West Coast Rapper Eazy-E's most famous song "I'd Rather F*** With You" is actually a parody of the slightly obscure "I'd Rather Be With You" by Bootsy Collins.
O-Zone and their song "Dragostea din tei" are only known because of the "Numa Numa" video with Gary Brolsma. Gary Brolsma's video, in turn, was an imitation of another video set to the same song.
In some Spanish-speaking countries, the song "Pluma Pluma Gay" is more popular/better known than "Dragostea din tei", the song it parodies.
In Brazil, a cover that isn't a parody but certainly takes a Filth detour, "Festa no Apê", also obscures "Dragostea din tei".
The song "Good Morning, Good Morning" from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band has a line about "it's time for tea and Meet the Wife." Most people probably assume it alludes to meeting your wife after a long day of work, but it's actually a reference to a popular British TV series, Meet the Wife, that has nowadays completely faded away in obscurity.
Another Beatles song, "Back in the USSR", was originally written as a tribute to Chuck Berry's "Back in the USA", which was one of his less-successful hits. It was also a sarcastic response to a now-obscure buy-native-made-goods ad campaign which used the slogan "I'm Backing Britain" (the refrain sounded like "I'm backin' the USSR").
Cheech & Chong's "Basketball Jones" is a parody of "Love Jones" by the Soul group Brighter Side of Darkness (the majority of which is a monologue by the group's 12-year-old lead singer telling his girlfriend how obsessed he is with her). It actually charted higher than the original (peaking at #15 in Billboard, while "Love Jones" hit #16) and is much more famous today.
The song "Flappie", by Dutch comedian Youp van 't Hek, was originally (in 1981) intended as a parody of Christmas songs, both contemporary and the older carols, and mostly of the fake 'Christmas spirit' people felt they needed to put up. Now most people don't realize that and play this song simply for the humorous lyrics (it tells the story of how a boy finds out his father killed his rabbit (called 'Flappie') to serve at the Christmas dinner). It's even a staple of the Christmas songs played on radio and in malls.
The text of National Lampoon's "Deteriorata" (written by Tony Hendra) is obviously a parody of Desiderata, but the music (by Christopher Guest) is also a parody of the 1971 hit spoken word recording of it by talk show host Les Crane, including the narmy "You are a child of the universe" chorus. Crane's version fell into obscurity, while "Deteriorata" became a longstanding favorite on The Dr. Demento Show.
Amilcare Ponchielli's 1876 ballet Dance of the Hours has largely been displaced by either parody lyrics written to melody or comic presentations of it, starting with Fantasia and its version accompanying dancing ostriches and other animals. Americans generally associate the tune with Allan Sherman's Signature Song "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh!". A year earlier, the pop song "Like I Do" borrowed the melody and was a hit in several European countries for different singers. Nowadays the K9 Advantix commercial that uses a lyrically changed version of the song is probably more well-known to younger audiences.
Odds are if you grew up in America you learned "On Top of Spaghetti" as a kid without being aware that it's a parody of the Folk Music standard "On Top of Old Smoky" (which had been a hit for The Weavers in 1951). And those who learned it as a Playground Song might not be aware that "On Top of Spaghetti" is an actual copyrighted song on its own, which had been a Top 20 hit for Folk singer Tom Glazer (with the Do-Re-Mi Children's Chorus) in 1963, though his version said nothing about "I shot my poor teacher".
Another rendition of this for military children in Japan is "On top of Mt Fuji, all covered with sand, I shot my poor teacher, with a rubber band."
French satirist group Les Inconnus has quite a few such songs. “C'est toi que je t'aime” is still played at almost every student party (at least in Belgium), more than 20 years after its release, while very few people remember ska band Mano Negra on whose performances the parody is based (although most people know who is Manu Chao, very few know that this is the band which made him famous before his solo albums). The same could be said about “Casser les couilles” which parodizes Patrick Bruel's “Casser la voix”.
