History LyricalDissonance / Music

** "Weasel Stomping Day", an upbeat holiday song where the holiday in question is devoted to the slaughter of thousands of innocent mustelids.

* Music/LosPrisioneros was extremely good at this before their DorkAge and separation. Some of their best examples are:

** "Lithium" is a song about a guy who kills his girlfriend and goes out to commit suicide, only to [[HeelFaceTurn join Christianity]]. This all happens while keeping the same mellow feel throughout the song.

** "I Got It From Agnes" is about the spread of VD through, among others: parental incest, zoophilia, and a homosexual threesome (Aha! Lucky Pierre!).

** "Party In The CIA" is a similar case, with a happy, catchy tune -- and lyrics about a CIA agent brutally torturing the nation's enemies before eventually being captured and killed himself.

** "Maldito sudaca", a rockish song that denounces the xenophobia towards Latin Americans -- "sudaca" is a very offensive Spaniard term to refer to people coming from Latin America.

* The Pointer Sisters' "Neutron Dance" is a happy, bouncy 80's number about trying to keep yourself together while things around you are falling apart. "I don't want to take it anymore / I'll just stay here locked behind the door / Just no time to stop and get away / 'Cause I work so hard to make it every day". Yeah. And to further heighten the dissonance, this song was featured in a ''Minnie Mouse cartoon special''.

* Music/AmandaPalmer:
** "Oasis" is a happy, bouncy, high-energy crowd-singy little number about... uh... rape, abortions and backstabby friends. Oh, and writing a letter to a certain British band... [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8C17yfGyJjM The video]] is even better. Palmer pointed out her blog that the LyricalDissonance is a big part of what makes it offensive, and if she were to sing the same words to a slow mournful tune, it probably wouldn't have been banned from the radio.
** From her Dresden Dolls days, "Bad Habit" is a catchy, upbeat earworm about self-harm.
%%*** "Coin-Operated Boy". The verses and chorus seem to be about a happy relationship between a girl and her robotic boyfriend... But when it gets to the bridge... oh boy. (Administrivia/ZeroContextExample; what ''does'' happen in the bridge?)
%%** And then there's her version of Music/RebeccaBlack's "Music/{{Friday}}".

* "Into the Ocean" by Music/BlueOctober sounds remarkably mellow and even oddly hopeful for a song that's written from the perspective of someone committing suicide out of general depression (based on the lead singer's personal experience) and because his love left him or died. Complete with a seductive siren-song of a violin solo. [[note]]Ironically, despite this almost positive portrayal of suicide, several fans have credited this song with keeping them from killing themselves.[[/note]]

* "Black Bock" by Music/{{Melvins}}: a languid, summery folk-pop song full of "la la la's" that's apparently about slaughtering animals for fun ("I cut the throat of a billy goat and let it bleed", "It's kinda nice to know the things that make me happy / Just realize, keep your dog away from me"). It's ''really'' far afield from their usual musical style (the very fact that the lyrics are intelligible for once makes them stand out), which makes it come off as BlackHumor... but then the music does eventually get a little eerie (though hazy and psychedelic, rather than aggressive), and it ends with some strange distant synth warblings.

