History Main / WhatSongWasThisAgain

** The Hindi dub is based on Funimation English dub and uses the music from Ocean dub, so they used "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4vjJrGeh1c Rock the Dragon]]" as the opening theme, but in contrast to the original version which only repeats the same words over and over again, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOqL80J9RnQ the Hindi opening has an real lyrics.]]

** Die Strandjungs used to specialize in Music/TheBeachBoys covers with German lyrics, often with an radically different meaning.

* The Japanese version of the traditional "Auld Lang Syne" is about studying by the light of fireflies, and is usually used as a graduation song.

* While ''Anime/{{Pokemon}}'' largely deals with the AlternativeForeignThemeSong, there are a few cases of this:

* Perhaps one is of the weirdest examples of this happens in the ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'' episode "Whale of a Birthday" with the song "4 Ply" by Squidward, where in the Latin American Spanish dub the context was changed to how "hysterical" is Squidward's butt and that he only uses soft toilet paper, otherwise he will cry. [[NotMakingThisUpDisclaimer Yeah]].

* Another famous example is "Comme d'habitude" ("As Usual") by Claude François, a song about a couple keeping the appearances while stuck in a loveless marriage. Music/PaulAnka liked the melody and adapted it for his friend Music/FrankSinatra. The resulting "Music/MyWay" was the hit that kept Sinatra from giving up on his music career, but ironically he came to loathe the lyrics as self-indulgent.

And if dubbing the ''spoken'' dialogue weren't tough enough, dubbing ''songs'' can be downright hellish. Not only do all the difficulties above carry over, but to get good lyrics in another language, dubbers have to account for the general meaning of the song, the intent of the song-writer, the grammar of the song's original language, the song's rhythm, scansion and meter, how slang and idiom are used in the dubbed language, where the stresses fall in the song due to rhythm/melody, the new language's rhyming schemes compared to the original language and how ''that'' will be perceived in the language, and so on and so forth.[[note]][[UsefulNotes/ChineseDialectsAndAccents Chinese varieties]] have a particularly critical issue in that they have various tonal systems, e.g. Mandarin has 4 tones while Cantonese has 6 tones. Each tone is effectively a "pitch pattern" that can be applied to any sound. That's to say, the same sound can have completely different and even unrelated meanings depending on pitch. In a song, this significantly constrains what words you can use for specific notes in the melody. This means Chinese song dubs usually deviate ''heavily'' from English or other languages out of necessity.[[/note]]

[[{{Woolseyism}} Dubbing is tricky business.]] And if dubbing the ''spoken'' dialogue weren't tough enough, dubbing ''songs'' can be downright hellish. To get good lyrics in another language, dubbers have to account for the general meaning of the song, the intent of the song-writer, the grammar of the song's original language, the song's rhythm and meter, how slang and idiom are used in the dubbed language, where the stresses fall in the song due to rhythm/melody, the new language's rhyming schemes compared to the original language and how ''that'' will be perceived in the language, and so on and so forth.[[note]][[UsefulNotes/ChineseDialectsAndAccents Chinese varieties]] have a particularly critical issue in that they have various tonal systems, e.g. Mandarin has 4 tones while Cantonese has 6 tones. Each tone is effectively a "pitch pattern" that can be applied to any sound. That's to say, the same sound can have completely different and even unrelated meanings depending on pitch. In a song, this significantly constrains what words you can use for specific notes in the melody. This means Chinese song dubs usually deviate ''heavily'' from English or other languages out of necessity.[[/note]]

* Both versions of Ashley's theme in ''VideoGame/WarioWare: Touched!'' are {{Bragging Theme Tune}}s, but the Japanese version is about how everyone loves her while the English version is about how she's a scary CreepyChild. ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBrosBrawl'' then remixed both versions and put them in the same game, which finally meant English players could hear the Japanese version and Japanese ones could hear the English version as well as their local equivalents.

