy a song as the original, only between two gay guys. The second version is also sung by Blaine to Kurt, but here he breaks down crying because he's cheated on him and they'll soon break up.
    • This version is also an example outside the show: it was a piano arrangement made by Darren Criss, which he often sang at his own shows. There it changed from a song about teenage sex to a thank you to his fans for letting him live his teenage dream.
  • "If I Were A Boy", sung by Unique Adams, who is a transgender character about the harassment and bullying she faces from the jocks. Her version reflects the incomprehension of others and how they badly treat people who are different. Overall, a very heartbreaking cover.
  • ABBA's "The Winner Takes it All" was originally a bittersweet ballad about the singer accepting that their previous love has moved on. The version performed by Will and Sue in the Grand Finale is about Sue finally ceding defeat and telling Will that after five hard years, he finally beat her.
  • Their cover of "Problem" by Ariana Grande is partially a Breaking the Fourth Wall Answer Song, as song was partially written by Big Sean about star Naya Rivera with Rivera hitting back at him.
• The Red Hot + Blue AIDS benefit compilation consists of reinterpretations of Cole Porter songs. For example, Erasure's version of Too Darn Hot from Kiss Me, Kate.
  • U2's version of "Night and Day" puts the song, usually done as a light jazz arrangement and sung playfully, behind an unrelenting robotic dance beat and ominous synth swells, with Bono singing the verses in a steady monotone, to highlight the obsessive, stalkerish aspect of the song ("In the silence of my lonely room I think of you ... night and day").
• Pretty much Me First and the Gimme Gimmes whole hat. They only release covers, with each album focusing on a specific type of song (Classic pop standards on Blow in the Wind, show tunes on Are a Drag, etc.), all covered as upbeat pop-punk versions. For some of the sadder songs ("Rocket Man" and "Delta Dawn" come immediately to mind), this makes them come across much Lighter and Softer.
• The Muppet Show did numerous cover versions which often gave a literal twist to the lyrics. For example, The Beatles 'I'm Looking Through You' was originally about a couple arguing. The Muppets version is sung by two ghosts to a third.
  • Much more blatant was their alteration of "For What It's Worth" from a war protest song to one protesting hunting, sung from the animals' perspective.
  • Not to mention "I've got you under my skin", a duet with a monster and his meal.
  • There was also a cover of Al Jolson's signature song, "You Made Me Love You (I Didn't Want To Do It)". Some of the words are changed as Cookie Monster is singing a love letter to a cookie, which he eats. It was covered by Judy Garland earlier, which makes it about a young girl's crush on movie star Clark Gable.
  • Vincent Price once did a cover of "You've Got A Friend" with Uncle Deadly, which made it seem that having Vincent come running to see you again whenever you speak his name is not a good thing. Sadly, that song was cut from the box set DVDs.
  • The original version of "Windmills of Your Mind" by Noel Harrison, from The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), is a slow and melancholy song about nostalgia and lost love. The Muppets did a fast-paced, frantic version that turned it into a Sanity Slippage Song.
• Homestuck has a lot of Recurring Riffs and some of the more popular ones are reinterpreted in a lot of different moods and ways. For example, Homestuck Anthem is a very slow, somewhat melancholy song. Anthem, on the other hand, is upbeat and victorious.
  • Dianne Warren's "How Do I Live" and "I Don't Want to Miss A Thing" were once perfectly straightly-intended, honest, if cliché, award bait songs. Then Michael Bowman of the Homestuck music team covered them, giving them both a facetious satirical Stylistic Suck treatment almost dripping in cheese and irony, emphasising just how incredibly silly they are. Bowman later acknowledged their original intention when releasing a second "How Do I Live" cover, this one played even straighter and serious than the original version, saying that he wanted to give a perfectly good song its dues in intent.
• Mark Kozelek's What's Next To The Moon, a whole album of AC/DC songs turned into folky acoustic ballads, tends to make Bon Scott's frequent Intercourse with You songs such as "Walk All Over You" and "Love At First Feel" seem outright romantic. In AC/DC's version of the latter, the narrator is bragging about sex with a younger, possibly underage girl- Kozelek makes some slight lyrical changes and adds a more wistful melody, which makes it seem like both of them were teens and he's just reminiscing about his first time.