[[folder:Musical Theatre]]
* "Everybody's Got the Right" from ''Theatre/{{Assassins}}'' is a fantastic example. The lyrics read almost like something that might be read in an elementary school classroom, that everyone has the right to find happiness -- except the song is about madmen ''defending their right to kill the president''.
* "Auto-da-fé" from Music/LeonardBernstein's adaptation of ''Literature/{{Candide}}'' is a jolly song about watching a public execution, with lengthy middle sections about [=STDs=].
* ''Fade Out Fade In'' has the song "You Mustn't Feel Discouraged", which ''sounds'' congenially cheerful, especially when it accompanies a playful tap-dance routine, but here's how the lyrics go:
-->''When you think you've hit the bottom\\
And you're feeling mighty low\\
You mustn't feel discouraged\\
There's always one step further down you can go''
* "It Depends on What You Pay" from ''Theatre/TheFantasticks'' is an upbeat, Disneyesque number about rape ([[HaveAGayOldTime as in abduction]]). Unsurprisingly, it isn't normally included in productions of the show.
* "Relax, Enjoy Yourself" from Music/RandyNewman's ''Theatre/{{Faust}}'' has several sections: 1. Nice upbeat song about how no one ever succeeds; 2. Less upbeat interlude with a little girl singing about evil; 3. Nice upbeat song about how the man who shot her will go to heaven because he went to confession; 4. Hymn about how God works in mysterious ways, and that she should be happy for the man who shot her; 5. Nice upbeat song about how Satan will take over the world and it'll be a good thing.
%%* "I'm Calm" from the musical ''Theatre/AFunnyThingHappenedOnTheWayToTheForum''. (Administrivia/ZeroContextExample)
* "Doomed, Doomed, Doomed" from ''Theatre/TheGoldenApple'' is an upbeat ragtime polka about the inevitability of human extinction.
%%* ''Theatre/TheGrandDuke'': (Administrivia/ZeroContextExample; what is the music in the songs like?)
%%** "Won't It Be a Pretty Wedding" savages the bride's taste and sense of fashion.
%%** Everyone goes on to savage the groom in "Pretty Lisa, fair and tasty".
* The song "Three-Five-Zero-Zero" from the musical ''Theatre/{{Hair}}'' has a verse that's an example of this. These words are sung to a cheery tune best described as "Dixieland". The meaning of the title? There were 3500 men in the first platoon of soldiers sent to Vietnam. Two out of every three were black.
-->''Pris'ners in Niggertown, it's a dirty little war\\
Three-five-zero-zero\\
Take weapons up and begin to kill\\
Watch the long long armies drifting home''
* As the protagonist works himself up to suicide in the Act I finale of ''Theatre/HMSPinafore'', 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 that she loves him after all.
* ''Theatre/{{Iolanthe}}'': "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. 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!"
%%** Parts of the Act I finale. (Administrivia/ZeroContextExample)
* ''Theatre/LesMiserables'':
** "I Dreamed a Dream" is a song about crushed hopes and dreams set to the most beautiful, uplifting, triumphant music imaginable. Made even more dissonant by the fact that Susan Boyle sang it to make her own dream come true.
** There's this one song that has a beautiful, soaring melody and heavenly-sounding accompaniment. The song is "Stars" and Javert sings it. The lyrics are... KnightTemplar-y, for lack of a better word, and about Javert's determination to see Jean Valjean arrested no matter what. Some of the lyrics:
--->''[[KnightTemplar And so it must be, for so it is written\\
On the doorway to Paradise\\
That those who falter and those who fall\\
Must pay the price]]\\\
[[SternChase Lord, let me find him\\
That I may see him\\
Safe behind bars\\
I will never rest\\
'Til then\\
This I swear\\
This I swear by the stars]]''
* "I Want More" from ''Theatre/{{Lestat}}'', Claudia's first song. Quite possibly the most cheerful song in the show, all about drinking people's blood..
* ''Theatre/TheMikado''. Beheadings, descriptions of grisly executions, lists of people to kill off -- all fodder for a cheery little operetta. The first song in the second half, "Brightly dawns our wedding day / Joyous hour we give thee greeting" ends with everyone in tears over how Nanki-Poo and Yum-Yum will only be married for a month before he's due to be executed.
* In ''Theatre/MotherCourageAndHerChildren'', there is a lullaby that Mother Courage sings over [[spoiler:her daughter Kattrin's dead body]], with lyrics of an obviously materialistic nature. This sort of thing is key to the ''verfremdungseffekt'' of the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_theatre Epic Theatre]].
* "Get Happy" from ''The Nine-Fifteen Revue'', popularized by Creator/JudyGarland in the film ''Summer Stock'', is a peppy, rousing song about Judgment Day.
* "Un Matin Tu Dansais" from the French rock opera of ''Theatre/NotreDameDeParis'' is a duet that starts off with a beautiful, longing melody as Frollo describes to Esmeralda how he first fell in love with her, and then she sings of how Phoebus will save her (she's currently in a cage, condemned to die). Then the song strays toward much darker territory as he makes her an offer: love him and he'll save her. Yet as it goes from devotion to blackmail to attempted rape, the tune stays that same light, lovely melody, with only the desperation and fear in the actor's voices to reveal that they're really singing things like "choose the grave or my bed" and "I'll bite you like a dog".
* ''Theatre/OnceUponAMattress'':
** "Shy" features the heroine describing how demure and bashful she is... while belting practically the entire song at the top of her lungs.
** "Sensitivity" is a rather ironic song by the queen, who is anything ''but'' sensitive -- but the off-kilter and jerky five-beat pattern is not very sensitive either.
* Creator/AndrewLloydWebber's ''Theatre/ThePhantomOfTheOpera'' includes an example of this in the perfectly happy-sounding tune of "Masquerade". Once you realise what it's actually talking about, 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 [[DarkReprise sings a slow, sad version of the chorus]].
* "When Anger Spreads Its Wing" from ''Theatre/PrincessIda'' is about going off to war but sounds kind of like it should be about [[Literature/JeevesAndWooster Bertie Wooster]] and his smashing adventures.
* ''Film/TheProducers'':
** The musical opens with everyone leaving a musical and then singing a joyful, sensational song about how god awful it was.
** Depending on which version you watch, you get a different kind of campy tune... [[CrossingTheLineTwice sung by]] [[SpringtimeForHitler Hitler]].
* ''Theatre/{{Rigoletto}}'': "La dona e mobile" has one of the most upbeat tunes in opera and as such gets used in a number of advertisements. The title means "The women are fickle", and the song is sung by the opera's BigBad; it's about how all women want him, but change their minds when ''he's'' ready for them, so his taking them by force is ''completely'' fine!
* The song "Rose Tint My World" from ''[[Film/TheRockyHorrorPictureShow The Rocky Horror Show]]'' is an upbeat song sung by Columbia, Rocky, Brad, and Janet about how they've all become corrupted by Frank N. Furter, while Brad begs for his mom to come and save him. The song even lampshades this with "Rose tint my world! Keep me safe from my trouble and pain!".
* ''Theatre/{{Ruddigore}}'':
** "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.
** The cheery, rapid-fire patter song "My eyes are fully open" is about upcoming death.
--->''But I have to die tomorrow\\
So it really doesn't matter''
* ''Theatre/TheSorcerer'':
** There's a bawdy drinking song about tea.
** The song "Oh joyous boon / Oh mad delight" is appropriately upbeat, and continues upbeat through lyrics like "Alas! that lovers thus should meet:/ Oh, pity, pity me!"
* At least half of ''Theatre/SpringAwakening''. For example, "My Junk" is a really cute upbeat song about masturbation and about comparing teenage crushes to drug addiction, which is arguably even more lyrically dissonant.
* ''Theatre/SweeneyToddTheDemonBarberOfFleetStreet'':
** "A Little Priest" is a fun, showstopping, and, especially in the original stage musical, humorous number... about cannibalism.
** The reprise of "Johanna" is a rather upbeat number in major key about how the VillainProtagonist is too busy killing people to think about his own daughter.
* "Hey Big Spender" from ''Theatre/SweetCharity'' sounds like an erotic come-on ("Good lookin', so refined/So wouldn't you like to know what's goin' on in my mind?"), but is sung by a group of bored taxi dance girls who can barely summon up the energy to go through the motions of their job.
* Several songs from ''Theatre/TheThreepennyOpera'' have lyrical dissonances. There is one song where the frequent refrain of "Yay! Hooray!" is performed in as deadpan and monotone a manner possible.
%%** "Hoch sollen sie leben! Hoch hoch hoch!" (Administrivia/ZeroContextExample)
* ''Theatre/TrialByJury'' is about a trial, so when the plaintiff arrives at the tune of "Comes the broken flower / Comes the cheated 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.
* ''Theatre/{{Urinetown}}'' is all over this trope. They even hang a lampshade on it:
-->'''Little Sally:''' What kind of musical is this? The good guys finally take over, and then everything starts falling apart?\\
'''Officer Lockstock:''' Like I said, Little Sally, this isn't a happy musical.\\
'''Little Sally:''' But the music's so happy!
* ''Theatre/UtopiaLimited'':
** "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.
** "It's understood, I think all round" and "In every mental lore" are both cheery songs with lines about grisly deaths by duelling and being blown up by dynamite, respectively.
* "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwM-toAsrvs Cute Boys with Short Haircuts]]" from ''Vanities'' is a cheerful, Disney-style AwardBaitSong about Kathy [[BreakupSong losing the only love of her life]].
* ''Theatre/{{Wicked}}'':
** In one interesting example, Elphaba sings triumphantly about a vision she has about a "celebration throughout Oz, that's all to do with me!" Anyone familiar with ''Literature/TheWonderfulWizardOfOz'' will realize she's [[TearJerker seeing the celebration of her death]].
** "What Is This Feeling?" is a cheery-sounding song with such lyrics as "my pulse is rushing, my head is reeling, my face is flushing; what is this feeling?" At this point, one might guess that the feeling is love, but the girls are actually singing about their "unadulterated loathing" for everything about one another.
* ''Theatre/TheYeomenOfTheGuard'':
** "How say you, maiden, will you wed/A man about to lose his head?" is one of the most upbeat, fun, cheery numbers.
** "Oh, a private buffoon is a light-hearted loon" is about how the jester's being torn apart and has to remain cheerful throughout it all.
** "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 [[spoiler:while that person dies]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Classical and Orchestral]]
* The Polish National Anthem has an upbeat, cheerful tune, but the translation of the lyrics towards the end is anything ''but'' cheerful.
-->''Father, in tears\\
Says to his Basia\\
"Just listen, it seems that our people\\
Are beating the drums"\\
March, march''
* Creator/GilbertAndSullivan have "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdJg6Duzzf4 With Catlike Tread]]" from ''Theatre/ThePiratesOfPenzance''. A song about how sneakily the titular pirates are breaking into the Major General's home... annotated ''Fortissimo'' (Italian, and musician, for ''"Really Loud"''), and set to the sound of blaring trumpets, rumbling kettle drums, and crashing cymbals.
%%** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkJdEFf_Qg4 Gilbert and Sullivan]] perform "Baby Got Back". (Administrivia/WeblinksAreNotExamples)
* Music/JosephHaydn had a bit of fun with this in the Agnus Dei portion of his Creation Mass. The lyrics (translated from Latin) are "Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us". Haydn proceeded to write the ''happiest'' Agnus Dei [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3SWqM-ZQww he could think of]].
* Music/WolfgangAmadeusMozart:
** The quite beautiful, six-part canon entitled [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C78HBp-Youk "Lick Me in the Arse"]].
** "Batti, batti o bel Masetto" ("Beat me, oh lovely Masetto") from ''Theatre/DonGiovanni'' is a calm and tender love song in which a woman begs her fiance to beat her. Though to be fair, the subtext of the aria basically comes down to a teasing, "You love me way too much to beat me, even if I did cheat on you like you think I did."
** "Der Hölle Rache", or "Hell's Vengeance", is one of those classical pieces everyone recognizes but nobody can name. It's an aria from the opera ''Theatre/TheMagicFlute'', in which an enraged queen threatens damnation and disownment upon her daughter if the girl doesn't kill one of the queen's enemies. The general tone of the piece, however, is [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02yf6RHIQjQ somewhat less than fiendish]].
* Carl Orff's ''Music/CarminaBurana'' contains some of the most instantly recognisable music in the world. The first four minutes, better known as [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5b7tgkdFH0&ab_channel=Mamanzord "O Fortuna"]], is quite probably the most famously epic piece of music ever written, and the platinum-iridium standard for OminousLatinChanting besides. The lyrics? The ''Carmina Burana'' covers a wide variety of subjects, and most are utterly mundane. "O Fortuna" itself is about ''bad luck''. More specifically, it's the lament of a student emo-ing out because he just gambled away the last of his drinking money.
%%* The aria "O mio babbino caro" from Music/GiacomoPuccini's ''Theatre/GianniSchicchi'', as Lauretta's pleading with her father to let her marry the man she loves, or she'll kill herself. (Administrivia/ZeroContextExample; how is the music dissonant to the lyrics?)
* Any serious opera by Music/GioachinoRossini. It seems the man was practically incapable of writing anything ''not'' upbeat and cheerful, even if the lyrics call for vengeance, anguish, distress, fear, etc.
* The trailer for ''Film/TheSocialNetwork'' features a harmonized choral arrangement of Music/{{Radiohead}}'s "Creep", a song about a man wishing he could have a woman he thinks is too good for him, by the Belgian choir Scala & Kolacny Brothers.[[note]]Incidentally, it's from their 2004 album ''On The Rocks''[[/note]] It's weirdly haunting and awesome.
* The rather sweet lullaby Mariya sings at the end of Music/PyotrIlyichTchaikovsky's ''Mazeppa''. It would be quite beautiful if [[spoiler:she wasn't A) completely mad, B) holding and rocking a dying man who she thinks is a child, who dies half-way through, and C) about to freeze to death]].
* On Christopher Tin's 2009 album ''Music/CallingAllDawns'', there is a song called "Se E Pra Vir Que Venha", which has a rather upbeat tempo and is even a bit of an ear worm, but the Portuguese lyrics? It's about the narrator waiting for her own death to come, and she's even quite joyful about it. Not long after that, though, there's "Rassemblons-Nous", [[MoodWhiplash which is a pumping anthem]] [[ScrewDestiny about the opposite]].
[[/folder]]

