Discussion Main / AdaptationDisplacement

Covered Up is the music-specific version of this trope. I've removed the existing "musical adaptations" and included a link to that trope. The songs I removed are below:

• The Tears for Fears song "Mad World" is pretty much the textbook music example of this trope, and perhaps even the modern-day Trope Codifier. The much slower, more melancholic cover version by Gary Jules is so monumentally popular that the original song is often mistaken to be the cover, with Gary Jules fans attacking the band for "ruining the song" despite them being responsible for its existence in the first place.
  • Furthermore, virtually every cover version available to watch on YouTube is of the Gary Jules version, with the uploader often failing to credit Tears For Fears for writing it. Some credit the song as being written by "Gary Jules/Tears For Fears". Finding a cover version of the original track at its original speed is incredibly difficult.
• Very few people realize that the Leonard Cohen song "Take This Waltz" is not an original. In fact it was originally a poem by Federico García Lorca that was given a painstaking poetic translation by Cohen.
  • Likewise, Cohen’s "Hallelujah" has been so thoroughly Covered Up by artists such as Jeff Buckley, kd lang, and Rufus Wainwright that many people assume it was written by one of the above. (According to one site, there are now over 2,000 cover versions of the song.) This is compounded by the fact that Jeff Buckley's version, the first to make a widespread cultural impact, was actually derived from an even earlier cover by John Cale. Pretty much every version you hear today is based more on Cale's version than Cohen's original. These days the song is treated almost as a traditional hymn or folk song, with versions even being played at church services and on Christmas radio (bear in mind that Cohen's original was intended as a Love Is Like Religion song, not an actual worship song, and that Cohen himself was Jewish!)
• The Billie Holiday song "Strange Fruit", which was voted 'Best Song of the Century' by TIME Magazine, was actually written by a teacher named Abel Meeropol as a poem called "Bitter Fruit" which he later set to music himself.
• The Elvis Presley song "Can't Help Falling in Love" is a rewritten version of the French song Plaisir d'Amour, written in 1780 by Jean Paul Égide Martini.
  • Similarly, Elvis' song "It's Now Or Never" uses the melody from the Italian aria "'O Sole Mio".
  • ...and "Love Me Tender" uses the melody from the Civil War song "Aura Lee".
  • As well as "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" which was a popular song during The Great Depression, performed by artists like The Carter Family and Gene Austin.
• Frank Sinatra's "My Way" from My Way is a cover from the French song "Comme d' Habitude" by Claude François.
• "Land of Confusion" was written and first recorded by the British band Genesis, not Disturbed.
• "Pictures at an Exhibition" is less well-known as a piano piece by Modest Moussorgsky than in the orchestral version by Maurice Ravel.
  • Both displaced by the 1971 Emerson, Lake & Palmer album.
  • By the same token, most people haven't seen the pictures that were exhibited in an 1874 exhibition of Viktor Hartmann's works, the pictures having been overshadowed by the musical interpretations of them.
  • Speaking of Rimsky-Korsakov, his arrangement of Modest Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain completely eclipsed the original, which is nearly extinct nowadays. In turn, R-K's version was rearranged by Leopold Stokowski for Fantasia.
• This is often the case with literary works that have been used as sources for far more famous classical vocal works. For example, the Carmina Burana manuscript of medieval German poems and dramatic texts that was used for Carl Orff's famous cantata, or Schiller's poem "To Joy" which was used for the last movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
• There are plenty of cases in music where a cover of a song has eclipsed the original version. For example, few people know that Otis Redding first recorded "Respect" as it's been eclipsed by the Aretha Franklin version. And younger people are more likely to know the versions of "I Want Candy" recorded by Bow Wow Wow or Aaron Carter than the original by The Strangeloves (even though the original song actually was the highest charting).
  • Also true with hip-hop that "samples" earlier music. Most young people who love Kanye West's "Gold Digger" have probably never heard of the Ray Charles song, "I Got a Woman", that Jamie Foxx samples in it.
  • Another Kanye example, in that most don't realize the "Stronger" is essentially him singing along to Daft Punk's "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" from Discovery. Or that the video for "Stronger" is a giant reference to AKIRA.
  • The Soul Searchers instrumental "Ashley's Roachclip" is obscure at best. Only one bar of it is really known—and most people don't even know where it's actually from—as a breakbeat used by Eric B. & Rakim in Paid in Full. This in turn was eclipsed by Frank Farian's use of the same sample for several Milli Vanilli songs.
