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Pointless lyric changes in cover versions

R

rnigma1

I'm not talking about gender changes, where, say, a love song from a male point of view is altered for a female vocalist. I mean when a song is recorded by another artist besides the one who first recorded it (and, perhaps, made it an established hit), and the cover artist makes unnecessary changes in the lyrics.

For instance, in "(Oh) Pretty Woman," Roy Orbison sang "I don't believe you - you're not the truth..." However, in the Van Halen cover, it's changed to "I don't believe you, it must be true.." ???

Bob Seger's "Fire Down Below": "But only one thing in common... they got the fire down below."
Bette Midler's cover: "But only one thing on their minds... fire down below." ???

There's a special place in hell for Michael Johnson, who took Bill La Bounty's "This Night Won't Last Forever" and completely FUBARed the lyrics, transposing the second part of verse 1 and the first part of verse 2, among other tinkering.

The lyric change in Narvel Felts' awful version of Dobie Gray's "Drift Away" is understandable, but still bad: "Gimme the beat, boys, and free my soul, I wanna get lost in your country song, and drift away..."
 
Lynn Anderson's remake of the Drifters' Up On The Roof changed "we'll be making love" to "we'll be falling in love." Johnny Carver's country version of Tony Orlando's Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Ole Oak Tree changed "the whole damn bus" to "the whole darn bus." But those changes were made to make the songs more "family-friendly."

How about UB40's remake of the Temptations' The Way You Do The Things You Do? The original lyrics were:

"The way you stole my heart, you know you could have been a cool crook.
And, baby, you're so smart, you know you could have been a schoolbook."

UB40 omitted the word "cool." Either the word was no longer a popular expression or the band didn't want to glamorize the life of a thief. At any rate, the one-syllable omission threw off the meter.

And the Walt Disney Company bowed to pressure from Arab-American groups who objected to a line in Arabian Nights, one of the songs in the Aladdin movie: "They cut off your ear if they don't like your face" was changed to "It's flat and immense and the heat is intense." Uhh...Aladdin was not a true story, people! It was an animated film! I don't think anyone saw the movie and heard the original song and then expected his ear would be sliced off by an Arab.
 
In the 1950s several raunchy r&b songs were cleaned up and recorded by white singers. Here are two good examples: Etta James' Roll With Me Henry became Georgia Gibbs' Dance With Me Henry, and Elvis Presley sang "One night with you is what I'm now praying for" because there was no way that manager Tom Parker would have let him record the original Smiley Lewis lyrics, "One night of sin is what I'm now paying for."

Bill Haley made no changes when he recorded Joe Turner's Shake Rattle & Roll...but maybe he didn't get the sexual references in the line about the "one-eyed cat peepin' in a seafood store." :eek:
 
On the subject of R&B and Elvis, Big Mama Thornton first recorded "Hound Dog," and in her version the first line was "You ain't nothin' but a hound dog, snoopin' round my door." When Elvis covered it, he (or Lieber and Stoller) changed it to "...cryin' all the time." Why, I don't know.

And didn't Pat Boone change Fats Domino's "Ain't That a Shame" to "Isn't That a Shame"?
 
Pat Boone's first number-one hit was indeed Ain't That A Shame. Do you really want to get me started on grammatically incorrect song titles such as Ain't Got No Home, Don't Say Nothin' Bad About My Baby, or Tell Someone You Love Them?

Here's a song that was almost completely changed: The movie version of Georgy Girl started out this way:

"Hey there, Georgy girl, pretty as a picture, told you so;
Can it be the Georgy we all know or somebody new? I wonder.
Hey there, Georgy girl, hurrying away to celebrate;
Got yourself a man, but wait---there’s somebody else for you."

The Seekers' single version of the song began with these lines:

"Hey there, Georgy girl, swingin' down the street so fancy-free;
Nobody you meet could ever see the loneliness there, inside you.
Hey there, Georgy girl, why do all the boys just pass you by?
Could it be you just don't try or is it the clothes you wear?"

Except for the title, the two versions have little in common.

And of course Elton John's single version of Can You Feel The Love Tonight was drastically different from the version that Timon sang in The Lion King.
 
I have to say that the recent version of "Big Yellow Taxi", where they change "and took away my old man" to "and took my girl away", is like fingers on a chalkboard to me!
 
I see that Pat Boone recorded "Ain't That a Shame" with title intact, but I recall seeing a clip of Boone on a TV show changing the grammar in the song.

Speaking of Lynn Anderson, she did a cover of Andy Gibb's "I Just Wanna Be Your Everything" wherein she changed "I want you laying in the love I have to bring" to "I want you wrapped up in the love I have to bring...."
 
Billy Joel, "Zanzibar," original lyrics:

"Rose, he knows he's such a credit to the game..."

Revised lyrics, when he sang it live in concert:

"Rose, he knows he'll never make the Hall of Fame..."

(A reference to Pete Rose and the Baseball Hall of Fame, in case Mario is reading this. ::))
 
Then there's Lou Christie's cleaned up version of "Rhapsody in the Rain", as well as Lloyd Price's sanitized version of "Stagger Lee"

Another one that always got my attention was Charlie Drake's, "My Boomerang Won't come back", where "black in the face" got replaced by "blue in the face".
 
LARadioRewind said:
Lynn Anderson's remake of the Drifters' Up On The Roof changed "we'll be making love" to "we'll be falling in love." Johnny Carver's country version of Tony Orlando's Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Ole Oak Tree changed "the whole damn bus" to "the whole darn bus." But those changes were made to make the songs more "family-friendly."