• Vitamin String Quartet, Vitamin Piano Series, and Pickin' On Series make a business out of making songs into string instrumentals, piano instrumentals, and bluegrass tunes respectively. In some cases, this vastly changes the feel of the song.
• The radio panel game I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue has a round entitled One Song To The Tune Of Another, which consists of the panel singing, well, one song to the tune of another. This has resulted in some massive Lyrical Dissonance and changed meanings — one of the most beloved is "Girlfriend In A Coma" to the tune of "Tiptoe Through The Tulips", which makes the tone sound way more cheerful than in the original as if sung by someone who really doesn't want his girlfriend to survive and sees this as a great opportunity.
• The Beautiful South's 'Golddiggas, Headnodders and Pholk Songs' takes, among many others, S Club-7's "Don't Stop Moving" from an upbeat pop song about good music at a club to a slow, almost threatening song about spinning out of control under the hand of an unseen puppet-master, and their cover of "You're The One That I Want" from Grease takes it down a few notches and turns it sensuous and decadent.
• The Better Beatles' whole formula was turning The Beatles' cheerier-sounding hits into deliberately cold, detached Post-Punk - usually making the songs virtually unrecognizable except for the lyrics. The main point seemed to just be trying to dismantle the "sacred" reputation of The Beatles with irreverence, but at times this approach did paint the lyrics in a different light: For instance, The Beatles' "Paperback Writer" seemed to be mocking the narrator's ambitions, but The Better Beatles version brings the tempo down to a dirge and has the lyrics sung in a more pleading manner, making it feel more like a sincere depiction of a desperate starving artist.
• Limp Bizkit did it twice, helped by modifying the lyrics. George Michael's "Faith" becomes more egocentric ("I know not everybody has got a body like you" -> "has got a body like me") and The Who's "Behind Blue Eyes", in addition to losing a whole verse in lieu of a spelling bridge, adds even more angst ("No one knows what it's like, to be mistreated\ To be defeated, behind blue eyes \And no one knows how to say, that they're sorry \ And don't worry, I'm not telling lies").
• Pretty much any cover by Boyce Avenue manages to change a pop song into a genuinely romantic ballad.
  • The best example is, of all things "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" by Taylor Swift. Original version is about a woman cruelly denying her ex a chance with her and sarcastically saying how she'll miss fighting and hating each other. The cover actually shows genuine regret in ending an on/off relationship that isn't good for either party and wishing things were different, showing that they may legitimately miss the fighting.
• Karaoke Advice: Never EVER gender-flip Blondie's "One Way or Another". Sadly, One Direction did not heed that advice. Granted, they do leave out the parts about ditching the other person.
• Up-and-comer Chase Holfelder does this with his series of videos called "Major to Minor":
  • One includes turning "The Star-Spangled Banner" from a war hymn about perseverance to a requiem for a fallen nation.
  • "Animals" by Neon Trees is a Silly Love Song. Holfelder's "major to minor" cover makes the song incredibly predatory and creepy. It sounds more like a Murder Ballad or song about a Stalker with a Crush.
  • American Author's song "Best Day Of My Life" is an unironically happy song about having a good day. Holfelder's cover turns it into something akin to a Villain Song.
  • His take on The Police's "Every Breath You Take" kills the Lyrical Dissonance entirely.
  • "I Dreamed A Dream" goes despair to bitten, broken anger.
• Postmodern Jukebox:
  • Quite a few of their covers don't change the wording so songs like "Wiggle", "Careless Whisper" and "Creep" become about lesbians in the early to mid-20th century.
  • Their cover of "Gangsta Paradise" reinterprets it as being about early 20th-century gangsters.
  • Actually subverted for many of their songs, which are quite different musically but retain the original meaning. Take, for example, their version of Talk Dirty, which still is about travelling around the world and partying (and having sex with) many different women - despite being a Jewish klezmer.