While "Casser la voix" and Bruel himself are still somewhat recognized in France (albeit among the sort of people who still remember him as a teen heartthrob rather than a poker commentator), this completely applies to "Isabelle a les yeux bleus", which took large jabs at the band Indochine, its needlessly depressed tone, its word salad lyrics, even Gratuitous English, and is possibly the most well-known of Les Inconnus' parodies in France today. Suffice to say Indochine frontman Nicolas Sirkis was not amused. And today, virtually any mention of Princess Stephanie Grimaldi will elicit a reference to their impression of STEPHANIIIE DE MONACOOOO. Or "Est-fe que tu baives".
On the subject of French satirists, the song "La Carioca" from Les Nuls' film "La Cité de la peur". It's often believed to be a real dance (since Carioca literally means an inhabitant of Rio), but Alain Chabat made it up on the spot, ostensibly to poke fun at shoehorned musical interludes in period Red Scare films.
Gracie Fields' "Sing As We Go" from the 1930's is almost completely forgotten today, save for the melody—instantly recognizable as Monty Python's "Sit On My Face", written by Eric Idle, from Monty Python's Contractual Obligation Album.
Melanie Sakfa's "Brand New Key" was a #1 hit in the US in 1971, and got to #4 in the UK. In the latter, though, it is significantly less well-known than the parody version, "The Combine Harvester", which was a #1 hit for The Wurzels in 1976. This also intersects with Covered Up, since "The Combine Harvester" was originally recorded in 1975 by Irish comedian Brendan Grace, who got to #1 in the Irish charts with it; The Wurzels' version, though, is much better known.
The 1961 Harry Belafonte song "Monkey" is more well-known for being covered and parodied on an episode of Animaniacs.
This is happening to Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode" in Poland. While a lot of people know the song from Back to the Future, the parody made by a famous Polish cabaret "Ani Mru Mru" is becoming more known.
In Russia, most people do not know that the song “Malchik khochet v Tambov” by Murat Nasyrov is actually a parody of Brazilian hit Tic Tic Tac by Carrapicho
John Philip Sousa's "The Stars and Stripes Forever" has had lots of comedic With Lyrics variations that have circulated over the years that are just as famous as the original, like "Be kind to your web-footed friends" and British football Crowd Chant "Earwig-o, earwig-o, earwig-o... (Here we go, here we go, here we go!)".
There was once a Russian musical piece called "Days of our life". They had to stop playing it because whenever they did, everyone was laughing at remembering the parody. Today, the music is recognizable, and most people at least remember the first lines of the parody (A large crocodile lady was walking on the streets).
In Brazil, a certain child's song ("Criança feliz, feliz a cantar. Alegre a embalar seu sonho infantil."note Happy child, happy and singing. Joyful in going through its juvenile dream.) is overshadowed by its parody version ("Criança feliz, quebrou o nariz, foi pro hospital, tomar Sonrisal..."note Happy child, broke his nose, went to the hospital, to drink Sonrisal... (BTW, Sonrisal is an effervescent antacid). A line of the latter was even used in a popular Pato Fusong.
Fans of The Dead Milkmen might think the joke of "Watching Scotty Die" is just the fact that it's a peaceful-sounding, country-esque ballad about a young boy dying from exposure to poisonous chemicals... In fact it's a parody of the significantly sappier "Watching Scotty Grow", a Mac Davis song that been a big hit for Bobby Goldsboro years earlier.
Few Russians know the 1906 song On the Hills of Manchuria. However, play the melody, and everyone will be able to remember a few (mostly obscene) out of a virtually endless number of stanzas starting with "It's quite in the forest".
During the 70's there was a commercial selling a classical music album based on this trope.
"I'm sure you recognize this lovely melody as 'Stranger in Paradise.' But did you know that the original theme is from the Polovetsian Dance No. 2 by Borodin? So many of the tunes of our well-known popular songs were actually written by the great masters—like these familiar themes... "
"When Johnny Comes Marching Home" was written about soldiers during the American Civil War, but most today know it as the playground song "The Ants Go Marching One By One." The Civil War song was a version of the much more depressing Irish song "Johnny we hardly Knew Ye" about a soldier returning from war missing his limbs. (Steeleye Span did a version called "Fighting for Strangers"). The playground version was in turn featured in the Dreamworks movie Antz.