  • Many Rock and Roll pioneers, like Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis, made their careers performing covers or re-workings of blues songs originally written and recorded by black artists; many of whom are long forgotten by all but the most stalwart fans. Few of the original creators were ever compensated, or even acknowledged, for their work; and those that were, were typically hired by the music labels at very low pay, and their songs re-recorded by the more popular white artists. All of which constitutes a substantial Old Shame for the American music industry. A few artists, such as Elvis Presley, did attempt to make these black musicians better known, but the institutionalized racism of the time greatly limited their ability to do so.
  • Arguably Jimi Hendrix's remake of Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower" from John Wesley Harding on Hendrix' album Electric Ladyland is an example of this. Since the early 1970s Dylan's own live concert version of it has been based on Hendrix's arrangement.
  • As is The Byrds' version of Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" from Another Side of Bob Dylan on Mr. Tambourine Man, which includes only the intro, chorus and second verse of the original. Another Byrds example is "Turn! Turn! Turn!", which was written and recorded by Pete Seeger three years before the Byrds' #1 hit was released (though Seeger wasn't the first to record the song — folk group the Limeliters recorded the song several months prior under the title "To Everything There Is a Season").
  • All cover versions of Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides, Now" use a tune for the chorus which is slightly but very noticeably different from the one she wrote. The printed title also usually omits the comma.
  • Another Aretha Franklin example is "Think". At least in Germany, many radio stations would rather play the remake from The Blues Brothers than her comparatively obscure 1968 original.
  • Ever since The Fifth Dimension recorded a cover of "Aquarius" (the opening number of Hair) which for some unknown reason included the "let the sun shine in" chorus from "The Flesh Failures" (the closing number), every cover of "Aquarius" has done the same.
  • The song "Me and Bobby McGee" will forever be associated with Janis Joplin on her album Pearl, but was written and originally recorded by country musician Kris Kristofferson (who is probably better known as Whistler, mentor of Blade).
• Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt has been displaced by the incidental music Edvard Grieg wrote for it, except in Norway, where it is his perhaps most famous and popular play. And few people have heard any part which didn't make it into the two suites, which includes the lyrics to "In the Hall of the Mountain King," heard here.
• "Twist and Shout" wasn't written by The Beatles, nor was it first performed by them. But after listening to their version, it can be hard to remember that.
• "Mack the Knife" (Die Moritat von Mackie Messer in the original German) has been covered so many times that it's probably no doubt become more recognizable than the musical it was written for, Die Dreigroschenoper. Also, Die Dreigroschenoper itself was based on The Beggar's Opera by John Gay. (Even worse, many people under the age of 30 probably only associate it with McDonald's, thanks to its "Mac Tonite" advertising campaign.)
  • The "Alabama Song" from Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny is another of these songs by Weill and Brecht which has had this happen to it. This cover by The Doors on The Doors is an example.
• Smokey Robinson's "Who's Loving You?" was overshadowed by The Jackson 5 cover.
• "Black Magic Woman" is today mostly known as a Santana song from Abraxas - few people remember that it was originally Fleetwood Mac's debut single, and was indeed written by their founder, Peter Green.
  • Indeed, that first incarnation of Fleetwood Mac, a Blues Rock band responsible for a respectable list of hit singles in The '60s and early seventies, has itself been rendered obscure by the later supergroup lineup whose music bears practically no resemblance or continuity to what it was in the beginning. Fans of the original band can get acid that hit tracks like "Black Magic Woman", "Oh Well", "Green Manalishi" and "Albatross" - all big hits - never appear on ''Best of Fleetwood Mac'' compilations.
• At least one cover of "Tainted Love" is clearly a cover of the Soft Cell version, rather than The '60s original by Gloria Jones. Irish singer Imelda May has recently attempted to cover up the cover-up with a Rockabilly version, but so far the third "Tainted Love" hasn't achieved cult status.
• There are some who reckon that "You'll Never Walk Alone" was written by Liverpool FC supporters, not realising that in fact it's the closing number of Carousel by Rodgers and Hammerstein.
  • Others believe the song was written by Gerry and the Pacemakers, as their cover of the song was a popular No. 1 hit in 1963.