• For lowbrow laughs, the band My Dick performs nothing but covers of pop songs replacing many of the words in the lyrics with "dick," "my dick," etc. For instance, their version of Wang Chung's "Everybody Have Fun Tonight" makes a song about dancing and partying sound like a song about a Gag Penis (due to lines like "Rip it up / get down to the ground" changing to "My dick up / My dick down to the ground").
• Anal Cunt has covered many songs, but they tend to have two main ways of reinterpreting songs:
  • One is to take a soft or otherwise innocuous song like "Stayin' Alive" by The Bee Gees and turning it into a much faster, angrier-sounding song.
  • The other is to do a more musically straightforward version of a song with altered lyrics. For example, most of the Howard Wulkan is Bald EP takes pop songs and changes the lyrics to make the song about their friend Howard Wulkan's lack of hair. For example, George Thorogood's "Bad to the Bone" becomes "Bald to the Bone."
• The Passion Live (2016), a Jukebox Musical by Fox, changes the meaning of all the songs featured to suit the Passion of Jesus. Examples include:
  • Trisha Yearwood makes her live performances as the Virgin Mary (mother of Jesus), trying to contact her son with attempts to be comforting and maternal, with songs like "My Love Is Your Love", "Hands", "I Won't Give Up", and "You'll Never Walk Alone", before ending up mourning the loss of her son with a farewell speech called "Broken".
  • Chris Daughtry's version of Evanescence's "Bring Me to Life" is different: while the original version was about "an incident in a restaurant, open-mindedness, and waking up to the things which are missing in the protagonist's life", his version is about a Judas Iscariot in turmoil, fighting his inner battles over whether or not to betray Jesus.
  • "Demons" by Imagine Dragons. While the original was a Break-Up Song about a protagonist warning their significant other of their flaws, here it's a song of betrayal, with Judas Iscariot (Chris Daughtry) and Jesus (Jencarlos Canela) exchanging Volleying Insults and "The Reason You Suck" Speeches against each other along with Argumentum Ad Nauseam/No, You before Jesus gets arrested by a SWAT Team.
    Judas: No matter what we breed,
    We still are made of greed.
    Jesus: This is my kingdom come...
    Judas: [shoots back] This is my kingdom come!
  • Jencarlos' performance of "With Arms Wide Open" by Creed is different: the original was about a man who is about to become a father to his unborn child who will grow up to become like him, whereas Jencarlos' version is about Jesus demonstrating his heavenly Father and his Last Supper to his disciples and giving them examples to follow, that they should do as he did. (John 13)
    • This is followed by his performance of Train's "Calling All Angels", involving Jesus' bitter anguish and demand for a heavenly sign as he agonizes in the Garden of Gethsemane.
  • Prince Royce's performance of Hoobastank's "The Reason" (about a man trying to make amends to his Love Interest) sticks with St. Peter feeling deep regret over what he has done to Jesus by denying him.
  • Seal and Jencarlos' performance of Tina Turner's "We Don't Need Another Hero" (about children growing up in a dystopian future and wanting to escape to a "life beyond the Thunderdome") becomes an Angry Mob Song about the crowds wanting to rid themselves of rebellion and blasphemy by handing Jesus (their so-called Messiah and hero) over to crucifixion, unaware of the consequences of their actions they must face.
    • This is followed by Seal's performance of Tears for Fears' "Mad World", turning the theories of author Arthur Janov into an executioner's BSoD Song.
  • Jencarlos' Rooftop Concert performance of Katy Perry's "Unconditionally" becomes God's unconditional love for all humanity shown via Jesus' resurrection.
• Parodied in "Happy Sad Songs and Sad Happy Songs" which, true to form, changes the key of various songs. "Happy" by Pharrell Williams sounds sarcastic while "All Of Me" by John Legend is less romantic and more like a Break-Up Song.