* Half of the musically cheery tunes of Music/TheCure have extremely dark or creepy lyrics. On the other hand, Robert Smith's declaration of love to his wife (albeit being a beautiful song and probably one of the most sincere love songs ever), aptly named "Lovesong", does ''not'' have a happy tune. At all.

* ''Oh My Juliet!'' by Fujii Takashi is such a catchy dance song that one could be forgiven for thinking that it's yet another {{Silly Love Song}} that namedrops ''Theatre/RomeoAndJuliet'' for romantic comparison and misses the point about their deaths at the end. But the ending lyrics allude to exactly that, talking about how the singer and his love interest will fake their deaths by poison and then implying they indeed kill themselves:
-->''Oh Juliet, why are you crying?\\
Even though we soon should have freedom in our hands\\
Believe in love, call my name\\
Wake up, because it's a bad dream\\
So darling, call my name\\
You've gotten cold\\
Embrace me''\\

* ''Oh My Juliet!'' is such a catchy dance song that one could be forgiven for thinking that it's yet another {{Silly Love Song}} that namedrops ''Theatre/RomeoAndJuliet'' for romantic comparison and misses the point about their deaths at the end. But the ending lyrics allude to exactly that, talking about how the singer and his love interest will fake their deaths by poison and then implying they indeed kill themselves:

* "Arthur [=McBride=]" is basically a big TakeThat and ScrewYou at military recruiters. The Enter the Haggis version is a fast-paced, crowd sing-along number.
* The French-Spanish group Music/ManoNegra has a song named "Mala Vida" ("Bad life"), which talks about a HenpeckedHusband who's [[DomesticAbuse heavily abused by his bitchy wife]] and threatens to leave her if she doesn't stop... with a rocky, upbeat tune. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWV2kM1laIc And a musical video]] [[RefugeInAudacity that thrives]] [[BlackComedy on black comedy]].
** Their singer Manu Chao later went as a soloist and maintained the dissonance alive. In an example, his song "Clandestino" ("Clandestine") from ''Proxima Estación: Esperanza'' has a reggae rhythm... and is about the misadventures and difficulties that immigrants face in Europe.
* "Sweet Lullaby" is Deep Forest's biggest hit song. It's a pleasant and catchy sing-a-long that definitely sounds like a lullaby. And it is, but the context is gravely different once translated. The sampled lyrics come from a lullaby of the Soloman Islands called "Rorogwela", in which an older brother comforts his younger brother and helps him sleep after they ''just lost their parents.''

* "Moskau", both the Music/DschinghisKhan one and the Rammstein one, can be subversions of this: They both have the same title, they're both in the same language, they both have the same subject matter, and they both have markedly different moods. A botched search on Google for the lyrics might leave you with the impression that the upbeat disco piece portrays Moscow, Russia as a CrapsackWorld and that the driving metal tune with the Russian chorus is about throwing a party in Moscow's honor.
* There's a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaB1So7rDzw anti-Meth PSA]] that invokes this. The jingle is catchy, not unlike something you'd see in older commercials for candy or soda. However, the images and lyrics very much don't match the tone.
* The ending of ''[[http://soundcloud.com/tarbyrocks/something-broke Something Broke]]'' takes a cheery reprise of the second part ("All is Normal") and sets it to lyrics like:
-->So, down in the dimly lit\\

Soon they'll be on someone's plate.
* The whole genre of {{Neofolk}} qualifies, with occult, militaristic, or [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotPolitical ambiguously]] Far-right lyrics and mellow, folk-inspired instrumentation.
* ''DrBombay'''s [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3AKZGsOYs4 S.O.S.]] easily comes across as this without the music video. A catchy upbeat song about how a tiger took his family.
* Music/WesleyWillis used the upbeat demo tracks on his keyboard as his backing music, often using major keys for happy songs and minor keys for sad songs. In addition to singing songs about bands he'd seen, friends of his and praising various companies, he'd also sing songs about criminals, murdering people and his schizophrenia demons. Much of the time he'd pair happy music with negative lyrics.
* "Sleepytown Train" by the novelty group Optiganally Yours combines this with EggsBreadMilkSquick. The song is essentially a lullaby, possibly sung to a lover. And then we get this line out of nowhere:
-->Your teeth fall out in the sink\\

You've been gut-shot in the rain
* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fc-V3NYckOI This 'lounge chill' version of Cannibal Corpse's 'Rancid Amputation']]
* Roberto Vecchioni's ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coaDHAcqukQ Samarcanda]]'' has an upbeat tune. If you don't know Italian, it's the story of [[SelfFulfillingProphecy a soldier who's celebrating the end of a war only to notice that Death is looking at him with apparently bad intentions, so he gets a horse from his lord and escapes to the city of Samarcanda, where he encounters Death that explains him she wasn't looking at him with bad intentions but worry he couldn't make it in time to their date in Samarcanda, but he did manage to arrive in time]].
* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbHY7vBAp4o The Game of Life]] is a catchy little tune... about how we're all helpless Cosmic Playthings.
-->See how the game of life is never won, you only play\\
Bore him and you will find you're crumpled up and thrown away
* Boney M's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qV9xdMD_YA4 "Rivers of Babylon"]] sounds rather rhythmic and a bit cheerful at first listening. It's actually based on [[Literature/TheBible Psalms 137]], which is about the lamentations of the Jewish people imprisoned in Babylon.