Frank Zappa often uses high pitched or low pitched singing voices in his repertoire, most famously on Cruising with Ruben & the Jets. Most younger Zappa fans assume his singers are just putting on funny voices, while when you listen to a lot of 1950s doo-wop songs you'll notice those comically sounding singing voices really aren't that far off.
The song is inspired by the Will Smith song "Just The Two Of Us" (which was the song's original title). The original song is a very cute and wholesome song about a father's love for his child. In Eminem's version, the father loves his child so much that he kills her mother, her mother's new husband, and her half-brother so he can have her all to himself. Naturally, the song about a weird, bleached-blond Card-Carrying Jerkass who was marketed to your childrenwriting a fantasy about killing his actual then-wife proved more memorable than the song about a nice, handsome, family-friendly rapper-actor with a spotless public image (at least up until a certain 2022 awards show incident) loving his son in a non-homicidal way.
The song's updated title comes from a lyric in the Makaveli song "My And My Girlfriend", which Eminem interpolates in the song ("97 Bonnie and Clyde, me and my daughter", referencing "96 Bonnie and Clyde, me and my girlfriend"). If you reference this line now, people will think of Eminem - while undoubtedly one of the legends, 2Pac's Makaveli phase is not remembered so much for its musical content (widely considered to be fine, not great) and is instead more significant for it being his first posthumous release, and how Pac may have been Lost in Character as his Makaveli alter-ego in such a way as to contribute to his death.
"The Real Slim Shady":
The catchphrase "Will the real [person's name] please stand up?" is now more likely to be associated with "The Real Slim Shady" than the 1960s/70s game show To Tell the Truth.
Eminem himself got the phrase from the 1990 song "Real Solo Please Stand Up" by K-Solo, which he parodies in his song. The original K-Solo song is about other rappers biting his style, which he responds to by killing them; Eminem's version is about his fans imitating him, and cheering them on as they do everything the moral panic about him thinks they do.
When Eminem adopts a sing-song voice to rap "my bum is on your lips! My bum is on your lips!", that's a reference to Tom Green's "Bum Bum Song" routine (where he would put his bottom on various things and then sing "My bum is on [the thing!]" - not that anyone under the age of 35 would have a hope in hell of knowing that.)
The Christina Aguilera diss - "yeah, he's cute, but I think he's married to Kim, tee hee" - is a parody of a piece of ephemera that would have been obscure even at the time - a music video showcase slot Christina did for MTV, in which she played "My Name Is" because Eminem is "cute", but not before giving the young girls in her audience some strangely serious advice about not staying with men who talk about women the way Eminem does in his songs. Apparently, what had outraged Eminem was that she'd brought up his personal life - not that he exactly hid the details of it himself.
The bridge in "Marshall Mathers" ("New Kids on the Block suck a lot of dick/Boy-girl groups make me sick/And I can't wait 'til I catch all you faggots in public") is interpolated from the hook of LFO's "Summer Girls" ("New Kids on the Block had a bunch of hits/Chinese food makes me sick/And I think it’s fly when girls stop by for the summer"), which, if it's remembered now, is for its Word Salad Lyrics. (Bad enough that Eminem's hyper-offensive version makes much more sense.)
"Without Me":
The line "two trailer park girls go 'round the outside" is adapted from the line "two Buffalo Gals go 'round the outside" from "Buffalo Gals" by Malcolm McLaren, who was best known as The Sex Pistols' manager.
Relapse and its era may have become a HorrorcoreCult Classic, but it's based on celebrity ephemera of 2009 so microspecific that it'd be basically impossible for anyone nowadays to get all the jokes without reading a lot of gossip blogs via the Wayback Machine. The album's concept is inspired in part by a rash of pill deaths of major starlets at the time and the predatory and foul tabloid culture of the era. Even if you can remember this, and a few enduring stories mocked in the album like Kim Kardashian's behind and the abuse faced by Britney Spears and Rihanna, you'll have to be a real geek to catch the references to Jessica Alba's breastfeeding phobia, Jessica Simpson being Hollywood Pudgy, Amy Winehouse losing a tooth, Lindsay Lohan's skirt flipping up while singing to a child audience, or what Perez Hilton said to Eminem that was so offensive that he murdered him in a song.