• The game Bioshock Infinite is set in 1912, but features many songs written much later in history. This is explained as a songwriter from Columbia using Tear technology to hear songs being played in other worlds and timelines, which he then plagiarizes. Some of these are just straight covers of the originals, just shifted to the genres and musical styles popular in 1912 (such as a jazzy, cotton-club-style cover of "Tainted Love"), but others actually do change the meanings too, often to reflect Columbia's bizarre culture.
  • The song "Everybody Wants To Rule The World" by Tears for Fears was about the Cold War. ^note The original title was "Everybody Wants to Go to War", but their producer nixed it because it wasn't catchy enough. The Bioshock cover makes it softer, cozy, and romantic. Rather than being cynical and vibrant, it sounds more satisfied with one's lot in life, and calmly watching the struggles of other people, perhaps reflecting Columbia's isolationist stance with the rest of the planet.
  • "Goodnight, Irene" is a classic folk song about losing a beloved wife and coping with misery and suicidal thoughts. When you hear it in Bioshock, it's being happily sung by a large crowd swaying in a festival and sounds more like a drinking song. The actual meaning of the song doesn't seem any different, but it seems to have been hit hard by Lyrical Dissonance in being brought to Columbia.
  • Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Fortunate Son" was an anti-war protest song about the hypocrisy of the upper class during the Vietnam war. The Bioshock version is an acapella rendition sung by a single woman who sounds worn out and exhausted. Columbia still legalizes slavery, allows robber barons, and has a downtrodden lower class living under its glittery surface; the cover is less about rebelling against the upper class and more a tragic send-up of being trapped at the bottom.
  • "God Only Knows" by The Beach Boys was a pretty, lilting song about the singer loving someone else fondly. The cover featured in Bioshock Infinite switches it to a Barbershop Quartet, but retains precisely the same lyrics and for the most part the same mood. However, as the song goes on the tempo gets slower and slower, and the quartet sounds more and more solemn. By the end, where the singers are repeating a drawn-out "Without youuuuu," you realize this isn't just about how much you love someone, but how difficult it is to move on when that special person is no longer in your life. The game plays this over the ending credits, reflecting Elizabeth's sadness over Booker's death.
• The Hamilton Mixtape featured reimaginings of several of the songs from Hamilton. While most aren't straight covers, and some only take a single line or two and remix it, they tend to use similar music in vastly different arrangements, so they still (somewhat) count:
  • "My Shot" is a cover of the song from the show of the same name. The meaning is largely the same but has removed any references to the American Revolution (although it does mention Hamilton and Hercules Mulligan by name) and makes it a generic political anthem.
  • "Wrote My Way Out" is a cover of "Hurricane" from the show, and turns a song about Hamilton trying to figure out what to do in the midst of a crisis in his life into a song about being a "smart" kid in the hood.
  • "Immigrants (We Get the Job Done)" is a cover of "Yorktown (the World Turned Upside Down)" from the show, and is probably the most changed song in the mixtape, going from a fairly straightforward retelling of the Battle of Yorktown into an anthem about the difficulties of Hispanic and Latino immigrants living in America.
  • "Say Yes To This" is a cover of "Say No To This" and tells the story of a woman trying to convince her man to commit to her. It's presumably from the perspective of Maria Reynolds (who seduces Hamilton in the song "Say Yes To This" is covering), but it's left ambiguous.
  • "Washingtons By Your Side" is a cover of "Washington on Your Side" and changes the meaning from complaining about George Washington's obvious favoritism of Hamilton to a song about how lonely it is on the top.
  • "Who Tells Your Story" is a cover of "Who lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story" and removes the specificity of the original, instead making it a generic song about legacy as opposed to directly about Hamilton.
• Hidden Citizens has an album where they reinterpret songs in more dramatic and scarier interpretations. "I Ran (So Far Away)" becomes about running for your life, "Somebody's Watching Me" becomes about trying to escape a murderer, while "I (Just) Died In Your Arms Tonight" is about someone literally dying.
• Kidz Bop is a series of albums that have kids singing popular songs. They often Bowdlerise the lyrics for preteens. However, this ends up heavily changing the theme of the song. Two egregious examples include:
  • Drake's "Hotline Bling" is about the singer reminiscing about his ex and how she would call him for sex. The Kidz Bop cover changes the lyrics and removes one entire portion of the song. It's now about a long-distance relationship.