* The Blue Water dub of ''Anime/DragonBallGT'' loosely adapts the melody of the original Japanese version (Dan Dan Kokoro Hikareteku), but with lyrics summarizing the plot (such as "We've got to find them all, gotta find those Dragon Balls").

* Many European fans believe the English versions for the ''Manga/InuYasha'' songs are produced by The Ocean Group ([[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jd9c3AnGEr4 Change the World]]). They are really made by the Italian dub, sung by Italians, and have only aired in Italy. Anyone who has seen the American TV broadcasts will quickly tell you the English dub uses the original Japanese ending themes, and the openings aren't broadcast at all due to time constraints (though they did air on Canadian TV and are on the [=DVDs=] and, yup, in Japanese).

** ''Chiisaki Mono'' (A Small Thing), the ending theme to ''Anime/PokemonJirachiWishmaker'', was localized as "Make a Wish" with English lyrics completely unrelated to the Japanese song, except that halfway through [[TheSongRemainsTheSame the Japanese vocals kick in]].

* The American dub of ''Anime/YokaiWatch'' retains the Japanese opening and ending theme, but has the lyrics rewritten. However, there's an alternate opening theme that's completely new, that was used for the video game- and later began to alternate with the other opening after the game was released.

* The French version of "I'm Still Here" from ''WesternAnimation/TreasurePlanet'' is translated to "Un Homme Libre" (A Free Man) and becomes less of a song about a boy telling off the universe to something more like 'if you feel like a reject, maybe you should run away'.

* The German and Italian translations of the "A Whole New World" from ''WesternAnimation/{{Aladdin}}'' are pretty far from the original, being called "Ein Traum wird wahr" (A dream is coming true) and "Il mondo è mio" (The world is mine) respectively. Both almost entirely change the meaning of the lyrics, leaving only the original overall meaning of "We're going to go away and start a new life together". The German translations of the other songs were much closer to the originals.

* Creator/{{Pixar}} had covers made for the original songs in ''WesternAnimation/TurningRed'' performed by boy bands such as Da-iCE for "Nobody Like U" in Japanese and [=W0LF(S)=] for "U Know What’s Up" in Mandarin. The former has relatively faithful lyrics but the latter is almost completely different with the song being called "King's Pride" instead of "U Know What’s Up".

* The Japanese version of ''[[WesternAnimation/MagicAdventuresOfMumfie Mumfie's Quest]]'', released as a 4-part VHS series and aired as 13 10-minute segments on NHK, has these changes to the songs:

* There are at least five different Chinese versions of the traditional hymn, ''A Mighty Fortress Is Our God'', none of which closely resemble the original.

* Another famous example is "Comme d'habitude" (As Usual) by Claude François, a song about a couple keeping the appearances while stuck in a loveless marriage. Music/PaulAnka liked the melody and adapted it for his friend Music/FrankSinatra. The resulting "Music/MyWay" was the hit that kept Sinatra from giving up on his music career, but ironically he came to loathe the lyrics as self-indulgent.

* Jai Ho, from ''Film/SlumdogMillionaire'', originally celebrated a victory. The Music/PussycatDolls cover turned it into a love song.

** Udo Lindenberg translated several English songs into German, not only keeping their general meaning, but also often staying as close to the original lyrics as possible while at the same time ditching the then-usual Schlager lyrics kitsch. "Ich sitz den ganzen Tag bei den Docks" ("Sittin' On The Dock Of The Bay" by Music/OtisRedding) is only one example. "Sympathie für den Teufel" translates the title of "Sympathy For The Devil" (Music/{{The Rolling Stones|Band}}) literally. On the other hand, he also rewrote Music/TheBeatles' "Penny Lane" into "Reeperbahn" which is about the demise of Hamburg's amusement quarter during TheSeventies.