* You can find children from [[FromTheMouthsOfBabes seven onwards]] singing [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_the_Dance_%28hymn%29 "Lord of the Dance"]] at Catholic schools and churches. Enthusiastic renditions of lyrics like:
** ''I danced on the Sabbath / And I cured the lame; / The holy people / Said it was a shame. / They whipped and they stripped / And they hung me on high, / And they left me there / On a Cross to die.''
* One might note that the original words to "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" are somewhat ... depressing, (including the line "We all will muddle through somehow") and that the retouching to make the song acceptable to modern audiences has left a melancholy tune with much more pleasant lyrics.
** 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.
** Even "Jingle Bells", as cheery a carol as they come, has its one-horse open sleigh wipe out in a snowdrift: a type of accident which seriously endangers the horse as well as the passengers. "We got upsot" is also a pun that implies they'd been sleigh-driving drunk. In the seldom-heard third verse, the singer falls on his butt on slippery ice and a passing sleigh-rider mocks his misfortune.
** On the other end, "Carol of the Bells" sounds very sinister but the lyrics are cheery.
* OlderThanRadio: The song "My Grandfather's Clock," written in 1876 and regarded as a "children's favorite" in the '50s and '60s (and maybe afterward, too). Very bouncy tune, but it actually inspired an episode of ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959''. "But it stopped short / Never to go again / When the old man died."
* For a historical example or two, check your local church's hymnals. Sometimes, because hymns (i.e. the words) can be set to multiple tunes, and because congregations only know so many tunes, you can get some very bizarre combinations.
** For one that particularly bothers this church musician, singing "Rock of Ages" to the tune "Toplady," the tune most people (sadly) know. A cheerful, upbeat, happy tune about how Jesus is broken and how I want to "hide myself" in him.
* The fan-made Christmas song [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5NbD5bXyZI "Merry Christmas Gotham City"]] is sung from the Joker's point of view. Standard commercial Christmas beat... with the lyrics describing him planning a rampage as a city-wide Christmas gift "decoration".
* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWmi2IxgDuk&feature=related "The Ash Grove"]], an English version of the Welsh air "Llwyn Onn", has a soothing melody but depressing lyrics.
* The Italian song, "Teorema" basically teaches that you have to treat a woman bad to have her love you ('Take a woman, treat her badly' are the opening lyrics) in a sarcastic take of 'all girls love bad boys' with quiet music. The chorus says 'I'll never tell her that I live for her, I'll treat her badly, and she'll love me'.
* The French oldie "Je t'attendrai a la porte du garage" (I'll wait for you at the garage door), a supposedly funny song with a very light-hearted tune... that tells the story of a woman who has to raise her kids alone because her husband left. The title refers to what she writes to him: she'll wait for him at the garage door, and one day he'll finally come back home and everything will be alright. He does come back. Forty years later.
* The French song [["Gentiment je t'immole"]], meaning "I immolate you gently," sounds like a soft ballad, until you listen to the lyrics, which include things like 'you scream like a whore, your skin comes off'
* A popular song from 1913 titled "And The Green Grass Grew All Around" (not to be confused with a similarly titled children's song) is a very cheerful upbeat tune that deals with dark subject matter, in the first verse it's implied that one of the two lovers may ultimately be a gold digger, the second verse deals with a deadly accident (implied to be a hit and run) with an early "Ford machine" car crashing into a butcher cart, describing in detail the gruesome death, and the third verse dies with contaminated food. Slightly subverted in the final chorus, which takes a somewhat somber tone followed by the opening bars of the Funeral March, but then resumes the cheerfulness in the final "And the green grass grew all around, all around, and the green grass grew all around".
* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nabYYdQkS58 Katyusha]] is a very catchy cheerful Russian song about a women yearning for her lover who is away fighting a war. It doesn't help that this song is often sung by [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDe4g4bgNok cheerful]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivASIwtHALM children.]]
* "Ten men rowing on a river, ten men rowing on a stream, ten men rowing on a river, [[MoodWhiplash then in a flash, a great big splash, now there's only nine."]] Repeat until the boat is empty. Sung to a cheerful, peaceful little tune.

* cali=gari. All of it. "Mama ga boku o sutete papa ga boku o okashita hi" -- "The day mama abandoned and papa raped me".
* Dir en grey's song "embryo". While sounding like a perfectly tender ballad with a warming chorus, the lyrics (sung from a daughter's perspective) reveal that the singer's mother has hung herself to save herself from an abusive relationship with her husband, who has now turned to raping his daughter. She ends up eventually killing her father ''during another rape'', and yet manages to ''not abort the baby she is now carrying.''
** It should be noted that the song's lyrics were understandably changed to the singer's desire to join his mother in the afterlife, for its release as a single.
** It should also be noted that "Embryo" contains creepy whispering verses and almost an emo chorus. However, this trope is true to some of Dir en Grey's early upbeat and melodic stuff such as "Yurameki", "-I'll-", "Raison detre", "Wake", "Jessica", etc. The most perfect example is "Yokan" from their ''Gauze'' album (1999), this happy-sounding song with sad lyrics even got them to perform on pop-ish talk shows like ''Music Station'' and ''sitting next to frigging Ayumi Hamasaki'', the Empress of Pop herself.
* By Ensoku, there is "This is a Pen". Consisting of only the phrase "This is a pen" and an insert describing the functions of a pen. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9abC7LpgUo Needs to be seen to be believed.]]

* 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.
** This happens frequently with political songs, particularly of a satirical nature. Music/NeilYoung'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.

* Music/{{Sublime}}'s "Wrong Way" is about a teenage prostitute. Although it's pretty blatant what the song is about, the cheery beat contrasts with the dark lyrics.

* Music/ReelBigFish's best songs are depressing songs to the tune of cheery ska-punk. Frontman Aaron Barrett has said in interviews that they invoke this trope intentionally, stating that he was once called into a record executive's office and asked why their lyrics were so depressing and/or angry. He proceeded to pick up his guitar and play one of their happy, bouncy tunes but changing the lyrics to be happy and bouncy as well. The executive told him to stop and said he understood now. To name some specific examples:
** Their big hit "Beer" is, as the name implies, a catchy, danceable, upbeat song where the narrator drinks himself into a stupor because he's been dumped.
** "Sell Out" is about a singer who signed on with a record company and starting to doubt if he did the right thing.
** "She Has A Girlfriend Now", in which the singer's girlfriend realises that she's a lesbian and leaves him for a woman.
** "She's Famous Now" is about a man reflecting that his ex-girlfriend is now a celebrity.
** "Brand New Hero" is in the usual style, but is about a person "leaving" his friends and family because he doesn't believe in himself.
** "My Imaginary Friend" seems at first to be a silly song about, well, his imaginary friend, but it's actually about God and how the singer is renouncing his religion because he feels his prayers went ignored.
* Streetlight Manifesto's "The Saddest Song" fits this. Entirely peppy, with lyrics along the lines of
-->And it's the saddest song you'll ever hear
-->the most pain you will ever feel
-->but you grit your teeth because it don't get better than this.
** "As The Footsteps Die Out Forever" ([[strike: also by Streetlight Manifesto]] by Catch 22 before their lead singer left and formed Streetlight Manifesto) is an upbeat and happy song about the singer's mother getting sick and dying.
** Bandits of the Acoustic Revolution, pretty much the same band, has "It's a Wonderful Life," titled and performed happily, about an unhappy conscript coming to terms with the fact that he's much more likely to die at war than ever see his wife again. Somewhat [[SubvertedTrope subverted]] in that he decides that it was all worth it anyway.
-->I was told boy prepare for war
-->but they failed to mention what I'd be fighting for
-->So I fought for this
-->That as I passed away I'd feel her kiss
-->and I smile, what a wonderful life
** Also by Streetlight is "A Better Place, A Better Time," which is full of bouncy horns and bass in their usual style, but is sung from the point of view of someone desperately trying to talk a friend out of committing suicide.
-->And when you wake up, everything is gonna be fine
-->I guarantee that you'll wake in a better place, in a better time
-->So you're tired of livin', feel like you might give in?
-->Well, don't, it's not your time
* "Spiderwebs" by Music/NoDoubt has an upbeat, catchy tune, but it's about a girl who keeps getting called by a guy so much that she has to screen her phone calls (sounds like a stalker to me).
** Real Life Writes The Song.
* Sublime's "Wrong Way" is about a teenage prostitute. Although it's pretty blatant what the song is about, the cheery beat contrasts with the dark lyrics.
** "Santeria", a wistful 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").
** Let's not forget "Date Rape".
* Less Than Jake have a time with this now and again. The song "The Science of Selling Yourself Short" is bouncy and upbeat... and sings about being a self-defeating depressive, drinking his problems down the drain and alienating his friends in the process. (''I'll sing along, yeah, with every emergency/Just sing along-- I'm the king of catastrophes!/I'm so far gone, that deep down inside/I think it's fine by me/That I'm my own worst enemy!''
* The English Beat did a cover of The Miracles' [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjnYRD2vm8E "Tears of a Clown"]].
* I Voted For Kodos's "Please Die In A Fire" is a bouncy song that focuses on a band being screwed by their managers and label.
* Music/TheAquabats