• Few people realise that "Hey Joe" from Are You Experienced by Jimi Hendrix was a cover of a Tim Hardin song — which was itself a cover of a song by The Leaves. (And that's simply the earliest known version. It's likely much older.)
• The Uncle Remus stories written by Joel Chandler Harris were later displaced by the Disney adaptation Song of the South, which itself is more famous for the fact that, since the 1980s, Disney has suppressed the film because of racial sensitivity. The Oscar-winning song from the film, Zip-a-dee Do-dah, however, has outlived both the film and the Harris stories.
• Sinéad O'Connor's breakout hit "Nothing Compares 2 U" was written by Prince and originally recorded by The Family for their eponymous debut album in 1985. The Family's version went without notice and was never released as a single; four years later O'Connor's version was a worldwide hit, hitting #1 in seventeen countries including the US.
• There are people out there who are unaware of "I Will Always Love You" being a Dolly Parton song before it was covered by Whitney Houston for the 1992 blockbuster hit The Bodyguard. Even though Parton's version was only a number-one single twice.
• There are also people out there who are much more familiar with Bananarama's "Venus", instead of the early '70s version by Shocking Blue from their album At Home. Similarly, Nirvana's cover of "Love Buzz" from Bleach is probably better known than Shocking Blue's original on At Home.
• Nirvana sang "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" during their famous Unplugged performance in the '90's and it ended the show so well that Cobain refused to play any more songs, convinced he couldn't top it. Unless they've checked Wikipedia or paid close attention during the performance, any random person would likely think it was written by Kurt Cobain; it had previously been a success for Lead Belly, and his wasn't the first version either. It's also called "In the Pines" or "Black Girl", and it dates back to roughly the 1870s.
  • The same happened with David Bowie's "The Man Who Sold the World". That was the title track of his 1970 album, but it was not a big hit at the time. Not long after Nirvana's Unplugged appearance, Bowie made the song a staple of his concert setlists (at a time when he was eschewing his bigger hits) and bemoaned the fact that when he performed it he would encounter "kids that come up afterwards and say, 'It's cool you're doing a Nirvana song.' And I think, 'Fuck you, you little tosser!'"
• The song "One Night In Bangkok" was a hit in the 1980s, and is one of the prototypical examples of songs from that era. Few people realize it's from a rock opera, Chess, and fewer still realize it's probably the least plot-critical song — simply summarizing the petulant singer's walk around Bangkok when he gets frustrated in a chess match. Though Chess has been rewritten extensively in its many stagings, this song is the only one all but certain to remain in for its popularity alone.
• Gioachino Rossini's "William Tell Overture" is arguably his most famous piece, but has long since become more known in the United States as The Lone Ranger's theme.
• Not counting devoted folk-blues fans, few people seem to realise that "The House Of The Rising Sun" is a very old traditional. Most people who are aware of the song at all seem to think that the Animals version is the "original".
• Typically Tropical's smash hit "Barbados" has been obscured almost completely by the Venga Boys' cover, which substituted Ibiza for Barbados as the singer's destination.
• You know Liebestraum No. 3 by Franz Liszt, that extremely famous piano piece that's on all the "Piano Favorites" collections? It's actually a transcription of Liszt's song O lieb, so lang du lieben kannst, which was originally for voice and piano. Same goes for the Petrarch Sonnets found in the second book of Années de pèlerinage. Today, the piano versions are extremely famous, whereas the original songs are barely known.
• More people know "Here Comes the Bride" as a "trad." instrumental tune played at weddings than as a chorus from Lohengrin by Richard Wagner. (You sometimes even see it listed as "traditional" in film soundtrack credits).
• The song "Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps" has been covered by a number of English musicians such as the band Cake, Doris Day and the Pussycat Dolls, but few people seem to know that it was originally written in Spanish, composed by Cuban musician Osvaldo Farres. The song was first adapted into English by Joe Davis.
• The MK Nocturnal Dub (and the slightly edited Dub of Doom) remix of The Nightcrawler's "Push the Feeling On" (with its characteristic indecipherable resampled vocals) completely outshone the original lyrical version, and all later remixes were therefore based on it. This occurs a lot in dance music, where a sometimes completely different remix ended up eclipsing the original, such as Age of Love's "The Age of Love (Jam & Spoon Remix)", Underworld's "Born Slippy (NUXX)", Brainbug's "Nightmare (Sinister Strings mix)", Art of Trance's "Madagascar (Cygnus X remix)", and Ayla's "Ayla (Taucher mix)". Can also happen with softer and slower versions, such as the unplugged versions of DJ Sammy's "Heaven" and DHT's "Listen To Your Heart" (covers of Bryan Adams and Roxette, respectively).