  • DNCE's song "Cake By The Ocean" is an Intercourse with You song (think "sex on the beach"). The Kidz Bop version is about literally eating cake by the ocean.
• In 2018, Bob Dylan and St. Vincent among others contributed to a multi-artist album called Universal Love - Wedding Songs Reimagined that essentially reinterpreted famous wedding songs with LGBT twists. The intent of the album was so these songs could easily be played at same-sex weddings.
• Neil Cicierega has done this more than a few times, even without rearranging the lyrics very much. "Furries" takes Jimi Hendrix's "Foxy Lady" and juxtaposes it with news soundbytes about furries to make it about Jimi trying to seduce a literal fox. "Love Psych" mashes up "Love Shack" with music from the Psycho soundtrack to make it a lot more unnerving, and many other mashups also juxtapose the vocals from one song with instrumentation from a completely tonally different song (i.e. the vocals from "Chop Suey" with "Crocodile Rock", or "YMCA" with a more tragic theme from the Inception soundtrack.)
• Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again does this several times, first with "When I Kissed the Teacher" (a song that is originally about a Teacher/Student Romance, reinterpreted to be about youths finding freedom), then with "Waterloo" (a song that is originally about one giving in to the fact that they're in a doomed relationship, reinterpreted to be about the young Harry Bright surrendering himself to his newfound crush on Donna), and also with "My Love My Life" (a sad song about the dawning realisation that your romantic relationship is coming to an end, repurposed as a song about the bond between mothers and their children even after death).
• Fraggle Rock has some licensed Alternative Indie cover albums that largely do this. For instance...
  • Sin Fang did "Lose Your Heart And It's Found" and made it more introspective and inspirational than it did in its original context.
  • "Do It On My Own" was originally a Bragging Theme Tune sung by Red, but Vivian Girls gave it a more empowering, almost feminist, tone.
  • Fol Chen's version of "Dream a Dream and See". In the show it was sung by the Fraggles as they prepared to enter Boober's dream, having a shared ability to enter each others' dreams. This version, with its trippy, dreamlike undertone, feels more like a drug trip, or even winding down from being anesthetized after surgery (the latter comparison was made by Muppet fansite Toughpigs).
  • Chalk and Numbers' "Brave Boy, Jump Up" and Radiation City's "I'd Give My Soul", especially the latter, sound more romantic than originally intended.
• Young@Heart is a movie about a senior citizen chorus that breathes new meaning into songs like Should I Stay or Should I Go (how long until old age is too much to handle?), I Feel Good (it's a surprise to feel good after a certain age), and Fix You (sung by a man on an oxygen tank audible during the performance).
• Johnny Cash:
  • Perhaps most notably, Cash turned "Personal Jesus" by Depeche Mode from a cool, sarcastic look at organized religion from a postmodern perspective into a sincere and uplifting hymn. Cash himself called "Personal Jesus" the most evangelical gospel song he had ever heard.
  • Cash also took "Hurt" by Nine Inch Nails and turned it from Reznor's harsh, self-loathing scream into the void, into a calm introspection on a long life filled with regret and bad choices.
• The Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS "Broadway Backwards" concert series, featuring gender flipped performances of Broadway musical numbers, often changes the context of the original song.
  • Bonnie Mulligan's cover of "I Met a Girl" becomes about a young city girl coming out as a lesbian.
  • Andrew Keenan-Bolger's cover of "The History of Wrong Guys," originally about a woman falling for her coworker named Charlie, is set in a Starbucks where a barista falls for one of his regular male customers, Charlie. Charlie gets a coffee for someone named Nicola, who Andrew assumes is his girlfriend. The "Why are they only nice when they're unavailable?" line is recontextualized as Incompatible Orientation. However, while Charlie in Kinky Boots really does have a girlfriend named Nicola, in this cover, Nicola turns out to be Charlie's sister, and Charlie and Andrew end up together at the end of the song.