---> ''Chemical bomb, chemical bomb,\\
Eyes melt, skin explodes, everybody's dead.\\
It won't be long, it won't be long,\\

** "Radiation Song!" is a peppy show-tune about living in a VideoGame/{{Fallout}}-esque post-nuclear apocalypse.

* The Foundations' two big hits are both bouncy, sweet-sounding songs about disturbingly obsessive love. The basic message of "Build Me Up Buttercup" is "Don't you see that we belong together? ''You shameless cocktease?''", while "Baby Now That I've Found You" goes more for "You're breaking up with me? Yeah...I won't allow that. I get it that you don't love me, but you are my everything and I WON'T LET YOU LEAVE."
** The lyrical dissonance of "Build Me Up Buttercup" is discussed at length in [[http://www.shaviro.com/Othertexts/Beat1.html this review by Critical Beatdown]].
* If you heard it without hearing the name you'd think this of "Fuck You" by Cee Lo Green. It's a ClusterFBomb soul song.
* The solemn instrumentation and raspy voice of Music/LouisArmstrong make "What A Wonderful World" sound like a deathbed song. He makes it sound like he is dying, but he is happy and content with the good things in life he has remembered.
** [[HarsherInHindsight Made even more]] [[TearJerker tearjerking]] in that he died 4 years after the song was released.
** Kinda made it more dissonant when the song is [[SoundtrackDissonance/WhatAWonderfulWorld used in media]] to portray sad or harsh scenes.

--> Now I wonder how a dance like the Tennessee Waltz
--> Could have broken my heart so complete
--> Well I couldn't blame my darlin', and who could help fallin'
--> In love with my darlin' so sweet
* "Waltzing Matilda" by Banjo Paterson is a cheerful-sounding song, the kind you want to sing along to, but the main character who steals sheep and camps under trees eventually commits suicide. Added bonus: Many Aussies consider this to be their national anthem, unofficially. Makes sense, given the historical context...
* "Little Brown Jug" by Joseph 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.
* "Whatever You Say, Say Nothing" is usually [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vm51sR4tRY sung in an upbeat fashion]]. It is actually a scathing satire of...well...the specific target has changed over the years but seems to generally be police state tactics and the use of [[TheMole informers]] in general.

* "The Minstrel Boy" can be performed in an uptempo fashion (e.g. Enter the Haggis, Young Dubliners). The eponymous Minstrel goes off to war, gets thrown in prison, and breaks his harp because its songs were "meant for the pure and free/ they shall never sound in slavery." The dissonance isn't quite as stealthy in many other examples, but it still fits.
* "Whiskey in the Jar" is certainly a fast, bouncy song that is a great one to sing along to. It is about a thief who is betrayed by his wife and thrown in prison
* "The Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond" is commonly sung at the beery, cheery end of parties and ceilidhs, oblivious to the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bonnie_Banks_o%27_Loch_Lomond# Interpretation gloomy interpretation]] of the words.
** However, it's only Lyrical Dissonance if you sing it too fast and at a party or other celebration. Sung slowly, and it's the most heart-wrenching song you'll ever hear.
* The traditional French song "Alouette", often taught to children, actually is about removing a lark's feathers in order to cook the bird.
** There is a children's song from the Philippines that describes the sighting, shooting and eating of a bird in both Tagalog and English.
** Puerto Rico has at least two Christmas carols that have to do with roasting pigs on a spit. One of them begins "You get the pig, you kill it, you skin it . . ."
* Then there's the happy French song that often produces spontaneous can-canning. You know? The one about HELL and DAMNATION?
* Several folk songs about love and death, such as "Frankie and Johnny", "Molly Malone" and "Oh My Darling, Clementine" have upbeat tunes.

* "The Man on the Flying Trapeze" is another nursery song that should be on here. A song in happy, happy ¾ time about a man whose girlfriend is taken by a circus performer. Then, after being trained by said circus performer, She, depending on how you look at the line "thus my love is stolen from me", has finally left the man singing for good, or dies attempting her first trapeze act.
* Depending on the singer, the Civil War-era ballad, "Lorena" can be sung quite cheerfully and even in its slower forms just sounds like a sweet love ballad... until you realize that it's about a soldier who not only knows he's likely to die but already gave up on the woman he loved when he left for war... 100 months ago.
** Folk legend has it that entire regiments during the war on both sides were banned from singing the song, because though it had the cheery sound of more positive ballads, the lyrics themselves were so heartbreaking to the soldiers (many who actually lived what the song was about), that it was causing detriment to the war effort by harming morale and making soldiers inconsolably homesick.
* "Rock-a-bye baby," the famous nursery rhyme also falls under this category. It's about a baby put in a treetop, where the child and cradle will fall down when the wind blows.
** In fact, a lot of nursery rhymes are quite violent in nature once you pay attention to the lyrics.
*** This is probably because Mommy's REALLY tired when she sings them. I like to refer to them as "Mommy's Ready To Snap songs".
** This was {{lampshaded}} in "Good Night," the very first ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' short on ''Series/TheTraceyUllmanShow'', in which Marge sings it to Maggie, who visualizes exactly what the lyrics describe.
** "Hush-a-bye"/"All the Pretty Little Horses" is especially sad and even gruesome, although the offending stanza isn't often sung anymore; apparently, it was originally sung by a slave mother to her master's child, which she was forced to nurse while neglecting her own.
--->Way down yonder, in the meadow,
--->There's a poor wee little lamby.
--->The birds and butterflies peckin' at its eyes,
--->The poor little thing cried "mammy."

-->"The other night, dear, as I lay sleeping\\
I dreamed I held you in my arms.\\

And I hung my head and cried."
* "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" sounds incredibly depressing and ominous for a song about the cheerful celebration of 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 version I know is worse -- "You haven't an arm, you haven't a leg, // You're an eyeless, noseless, chickenless egg; // You'll have to be put in a bowl to beg...." There's an English folk song called "The Recruited Collier", in which a young girl sings about her sorrow and shock at seeing her sweetheart go off to war where she knows he'll probably be killed, although he thinks it's a bit of fun. It has a terrifically upbeat, bouncy tune. One folksinger insisted on setting it to a different tune, precisely because of the Lyrical Dissonance which she thought was inappropriate -- but really the contrast between the jolly tune and the ominous words only made it sadder and creepier.
* Sarah Brightman's "Once in a Lifetime" is a soft, gentle song about a woman experimenting with S&M.

* "Snap Your Fingers" by Teena Marie is a peppy-sounding NewJackSwing song about a rich man who can't get into a lasting relationship because [[GoldDigger he scores girlfriends through his wealth alone]].
* Music/RobinThicke's "Blurred Lines" (featuring Music/PharrellWilliams and Music/{{TI}}) is a catchy, upbeat-sounding pop song with ''extremely'' explicit and predatory lyrics, like T.I.'s infamous line "I'll give you something big enough to tear your ass in two!" Thicke himself described it as a MisogynySong (though he denied personally being a misogynist in RealLife).
* The song played at many a cookout, family reunion, block party, "Before I Let Go" by Frankie Beverly is a song about being certain if leaving the woman he loves is what he really wants to do. Most people wouldn't notice this, however, due to the groovy and upbeat arrangement.