• Luther Vandross's famous hit "A House Is Not A Home" was originally a song by Dionne Warwick.
• Animotion's hit "Obsession" was actually a cover of a song of the same name by Michael Des Barres and Holly Knight released one year prior.
• Many, many operas are based on stage plays or novels which are now largely forgotten.
• Most Australians will recognise "Waltzing Matilda" as the quintessential Australian song, often used to identify the country when the national anthem is not appropriate. Less common but still fairly well known is that it was originally a poem by Banjo Patterson (it helps that he also helped write the song). What isn't widely known in Australia is that the tune is older, based on the Scottish folk song "Thou Bonnie Wood of Craigielea", and can cause a bit of surprise when it shows up in works that have nothing to do with Australia.
• "The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face" is universally associated with Roberta Flack. She originally recorded it in 1969 and it reached the top of the charts in 1972. What is generally forgotten is that the song was written in 1957 by British political songwriter Ewan McColl for Peggy Seeger to sing. The Roberta Flack version is much slower paced and somber than the original and can be seen as a definite improvement, however. (Not by MacColl, though, who famously hated it.)
• This even happens to fan music. The My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic song "Discord" was originally made by Odyssey Eurobeat a.k.a. Eurobeat Brony. Three months after it was released, it was remixed by The Living Tombstone. The remix has overshadowed the original so much that most bronies seem to believe that Tombstone wrote the song.
• Pink Floyd actually managed to displace their own song. Their half studio/half live album Ummagumma has four live tracks—three of which were on previous albums—and a fourth ("Careful With That Axe, Eugene"), which was an obscure B-side. The track became a fan favorite (and a Trope Namer), but due to the rarity and obscurity of the original studio release of "Eugene", the live version is far better-known even among fans of the band.
• Natalie Imbruglia's hit single "Torn" was actually the second cover of the song, it was originally recorded by Danish singer Lis Sørensen in 1993, in Danish, and then by American band Ednaswap in 1995 who released the first English version, before Imbruglia's version in 1997.
• MTV had a short-lived concert series in the mid-2000s in which two artists would mash up their songs, appropriately called MTV Ultimate Mash-Ups. Probably the best known of these was the Jay-Z/Linkin Park collaboration, the concert recording of which was marketed as "Collision Course". Tune to any radio station that plays music from that decade, and you're probably more likely to hear that CD's hit single "Numb/Encore" than either of its component songs (the former coming from Linkin Park's Meteora, the latter from Jay-Z's The Black Album.
• Ask any Colombian about the song "Baracunátana" and they will promptly tell you that is a song by the band Aterciopelados. Not too many know that it was originally sung, with slightly different lyrics, by folk singer Lisandro Meza.
• Tracy Lawrence's late 2006-early 2007 hit "Find Out Who Your Friends Are" was originally sung by just him. But partway through the song's chart run, he re-recorded it with Tim McGraw and Kenny Chesney sharing the lead vocal, and their name recognition helped boost the song all the way to #1 (albeit with the slowest ascent in the chart's history). Nowadays, if you hear the song on radio, there's a very likely chance that it'll be the version with McGraw and Chesney.
• The Sneaker Pimps' original proto-dubstep version of "Spin Spin Sugar" was almost completely eclipsed by Armand van Helden's "Dark Garage Mix".
• "Battle Flag" was originally released by the funk rock band Pigeonhed in 1997, but didn't take off in popularity until the British big beat group Lo-Fidelity Allstars reworked it the following year.
• It's a tossup as to which has been more popular and enduring in the public memory, Coolio's "Gangsta's Paradise" or the Weird Al parody "Amish Paradise". However, relatively unremembered is that Coolio's own song was a remake of "Pastime Paradise," a song off Stevie Wonder's 1976 album Songs in the Key of Life.
• "It Ain't What You Do (It's The Way That You Do It)" is a jazz number with a long history, first recorded by Jimmie Lunceford in 1939 and subsequently by the likes of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. Written by a trombonist and a trumpeter, it traditionally showcases a horn section. So what's the best-known version? The 1982 recording by The Fun Boy Three and Bananarama, which features no brass at all.
• "For Whom The Bell Tolls". When most hear this title, they immediately think of Metallica, as this is one of their most popular songs. Mention the 1940 novel by Ernest Hemingway the song is based on, and see how many people have heard of it, let alone read it.