Several sections in Eminem's signature late-career Boastful Rap technical showcase "Rap God" are parodies of other records, but due to the outsized influence of "Rap God", the flows are now all associated with that song.
The iconic speedrap section is a parody of the flow of "Supersonic" by JJ Fad (namechecked in the song). Eminem even opens the section by rapping the gibberish phrase 'summa lumma dooma looma', a direct quotation of a lyric towards the end of "Supersonic". Of course, this flow is now so associated with Eminem that rappers now refer to it as 'the "Rap God" flow'. JJ Fad themselves were spoofing the double time iambic flow originated in Treacherous Three and Spoonie Gee's "The New Rap Language", by making the lyrics gibberish (an unused take has them all joke about how one of the rappers in this group goes so fast people can't understand it).
The "gay lookin'-boy" section is a parody of "Lookin' Boy" by Hotstylz, with the lyrics changed to take a homophobic and rather outdated shot at ringtone rappers. By the time "Rap God" came out, "Lookin' Boy" had already been forgotten, meaning much of the audience didn't pick up on the joke, and "Rap God"'s enduring status as a trainee rapper practice piece means that kids with no memory of the ringtone rap era are probably reciting Eminem's version of its flow in front of their bedroom mirror right now.
The lyric "packin' a MAC in the back of the Ac'" is a reference to a skit on Big Pun's Capital Punishment in which Pun attempts to explain he was packin' a MAC in the back of the Ac', resulting in he and Cuban Link singing the phrase over and over as fast as they can to the tune of "The William Tell Overture". Apparently the phrase was something he used to do as a warm-up tongue-twister, explaining why it turns up in one of "Rap God"'s fastest sections.
The lyric where Eminem talks about taking "seven kids from Columbine, add an AK-47, a revolver and a 9..." is a reference to a lyric from his 2000 song "I'm Back" ("I take seven kids from Columbinenote these words were censored even on the explicit version, stand 'em all in line, add an AK-47, a revolver, a 9, a MAC-11, and it oughta solve a problem of mine, and that's a whole school of bullies shot up all at one time"), which itself was referencing "My Melody" by Eric B. & Rakim ("I take 7 emcees, put ‘em in a line, and add 7 more brothers who think they can rhyme — well, it’ll take 7 more before I go for mine, now that’s 21 emcees ate up at the same time").
The tune we now hear as "Hail, hail the Gang's all here" comes from "With Catlike tread" in Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Pirates of Penzance", which was a pretty obvious homage of "The Anvil Chorus" or "Gypsy Chorus" from Giuseppe Verdi's "Il Trovatore".
While there's no question of precedence, Finnish people born after the 70s (and not actively into Christmas music) will be able to sing the gruesome parody versionnote The Christmas tree has been stolen/ the police are at the door/Santa is hanged on the boughs of the Christmas tree. // The candles on the tree/burn Santa/Santa screams in agony:/"Bring flowers to my grave" of an old, sappy Christmas song (Joulupuu on rakennettu) at the drop of a hat, but struggle to remember the original lyricsnote The Christmas tree has been set up/ Christmas is at the door/Sweets have been hung/off the boughs of the tree.// The candles of the tree/give off a lovely glow/ Children play sweetly/in a ring around the tree..
Many Venetian gondoliers have learned the hard way that if you sing "O sole mio" around a Brit, they will start singing "Just one Cornetto" over the top of you.
Similarly, the infamous Go Compare jingle, as sung by tenor Wynne Evans, is now much more ingrained in the British consciousness than "Over There", the patriotic World War I song whose tune it borrows.