* A substantially large portion of the aforementioned Jamaican music of the '60s and '70s defines this trope by singing about injustice, poverty, racism, etc. accompanied by the upbeat, singable melodies of reggae and ska. A slight inversion of this trope is that sometimes the lyrics would seem tame, even if the actual meaning was something more sinister. For example, one of Music/BobMarley's earliest hits with The Wailers was called "Simmer Down", which despite sounding like he's talking to misbehaving children is actually a plea for gangs to stop killing each other. The word "rudeboy" is extremely common in ska and reggae music, which [[FluffyTheTerrible sounds like it refers to a childish prankster but actually refers to the extremely dangerous gangsters and hoods of Jamaica]] (akin to the use of "wiseguys" to refer to TheMafia).

* [=UB40=]'s version of "Red Red Wine": The melody is a somewhat upbeat spin on a song about a man who [[DrowningMySorrows turns to the bottle]] to forget a lost love.

* Music/SergeGainsbourg, his reggae cover of La Marseillaise (The French national anthem) called "Aux Armes, etc" definitely counts. As if a reggae tune for the national anthem of a European country wasn't strange enough, anyone who's read the lyrics of the song knows they are extremely violent and gory.
* "Wild World," the most well-known song done by British-born reggae singer Maxi Priest, has a bouncy rhythm and uplifting, jazzy-sounding saxophone music throughout; yet the lyrics depict a man simultaneously pleading with his girlfriend not to leave him and resigning himself to the fact that it's happening anyway.
* The calypso song "Jean and Dinah" by Mighty Sparrow has a cheery calypso beat; however, the song discusses how American military bases in Trinidad supported prostitution and how, after the military bases were closed down, the prostitutes became desperate. Likewise, Mighty Sparrow's song "Congo Man" is an upbeat-sounding little ditty about a cannibal in DarkestAfrica.
* "Vietnam" by Jimmy Cliff is another example of a happy-sounding reggae song with a sobering political theme: The music ''sort of'' fits the mood of the first verse, where the narrator receives a letter from his friend, who is fighting in the Vietnam war but is happy to be returning home soon. However, the second verse is about the soldier's mother receiving a telegram informing her of his death the very next day.

* Just about everything by The Specials counts. Notably, we have "Hey Little Rich Girl", which has a fast and upbeat accompaniment but describes the titular rich girl going to London and becoming a prostitute and adult movie star and their first number one hit, "Too Much Too Young", is about teenage pregnancy messing up somebody's life.
* "Cardiac Arrest" by Music/{{Madness}} is about ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin, "Johnny the Horse" is about a homeless man who gets kicked to death "for entertainment" and "Idiot Child" is about a child who never received any encouragement.
** ''Embarrassment'' from ''Music/{{Absolutely}}'' is made of this trope also. An upbeat, cheery tune alongside a dark and depressing story about a girl being disowned by her racist family for having a baby with a black man. Even worse, it was based on a true story.
* A lot of Fishbone's earlier work fits this.
* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8OH4rZu28o "Everybody's Got Aids"]] by the Canadian ska band Me, Mom, & Morgentaler definitely fits this trope, for relatively obvious reasons.
* The Argentinian band Los Fabulosos Cadillacs has explored this trope with the song [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEdTPqo2hgc "Matador"]] (prominently featured in the closing credits to ''Film/GrossePointeBlank''), which is a very danceable song about political assassinations in Latin America.
** Before that, they released "Mal Bicho", who is another danceable song who is a long call out to a shameless racist, openly insulting and mocking his beliefs. It has [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wctrVAyefms a controversial video]] featuring blood everywhere, torture victims, the band being killed during a "live" show, and [[RefugeInAudacity a effeminate dancing]] [[UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler Hitler-lookalike]] [[note]]In truth a CaptainErsatz of former dictator Jorge Rafael Videla[[/note]] as the torturer.
** A "lighter" example is [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ6u2STHDLs "El Satanico Dr. Cadillac"]], a danceable and rhythmic song where the narrator laments how an old friend fucked up his own life.
* Venezuelan Ska band Desorden Publico lives and breathes this trope, but where it shows more is in their 1997 album ''Plomo Revienta'' (slang who would -roughly- translate as "buttload of gunshots"), which is an long view on how dangerous is living in Caracas (violence, crime, governmental indolence, [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking bad love life]]...), and the perpetual alert state the city inhabitants live on because of it. All in the form of bouncy ska songs. The most memorable is [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gz7sh9JwS2I "Alla Cayo"]], a bouncy song with witty rhymes whose lyrics tell the story of three "normal" slum deaths: a petty murder of a thug because of his expensive Air Jordan shoes, a drug-related crime, and a innocent high schooler killed by a lost bullet during a gang battle. The last verse is in a funeral, with a mother loudly crying for her dead boy, but we don't know whose mother is this. The chorus it's so catchy you don't realize until later how cruel and ''detached'' really is:
--->''He fell there, he fell there, fell there, fell there''\\
''He fell there, he fell there, fell there, fell there''\\
''And they painted his ChalkOutline on the sidewalk (how pity!)''\\
''And they painted his chalk outline on the sidewalk (how pity!)''\\
''And they painted his chalk outline on the sidewalk...''
* ''Riot Squad'', by New Zealand ska group The Newmatics, explored themes of PoliceBrutality and was a favourite of protesters who opposed the [[PowderKegCrowd 1981 Springbok Tour]]. The [[http://www.nzonscreen.com/title/riot-squad-1981 very colourful music video]] with dance moves and fashions evoking Music/TheWiggles adds to the dissonance.

* 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".
** "Brand New Hero" is in the usual style, but is about a person "leaving" his friends and family because he doesn't believe in himself.

** "My Imaginary Friend" seems at first to be a silly song about, well, his imaginary friend, but it's actually about God.
** Frontman Aaron Barrett has said in interviews they invoke this trope intentionally, stating that he was once called into a record executive's office and asked why their lyrics were so depressing and/or angry. He proceeded to pick up his guitar and play one of their happy, bouncy tunes but changing the lyrics to be happy and bouncy as well. The executive told him to stop and said he understood now.

* WebVideo/RhettAndLink:
** "Get You Back" is a soft song about revenge.
** There's a song about squirrels which has a "squirrely" feel but portrays their anger about being shown all over the Web without giving consent first.