I suggest Doctor Moriarty from Sherlock Holmes.

In Conan Doyles' Books, Moriarty is suggested in one chapter (or story) then killed with Sherlock Holmes in the next chapter/story. (In this book one chapter is one story)

Two books later, Sherlock Holmes is "resurrected" and Moriarty is clearly dead.

So in almost all adaptations Moriarty is the recurrent nemesis of Sherlock Holmes but is only in three chapters/stories of the books !

Wolfenstein 3D does not belong here. It's not the adaptation or inspiration. It's completely other genre, made a decade earlier by other people and for another platform. The only thing linking these games is the appropriately 'German' name.

• Starship Troopers, based on a turd that flowed through a sewer pipe that went underneath an abandoned building that had once been a bookstore that sold the book.

It's not clear if it's a Take That! about how the film is a bad adaptation, or if the book itself is bad.

Cut this because it was a list of aversions. Putting it here because it is informative.

• The Other Wiki has a page [1] listing the sources for the Disney Animated Canon. The entries of the canon that are fully original are:
  • Saludos Amigos
  • The Three Caballeros
  • The Aristocats
  • Dinosaur
  • The Emperors New Groove
  • Lilo And Stitch
  • Brother Bear
  • Home On The Range
  • Bolt
    • Although "Lilo and Stitch may be like The Ugly Duck story and Home on the Range was originally based on the Pied Piper, with some elements of the story still left in.

This was removed a few months back:

• Most people would think of Pokemon Special when referring to "The Pokemon Manga". However, this would make the [Main] statement incorrect as that manga was released in August 1997, 4 months after the anime (April 1st of that year). However, the gag manga was released in November 1996. And there was a one-shot before that one, plus a straight Shonen-type just before the anime's launch, making it Manga Second, Third, and Fourth, Anime Fifth.

This was in context to the originally posted statement regarding Pokemon. (Games First, Manga Second, Anime Third.) In essence, Pokemon Special displaced other Manga from the consiousness of International Markets. So, while when referring to other Manga made the original statement correct, referring to the Manga, made it incorrect.

Upon evaluation of the deletion, while Poke Spe is definitely not a case of First Manga Wins, it's also not this Trope, as it's an adaptation of the Games and not said other Manga, and therefore would not qualify. Ergo, the main Pokemon entry was adjusted to fit.

This is a nice bit of trivia, but it hardly concerns the process of adaptation. It would have belonged to another trope that existed before The Great Crash and never restored because it was only about Real Life companies and had little to do with Show Business:

• Nintendo as an entire company can be seen as this - well over a century old, they got their start selling playing cards, and progressed to board games and the like later on. Outside of a few collectors and those interested in the company history, not many are aware they even had a pre-video gaming history. This also results in some people not knowing the origin of some of their games (Duck Hunt, for example, was based off of a target-shooting game they made in the 70's, as are Wild Gunman and Hogan's Alley).

Removed

• Few American fans are aware that The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is actually based on a light novel rather than a manga series. The manga gained steam due to the explosion of popularity for the anime, more than likely due in part to the talented work of Kyoto Animation studio and the increasingly popular Aya Hirano and Wendee Lee.

Since, with the publication of the original light novels in English, the fact that they're based on light novels is considerably more well known.