• Jonathan Young frequently covers songs in rock/metal style, sometimes changing the meaning in the process.
  • His 2019 cover of "Be Prepared" changes from someone planning an insurrection with an army to a disturbed individual talking to himself.
  • His cover of "Sound of Silence" based on the Disturbed cover is far more triumphant
  • His cover of "My Heart Will Go On" comes off as someone dying on The Titanic rather than surviving it.
  • His cover of "Prince Ali" makes it sounds like Ali wants to conquer Agrabah
• The Greatest Showman: Reimagined is an album where the soundtrack of The Greatest Showman is sung by different artists sometimes changing the original intent of the songs.
  • "Rewrite the Stars" by Anna Marie and James Arthur is turned from a song about an interracial couple who are pressured by society not to date, to a song by two white people with no such restrictions.
  • "The Other Side" by MAX and Ty Dollar $ign comes off as someone in the music industry trying to convince a rapper to make pop music
  • "This is Me" by Kesha, Missy Elliot, and original singer Keala Settle changes from a song about loving oneself, to a song about loving oneself while also being about inclusion as if the listener is part of the lyric "we are glorious"
• In 2022, the American Repertory Theatre at Harvard University produced a new version of 1776, which gender-flips nearly every role to either female or non-binary; since the original production only had two female characters, all of the songs take on a new tone, although none of the lyrics are changed. This version was later mounted as a revival on Broadway. Particular highlights include:
  • "The Egg", originally a rather silly but hopeful song about Benjamin Franklin arguing for using a turkey as the United States's national bird, becomes a hard-rocking anthem (complete with Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams playing instruments) about the brilliant future that the country will have. It's paired with a rapid montage of protests and equal rights movements from across American history to connect the idea of revolution with the present day.
  • "Mama, Look Sharp", already a tear-jerking song about a young man crying for his mother as he dies on the battlefield, is given an added dimension in the face of the Black Lives Matter Movement. In addition to the tune being performed in a gospel style, the son in this case is a young Black man killed by an authority figure, and the staging shows his grieving mother finding his corpse and screaming in rage and pain over it.
  • In the original production, "But Mr. Adams" seems to be more sincere, with each member of the Committee of Five genuinely trying to get out of writing the Declaration of Independence. In the new version, the whole thing feels more like a set-up to get Thomas Jefferson to write the Declaration through a lighthearted trick, with every other member of the Committee being in on the joke.
  • "Molasses to Rum," originally a scathing "Not So Different" Remark in song form about how the North benefits from the South's slave trade, has its tempo increased and adds hard rock elements. That, plus a staging of a slave auction performed by the Black cast members, gives the entire thing a hellish, nightmarish quality.
• Sesame Street does this a lot, since many times the songs are sung numerous times, by different characters, and in different contexts:
  • Whether "Somebody Come and Play" is a sad song about loneliness, or a happy invitation to come play with the singer seems to depend on who exactly the singer is. When Ernie sings it, when Big Bird sings it, and when a group of kids sing it, it sounds happy, but when Suzie Kabloozie sings it, it sounds sad. Perhaps this is because she has an emotive voice at the best of times, and she was singing it because her cat ran away.
  • "C is for Cookie" is usually a cheerful song about the letter C and about cookies. However, the opera version featured in one episode adds an intro "The sky has turned grey and the world seems sad and blue. All the laughter's gone away so there's just one thing to do", making it seem like the cookies are the only good thing happening.
• The Belgian women's choir Scala & Kolacny Brothers is known for their choral covers of pop songs, with their distinctive soulful and melancholy sound often drastically changing the tone of many songs. For example:
  • Their cover of Kings of Leon's "Use Somebody" turns a love anthem into an achingly sad song about pining for lost love. The music video makes it explicit that their version is supposed to be about someone mourning their deceased partner.
  • Their cover of Radiohead's "Creep" (famously used in the trailer for The Social Network) turns a tongue-in-cheek song about romantic obsession into a completely serious song about loneliness and longing.

---