* "Butcher Pete" by Roy Brown is a bouncy jazz number about a guy who's either [[AxCrazy a serial killer who targets women]] or [[TheCasanova a philandering cad.]] As [[http://www.cracked.com/article_17625_p2.html Cracked.com]] puts it, "This is a rare example where hiding the sexual content behind double entendres and innuendo somehow made the song a thousand times ''more'' offensive."
* Music/RayCharles' version of "Bye Bye Love." The more well-known version by the Everly Brothers is in a major key already, but Ray's version is positively bouncy. The song is about...well, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin exactly what the title tells you]]. Hear [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=729yYBH6ZxY part of it]] during a fittingly upbeat dance performance.
* Many songs by Steely Dan are good examples of this trope. (Examples: "Peg," "My Old School," "Reelin' 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 the same record as "Chain Lightning" is "Everyone's Gone to the Movies", in which a man known as Mr. La Page shows pornographic films in his living room to neighbourhood children, while the parents are none the wiser and happy that their children are out of the house.
** In contrast, Donald Fagen's solo work largely subverts this -- at least up until ''Morph the Cat'', and even that has exceptions ("Mary Shut the Garden Door", "Security Joan").
** "Kid Charlemagne" is an upbeat jazz-funk-rock song about an LSD dealer and his eventual arrest. "... Your low-rent friends are dead ..."
** In kind of a subversion, their song "Deacon Blues" sounds somber and morose, until you realize, ''the lyrics are about a hipster wannabe who wants to mythologize himself by adopting the nickname of a losing college sports team (the Wake Forest Demon Deacons--as contrasted with the winning Alabama Crimson Tide).
* "The Whole World Should Revolve Around Me" by Little Jackie is a cheerful, upbeat song about a woman who's too self-absorbed to keep up a relationship.
* City High - "What Would You Do". An upbeat mid-tempo major-key tune, which is about a mom having to turn to prostitution to support her child, while his dad goes off and does drugs etc.
* Al Duvall, a blues musician InTheStyleOf 1920s-era and older artists, is (while it isn't all he does) well known for light, happy, and wit-laden ditties that could all be set in a CrapsackWorld à la [[WesternAnimation/TheMarvelousMisadventuresOfFlapjack Flapjack.]] There's "Poppycock and Tommyrot," about a traveling salesman who packs up and leaves before his customers realize he's scammed them, "Mary Mack," about a shopkeeper who falls in love with the thief who's been raiding his store, "Slick Hamtree," which closes with a song about a man who can't do his job (farming chickens) while turning a profit, and "Dark Inside," a song about (among other things) binge drinking, work accidents, stalkers, wartime, and gambling oneself broke.
* D-Train's cover of Dionne Warwick's "Walk On By", a BreakupSong about how the singer is unable to prevent herself from crying whenever she comes across her ex-lover, who she tells to pretend not to notice him crying should they ever meet again, is done in their [[SignatureStyle signature bouncy post-disco style]], falling squarely into this trope. Warwick's original is a bit upbeat for the subject matter, as well.
* The slow groove, funky rhythm and horn accents of Music/{{TLC}}'s signature song, "Waterfalls", contrast with gritty, realistic lyrics about the toll of urban gang violence and AIDS. Even Lisa Lopez's genuinely upbeat rap in the bridge is tempered by knowing that she was let out of rehab to record it and the awareness of her later death in a car accident.
* Black Box's "Everybody Everybody" is the upbeat and cheery sounding song about a woman lamenting leaving a cheating partner who cared less about her than she him. It's exemplified best in the spirited "Sad and free!" she sings at the end of each verse.
* "Dilemma" by Nelly is not an innocent love song. It's very clearly about Nelly trying to break up a couple so he can get with a woman. Even worse, she has a kid with her current significant other.

* The Pointer Sisters' "Neutron Dance" is a happy, bouncy 80's number about trying to keep yourself together while things around you are falling apart. And I quote: "I don't want to take it anymore / I'll just stay here locked behind the door / Just no time to stop and get away / 'Cause I work so hard to make it every day". Yeah. And to further heighten the dissonance, this song was featured in a ''Minnie Mouse cartoon special''.
* "Rehab" by Music/AmyWinehouse.
* "I Put a Spell on You" by Screamin' Jay Hawkins, turned out this way by happy accident. It was originally penned and composed as an ordinary love ballad. However, one case of wine later, and Hawkins and his entire band decided to record the song while ''stone drunk''. The resulting cacophony of roaring, howling and snorting is somewhere on the line between Nightmare Fuel and Comedy Gold. The otherwise innocuous lyrics become something out of an insane stalker's mind, and then, of course, there's the demonic laughter.
* 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.
** Ditto "Tears of a Clown". The English Beat's jarring cover didn't help matters.
* "Ain't Too Proud To Beg" by The Temptations was about a man getting dumped and all the demeaning things he would do to get her back. It would be so sad if it wasn't so damn catchy and easy to dance to.
* Music/{{Rihanna}}'s "Take a Bow" is a scathingly sarcastic "screw you" to an ex wanting forgiveness...set to a touching piano arrangement. It's a little strange when ''AmericasBestDanceCrew'' uses the chorus as its "goodbye" theme. The chorus sounds fine out of context--the only outright hurtful stuff is in the verses. Still, it's strange to hear them congratulating a crew on how far they've gotten when you know the lyrics in their entirety:
-->''How about a round of applause?
-->Standing ovation.
-->You look so dumb right now
-->Standing outside my house
-->Trying to apologize, you're so ugly when you cry.
** By contrast, her next single, "Disturbia", is an upbeat pop/dance number with lyrics about a descent into madness.
* "Hit 'Em Up Style (Oops!)" by Blu Cantrell is a bouncy number about [[AntiLoveSong taking revenge on a cheating boyfriend]] by [[DisproportionateRetribution running up his credit cards and selling his stuff]].

* 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 [[StepfordSmiler hide their hurt and]] [[SadClown 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 LyricalDissonance intentionally after being reminded of the characters in ''Pagliacci''.)

* Chumbawamba embodies this trope, with cheery pop-synth beats, and female soprano vocals...that are rather depressing (and often either critiquing society or politics). For example, their song Smalltown, an airy, breezy number containing these lyrics:
-->''Cafes full of people dressed as spies''//
-->''And all I know is guilt for being different''//
-->''It's always raining stones''//
-->''There's a killer in my home''//
* "Final Day" by UK post-punk band Young Marble Giants has a bright, catchy tune and is sung in an endearingly sweet schoolgirl-ish manner, but the lyric concerns a nuclear holocaust. Cast in this setting, lines like "''There is so much noise, there is too much heat/And the living floor throws you off your feet''" carry an eerily poignant resonance no similarly-themed heavy metal song could match.
* White Rose Movement's "Girls in the Back" is a rather poppy song that most agree is either about sadomasochism or paedophilia whilst "Cruella", a song about a suffering drug addict, opens with the chant "Doh doh doh/ Doh doh doh doh"...
* The Louis XIV song "A Letter To Dominique" is one of their more upbeat tracks. It is in fact all about a suicidal young woman whose death was probably helped along by the narrator.
* Wire ''love'' putting bizarre or sinister lyrics to otherwise upbeat songs, with their '80s run being a boon for this trope. Here are some of the better examples:
** "Outdoor Miner" is a sweet, chiming harmony-laden pop tune about a kind of inchworm that eats chlorophyll. [[WordSaladLyrics Or so they say]].

** "Dot Dash" sounds a bit like The Buzzcocks, except that the lyrics seem to be about a fighter pilot crashing.
** "Map Ref. 41ºN 93ºW", generally agreed (amongst fans) to be Wire's SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic, is about cartography. Subtly subverted, though...
*** See also "'A Serious Of Snakes...'", in which we are treated to some incredibly arcane satire set to one hell of a tune.
** "Ahead" is about being deceived and manipulated. It is also an unbelievably catchy dance number.
** "Kidney Bingos" is, lyrically, faintly creepy and [[WordSaladLyrics borderline incomprehensible]], but this is easily ignored in favor of the utterly beautiful melody.
*** Ditto "Madman's Honey".

* 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.

* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xuz94ZIPfJk "Small Town Boy" by Bronski Beat]], a driving dancy new wave/Hi-NRG number, is about a teen being bullied and forced to leave town and his family because of his homosexuality.
* "Voices Carry" by TilTuesday is a fairly upbeat song about an abusive relationship.
* Corey Hart's ''"Sunglasses At Night"'' is an energetic new wave song... about life within a PoliceState. The dissonance would have been greater had it not been for ExecutiveMeddling giving it a romantic subtext.
* Falco's "Jeannie" ''seems'' to be about a DoggedNiceGuy who desperately wants a girl named Jeannie to notice him. The song is actually about a SerialKiller and Jeannie is ''his next victim''. Not helped by how the song is in German save for the chorus, and people only pay attention to the English chorus... totally missing the last spoken part that offers details about Jeannie and other girls being missing...
* Music/PetShopBoys's "It's A Sin" is a VERY hammy and loud song about a man who's tormented by guilt and his inner demons, inspired by Neil Tennant's own bad experiences in the past.
* "Always Something There To Remind Me" by NakedEyes is a very upbeat song about a man tormented by memories of his ex-girlfriend

* Julio Jaramillo is an Ecuadorian "pasillo" performer who has a wonderful song called "Bodas Negras". It doesn't start happy, but as the music advances, it gets more cheerful. It's a wonderful love song to dance to...Except when you realize it talks about a guy that pulls out his ex-lover's skeleton out of the grave and dances, kisses it and finally marries it.