* The 1906 hymn "Over in the Glory Land" went on a strange journey from GospelMusic into becoming a {{Jazz}} and {{Bluegrass}} standard, then jumped to Europe via a popular version by Skiffle pioneer Lonnie Donegan. From there, it became the Swedish pop song "Kärleksland" ("love land"), taking what was originally an American hymn about going to Heaven and turning it into a song about falling in love. Then it got similar translations in other Scandinavian languages, then became an instrumental called "Lapland" (which, in turn, got an American CoverVersion that became a minor hit), then became a popular Danish song called "Så går vi til enkebal" ("let's go to a widow's ball").
* "Those Were the Days", the FolkMusic standard that became a big international hit for Mary Hopkin in 1968 (an Apple Records release produced by Music/PaulMcCartney) was essentially a fresh set of English lyrics by Columbia University professor Gene Raskin for "Dorogoi dlinnoyu" (''Дорогой длинною'', "the long road"), a 1924 Russian song. Raskin's lyrics are completely different from the original content-wise (it's a song about TheOneThatGotAway, [[http://russmus.net/song/5199 based around sleigh riding imagery]]), but still keep close to the original's tone of regret and longing for the past (which was often taken to be a veiled critique of life after the 1917 Soviet revolution).

* Polish rock band Budka Suflera covered Bill Withers' "Ain't No Sunshine" as "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxHd7ELwBCw Sen o Dolinie]]" (Dream of a Valley), with lyrics about nostalgia and being tired of day-to-day drudgery.

* Most ''Series/SesameStreet'' dubs change the meaning of the songs a good deal, particularly in Dutch (for example: "Do De Rubber Duck" becomes "Zoek de Zeep," or "Find the Soap" - despite Ernie prominently displaying his rubber duckie in the song). Germany, however, takes it a step further: songs not only get different lyrics, they have ''completely different tunes.''
* The Croatian HRT version of ''Series/LazyTown'' has a song that not only has different lyrics but is in fact a completely different song, as in ''it was copied and pasted from a different episode''. In "Defeeted", the song "Always a Way" was replaced with "Twenty Times Time" - the former is about not giving up when you struggle while the latter is about dental care, so that means [[ItMakesJustAsMuchSenseInContext Stephanie sings about brushing your teeth in order to help Sportacus walk again]].

*** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHpljbTfKZQ "Love Is In Bloom"]] is drastically different; instead of Twilight singing about the marriage of Shining Armor and Cadance, she sings about "passing the test" and "dismissing your doubts" - and these lyrics just so happen to belong to The Success Song, a song that comes from [[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS3E2TheCrystalEmpirePart2 a completely different episode]].

* "Silent Night" is a fairly loose English translation of the original "Stille nacht", but translator John Freeman Young kept it conceptually close to Joseph Mohr's original German lyrics. However, the big changes are in the first verse. Mohr implicitly mentions Joseph ("''Nur das traute hochheilige Paar''"; "Only the close, most holy couple") and assigns a hairstyle to baby Jesus ("''Holder Knabe im lockigen Haar''"; "Blessed boy in curly hair"), while Young changes these to the familiar "Round yon virgin mother and child, holy infant so tender and mild."

* PlayedWith Music/{{Rammstein}}'s English version of "Du hast". The pun with "hast" and "hasst" ("have" and "hate") is LostInTranslation so the English dub is stated not to be an explicit translation of the original German lyrics. Subverted cause only the first chorus suffers from this, every other chorus is in German,

** For the first game:
*** They replaced the audio for the opening with a dubbed version of the anime adaptation's first opening theme, ''Tachiagariiyo''.
*** And they took a song about {{Hot Blooded}}ness and completely rewrote the lyrics to be about soccer.
*** Averted in the Italian version, since it just used the same version of the theme song used in the dub of the anime, which haves more classic "describing the show's premise" lyrics.
** Thankfully, when the second game was released in Europe, they kept the same song from its Japanese version and made a significantly better attempt at a translation. The lyrics were still incredibly unsubtle, but at least they retain the gist of the Japanese version.