How about UB40's remake of the Temptations' The Way You Do The Things You Do? The original lyrics were:

"The way you stole my heart, you know you could have been a cool crook.
And, baby, you're so smart, you know you could have been a schoolbook."

UB40 omitted the word "cool." Either the word was no longer a popular expression or the band didn't want to glamorize the life of a thief. At any rate, the one-syllable omission threw off the meter.

And the Walt Disney Company bowed to pressure from Arab-American groups who objected to a line in Arabian Nights, one of the songs in the Aladdin movie: "They cut off your ear if they don't like your face" was changed to "It's flat and immense and the heat is intense." Uhh...Aladdin was not a true story, people! It was an animated film! I don't think anyone saw the movie and heard the original song and then expected his ear would be sliced off by an Arab.
Click to expand...

That must be some rewrite if she brought in, and changed, lyrics from Under The Boardwalk, although originally "making love" meant something more along the lines of flirting with. I saw a movie from the '30s or early '40s several years back and a female character says to a male character "Why, (insert male character name here), are you making love to me?", and they were both fully dressed and not in physical contact.

Actually "falling in love" works better with the meter of the song, coming after "People walking above".

And speaking of meter, they could have changed it to smooth crook and that would have worked.

The one that really irked me was the Baldwin Piano sponsored/supplied Lawrence Welk show doing "I Love A Piano" and changing the best line in the song, "I know a fine way to treat a Steinway", to something lame to eliminate the competitor's name, which reminds me of when Midnight Special on NBC used to block out logos on musical instruments and equipment if the company was a part of the CBS Musical Instruments group.
 
Mister unitron, one of those 1930s movies with the line "Are you making love to me?" was the Marx Brothers' Horse Feathers. Thelma Todd's character said it to Professor Wagstaff (Groucho). She also fell out of a canoe and screamed, "Professor Wagstaff, throw me a life saver!" You can guess the next scene.

Another line in the aforementioned Big Yellow Taxi was changed: "They took all the trees and put 'em in a tree museum and they charged the people a dollar and a half just to see 'em." In 1995 Amy Grant got to #18 on the AC chart with a new version of the song. Inflation had taken its toll---she changed the "dollar and a half" amount to "twenty-five bucks."
 
Today I heard the Police's lame 1986 remake of "Don't Stand So Close to Me" for the first time since that year, and Sting altered the line "just like that old man in that book by Nabokov" to "just like that old man in that famous book by Nabokov," because he was trying to jazz up his vocal.
 
Don't remind me! When I bought the Police Greatest Hits CD, I was dismayed to find that dreary remake instead of the 1981 original (which earned them a Grammy award for best rock group).
 
I was just as disappointed when I bought the album "Eric Burdon - The Animals' Greatest Hits," and it turned out to be Burdon's solo covers of Animals songs. His version of "House of the Rising Sun" could not compare to the Animals' original.
(And when Dolly Parton covered that song, the lyrics were almost completely changed; instead of being a gambling house, the title establishment was now a whorehouse.)
 
LARadioRewind said:
Lynn Anderson's remake of the Drifters' Up On The Roof changed "we'll be making love" to "we'll be falling in love." Johnny Carver's country version of Tony Orlando's Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Ole Oak Tree changed "the whole damn bus" to "the whole darn bus." But those changes were made to make the songs more "family-friendly."
Click to expand...
Similar example, someone (don't remember who, doesn't really matter) sang a cover version of "Bad Bad Leroy Brown" on HeeHaw and changed "whole damn town" to "whole dang town." Probably plenty of examples like that.

Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock & Roll" was changed to "still like that country-style rock and roll" in a country remake (a "countrymake") of it. Country music should probably leave pop-rock classics alone! (Again, I do not remember who the offending "artist" was who committed this travesty.)
 
"Country music should probably leave pop-rock classics alone"? How can you say such a thing? Don't tell me you didn't absolutely adore Buck Owens' version of Bridge Over Troubled Water! :p
 
LARadioRewind said:
"Country music should probably leave pop-rock classics alone"? How can you say such a thing? Don't tell me you didn't absolutely adore Buck Owens' version of Bridge Over Troubled Water! :p
Click to expand...

It's probably better than Sen. Sam Ervin's version!
 
On an album of artists covering the Dead Kennedys, Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy covered "California Uber Alles" and changed "now your kids will pray in school" to "even your kids are gonna pray to me in school" (the "me" being the current Calif. governor Pete Wilson). Maybe the singer
had no problem with prayer, but changed it so the prayer was to the governor...

(allmusic, Virus 100: "Already one of the strongest numbers in the Kennedys' book, rapper Michael Franti updates the song for California governor Pete Wilson")

Guy Lombardo in the 70s did a New Year's Eve show and somehow there were versions of then
current songs--Bad Bad Leroy Brown's lyric became "the whole darn town" I think.
 
LARadioRewind said:
Bill Haley made no changes when he recorded Joe Turner's Shake Rattle & Roll...but maybe he didn't get the sexual references in the line about the "one-eyed cat peepin' in a seafood store." :eek:
Click to expand...

I would beg to differ:
Big Joe: "Get out of that bed and wash your face and hands"
Haley: "Get out in that kitchen and rattle those pots and pans"
Big Joe: "Wearin' those dresses, the sun comes shining through"
Haley: "Wearin' those dresses, your hair done up so nice"
 
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