[[folder:Post-Grunge]]
* Dynamite Hack's indie-rock version of "Boys-n-the-Hood."

[[folder:Post-Industrial]]
* "Worlock" by Skinny Puppy. The song is one of Skinny Puppy's most accessible songs and is essentially a pop song with heavy drums. The strings in the chorus are particularly beautiful. But the lyrics are the usual insane-demented-weird-incomprehensibility that Skinny Puppy revels in.
[[/folder]]

* "Lullaby" by Music/TheCure. 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 extremely 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 most sincere love songs ever), aptly named "Lovesong", does ''not'' have a happy tune. At all.
* This was Music/JoyDivision's stock-in-trade. Most of their songs are fast and catchy... with some of the most wretchedly depressing lyrics ever committed to paper:
-->When routine bites hard and ambitions are low
-->And resentment rides high but emotions won't grow
-->And we're changing our ways, taking different roads
-->Then love, love will tear us apart again
-->Why is the bedroom so cold turned away on your side?
-->Is my timing that flawed, our respect run so dry?
-->Yet there's still this appeal that we've kept through our lives
-->Love, love will tear us apart again
-->Do you cry out in your sleep, all my failings exposed?
-->Get a taste in my mouth as desperation takes hold
-->Is it something so good just can't function no more?
-->When love, love will tear us apart again
** Chillingly enough, the lyrics frontman Ian Curtis wrote for the band started to become more and more personal in the months leading up to May 18, 1980, but it was only ''after'' he [[DrivenToSuicide hanged himself]] that day that everyone came to realize that he had essentially been writing suicide notes; "Love Will Tear Us Apart" (quoted directly above) is only one of many examples.
** Even their name is a bit of a joke. In the novel, ''The House of Dolls'' by Yehiel De-Nur, joy divisions were groups of Jewish women in the concentration camps who were kept to sexually service Nazi guards.
** Some other wonderful numbers include "Isolation", a nice little bouncy synthpop song about the singer hating himself, and "Transmission", which seems upbeat and nice... until you look at the lyrics closely.
* Music/NewOrder does this semi-frequently, what with them being comprised of the surviving members of Joy Division plus the drummer's girlfriend. For instance, the song "Perfect Kiss" is about watching a mentally deranged friend commit suicide (which Sumner explained was based on an encounter with a man in America who randomly showed the band the guns hidden under his bed before going out for a night on the town). Sometimes they reverse it, though: a song called "Regret" is about falling in love and learning to put the past away.
** Or perhaps their biggest hit, "Bizarre Love Triangle", which is extremely catchy and built for dancing even before you get to some of the remixes, in which a guy's self-doubts and darker impulses (the singer is providing two legs of said love triangle) have him wondering if the relationship will last. And most covers/remixes of the song are even peppier than the original.
** "Blue Monday" also appears to be a nod to Curtis's passing.

---> I used to think that the day would never come, I'd spend my life in the shade of the morning sun/My morning sun is a drug that brings me here, to the child I lost, replaced by fear/I used to think that the day would never come, that my life would depend on the morning sun/
** "1963", the B-side to "True Faith", was once described by producer Stephen Hague as the only song about domestic violence you could dance to. And for good reason-- despite it's catchy (if comparatively sparse) instrumentals and melody, the lyrics are written from the perspective of a woman whose husband murders her to elope with another woman with whom he'd been having an affair.
** "Love Vigilantes", sung from the point of view of a soldier fighting in the Falklands War, whose chorus returns to his desire to get home and see his family again. It's upbeat and even features a harmonica, an instrument New Order never used in any other song. But then in the last verse, the singer returns home [[DeadAllAlong only to see his wife break out in tears as she reads the Army's letter telling her he died in battle]].

* Ado's "Domestic Violence" is a rather refreshing and upbeat jazz song...but the lyrics are ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: An abusive, toxic relationship between a couple.

* Industry's "State of the Nation" is an upbeat dance track with cool synth chords, yet the lyrics are all about war. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZh1oiN5bJY One version of the music video]] tries to imply this by taking place around and inside a navy vessel full of (dancing) ensigns, but the party atmosphere and the fact that everybody's dancing only makes it look silly.
* "Maniac" by Michael Sembello sounds pretty ominous (in a cheesy 80's slasher movie theme music sort of way) for just being about a girl who loves to dance. As it turns out, this is because it was substantially rewritten for the ''Film/{{Flashdance}}'' soundtrack: The original lyrics were inspired by the horror film ''Maniac'', and featured the refrain "He's a maniac, maniac, that's for sure, he will kill your cat and nail him to the door". A somewhat garbled copy of the song (which was written for personal giggles) was accidentally included on Sembello's demo tape for the producers of ''Flashdance'', and it was the only one they liked.
* You can't really get much more horrific than Paul Hardcastle's "19". "UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar was an unspeakable tragedy for everyone involved. Let's dance!"
* Music/DepecheMode almost always has angsty lyrics, and these are almost always paired with appropriately angsty or at least rougher-than-standard-pop music. And then there's "A Photograph Of You", which is bouncy, happy, and sweet, almost like an old-school [[Music/TheBeachBoys Beach Boys]] track on synths... but it's about a guy too torn up about his breakup to throw away the photo he keeps of his girlfriend.
* "Big In Japan" by Music/{{Alphaville}}, a fairly upbeat song with lyrics about a couple who share a heroin addiction imagining if their life would be easier elsewhere.
* "Kids in America" is a cheery tune about having fun in the city... until you see the original music video, and realize the song is about a paranoid agoraphobic who has holed up alone, watching a massive party outside, and trying to explain their behavior, eventually issuing a warning about them.
--> Looking out a dirty old window
--> Down below the cars in the city go rushing by
--> I sit here '''''alone'''' and I wonder why
** And that's even worse! ...Dangit, Cascada.
* Music/TheThe's song "This is the Day" has a catchy tune and a chorus that says: "This is the day your life will surely change / This is the day when things fall into place." Great, right? They even used it in an M&Ms commercial. Except that the verse lyrics describe someone who has wasted his entire life and tells himself things will change ''every day,'' without ever making a move to actually do so. Similarly, their song "Perfect" is quite upbeat and the chorus starts with: "It's such a picture-perfect day..." But the lyrics describe ''sitting in a cemetery pondering the futility of existence.''
* Not really creepy ''per se'', but "My Sharona" by The Knack is an incredibly upbeat song... about a guy who is attracted [[{{Ephebophile}} to an underage girl]] and, in his seemingly paranoid mind, is wondering if she feels the same or [[FilleFatale just leading him on.]]
* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjsnkIP4ddo Haysi Fantayzee's "Shiny Shiny"]], a ludicrously peppy new wave polka rap hit that's at least partially about the pending threat of nuclear war ("The child spoke 'we ain't got hope'/press a button, press a button/ it's all remote").
* Music/GaryNuman's "Are Friends Electric?"
** "I hate to ask, but Are Friends Electric? Mine's broke down, and now I've no one to love".
* Music/TearsForFears:
** "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" has a relaxed, radio-friendly sound. What the lyrics are actually about, however, well, [[UsefulNotes/ColdWar read the title]].
--->There's a room where the light won't find you\\
Holding hands while the walls come tumbling down
** "Woman in Chains" is a sweet-sounding ballad -- about a woman who's a victim of DomesticAbuse.
** "Mad World" is an upbeat sounding song about depression.

* Ado's "Domestic Violence" is a refreshing and upbeat jazz-rock song...but the lyrics are ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: An abusive, toxic relationship between a couple.

* Ado's "Domestic Violence" is a refreshing and upbeat tune...but the lyrics are ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: An abusive, toxic relationship between a couple.

* Ado's "Domestic Violence" has a refreshing and upbeat tune...but the lyrics are ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: An abusive, toxic relationship between a couple.