** The opening's lyrics are set to the same rhythm as the Japanese original. That's about the only similarity between the two songs, as not only are the the lyrics different[[note]]Not just because they are different languages.[[/note]] but also because the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SD8_bgRKvIA instrumentation is absolutely unrecognizable]] to anyone familiar with the [[https://youtu.be/B2SRQ8UzdEQ original theme]]. Had the lyrics been also timed differently, it would count as [[AlternativeForeignThemeSong a whole new song.]]

* While ''Anime/{{Pokemon}}'' largely deals with the AlternativeForeignThemeSong, there are a few cases of this, and it's ZigZagged by ''Anime/PokemonJirachiWishmaker'' with the end theme ''Chiisaki Mono'' (A Small Thing) which became "Make a Wish". The English lyrics were completely unrelated to the Japanese song, but halfway through [[TheSongRemainsTheSame the Japanese vocals kick in]]. Particularly odd is that the movie was dubbed by 4Kids, which is infamous for its badly done {{Cultural Translation}}s.
%%Administrivia/ZeroContextExample**''Team Rocket Forever'' from the Jigglypuff episode

* Creator/{{YTV}}'s ''Anime/FutariWaPrettyCure'' dub has an episode called "Choir Chaos", where the Japanese ending theme is sung in English.
* Funimation has managed to avoid this in translating the opening songs of some series', notably ''Manga/YuYuHakusho''.

* The Finnish AlternativeForeignThemeSong of ''Literature/TheMoomins'' anime was the basis of most of the other non-Japanese opening themes for the show.

* Unlike most dubs of the show, the Arabic dub of ''Literature/MayaTheBee'' uses the tune of the Japanese theme song sung at a higher octave and with different lyrics.
* In an unusual move for a dub of a children's anime, the opening to ''[[Franchise/HelloKitty Growing Up With Hello Kitty]]'' is a faithful translation of the original opening, "Itazura Tenshi" [[note]] "Mischief Angel" in English[[/note]]

* In the first Italian dub of ''Series/TheMuppetShows'', the lyrics to "Halfway down the Staris" have been changed to turn the song into a criticism towards people that do nothing useful all day.

* Is it worth mentioning that the French lyrics of the Canadian national anthem, "O Canada" are wholly unlike the English lyrics? However, the Maori lyrics of "God Defend New Zealand" are a decent approximation of the English lyrics.

* There's debate about whether the song "Jet Boy Jet Girl" or "Ca Plane Pour Moi" was recorded first, and if one is a cover of the other or if they merely share a backing track. If one is a cover, which seems likely, then it would be very interesting to see which was the second interpretation, as the French is a mostly nonsense song about what an easygoing life the singer has, and the English is about a 15 year old boy in a sexual relationship with an older man. So one of them missed the point.

* The Hindi dub of ''Anime/DragonBallZ'' is based on Funimation English dub and uses the music from Ocean dub, so they used "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4vjJrGeh1c Rock the Dragon]]" as the opening theme, but in contrast to the original version which only repeats the same words over and over again, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOqL80J9RnQ the Hindi opening has an real lyrics.]]

* "Silent Night" is a fairly loose English translation of the original "Stille nacht", but translator John Freeman Young kept it conceptually close to Joseph Mohr's original German lyrics. However, the big changes are in the first verse. Mohr implicitly mentions Joseph("''Nur das traute hochheilige Paar''"; "Only the close, most holy couple") and assigns a hairstyle to baby Jesus ("''Holder Knabe im lockigen Haar''"; "Blessed boy in curly hair"), while Young changes these to the familiar "Round yon virgin mother and child, holy infant so tender and mild."

* Eamon's "Fuck It (I Don't Want you back)" had an Italian cover named "Solo" ("Alone"), whose lyrics are not only profanity-free, but also describe a situation quite different from the one in the original song (albeit [[WordOfGod J-Ax, the Italian rapper who wrote the Italian lyrics]], said that the Italian version is meant as a sequel to the English one, with the main character [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone desperately trying to get his girlfriend back after he called her a whore]])