A album cover example: The Clash's iconic London Calling cover was intended as a pretty blatant homage to Elvis Presley's self-titled debut album Elvis Presley, right down to the colors and placement of the typeface. These days everyone recognizes London Calling (to the point that it itself is often paid homage to and imitated), but most young music fans couldn't tell you what inspired it.
Every Finnish schoolchild knows "I Know A Place So Awful"note Tiedän paikan kamalan, an ode to a child's hate of school. Few know there ever was a straight version "I Know A Place So Dear"note Tiedän paikan armahan on the loveliness of home.
Many of Spike Jones' songs also fall under this trope. They were famous for being "travesties" when they were recorded, where Spike and his band took existing popular songs and changed the music but kept the original lyrics intact. Today, the originals he spoofed are mostly forgotten; many people discovering Spike Jones for the first time won't even know that songs like "Der Fuehrer's Face", "Hey, Mabel" or "I Wanna Go Back to West Virginia" aren't his originals.
Whenever an Ennio Morricone Pastiche is quoted during a scene taking place with cowboys, many younger generations have no idea Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns are spoofed. (It even happened when the article was created on this site and many younger tropers were totally unaware who Ennio Morricone was.) If you're a metalhead from Europe, then Morricone's scores probably remind you of “To Hell and Back” by Sabaton.
The nursery rhyme "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep" takes its tune from a 1761 French song titled "Ah! Vous dirai-je, Maman".
"D-I-V-O-R-C-E" by Billy Connolly is another case of Parody Displacement crossed with Covered Up. While it's a parody of Tammy Wynette's 1968 Country Music hit, and became a #1 British hit (making it better-known than the original in the UK), Connolly actually did a slight rewrite of a 1969 parody ("D-I-V-O-R-C-E #2") of the original by Ben Colder (the comedic alter ego of Sheb Wooley). Connolly's version credited himself plus the original song's writers (Bobby Braddock and Curly Putnam) but not Wooley, but because of a publishing agreement Wooley still got a share of the royalties.
Thanks to being featured in the film Blade, and in turn being sampled by Public Domain and Warp Brothers, the Pump Panel acid techno remix of New Order's "Confusion" ended up displacing the original.
Bollywood music director Anu Malik, infamous for plagiarism, has ended up doing this to a few songs. British Indian rapper Apache Indian's Chok There was a minor hit in India despite heavy airplay, but Anu Malik's parody Stop That, sung by Devang Patel (an Indian parody artist), was a runaway hit for a long time in India. A few years later, Neend Churayi, directed by him, was a hit and went high up the Bollywood charts, while the song it ripped off, Sending All My Love by Linear, still remained obscure, and is remembered faintly only because Anu Malik copied it.
Another Bollywood music director almost did the same with Pal Pal Har Pal from Lage Raho Munnabhai, which was a big hit with the masses, but there were far too many fans of Cliff Richard in India, who were familiar with Theme For A Dream, for this to go unnoticed.
"Like a Boss" by The Lonely Island is much better known than Slim Thug's rap song of the same name, which it parodies.
Video game remix and mashup conglomerate SiIvaGunner has become this to many video game music fans. Formerly called "GiIvaSunner" (taking advantage of YouTube's sans-serif font that causes capital "i" to look like lowercase "L"), they successfully trolled many people trying to look for the real GiLvaSunner's music uploads by uploading Bait-and-Switch videos with the same titles. Eventually, SiIva's pranks gained a fandom of their own, to the extent that they managed to outlast the real GilvaSunner after their channel was Screwed by the Lawyers.
The effect was made even stronger when Siiva's 'rips' started to become just as popular, and in several cases more popular, than actual videos of the music on YouTube. Famously, searching "Slider - Super Mario 64" or "Snow Halation - Love Live" on Google will result in Siiva being the top hit.
This can happen to a Bowdlerization as well as a parody: more people heard the slightly syrupy "Bless 'em All" (especially in its rendition by Vera Lynn) than Fred Godfrey's original WWI song, whose first word wasn't "Bless."
While PewDiePie was playing Doki Doki Literature Club!, he makes a reference to a Swedish song called "Hej Hej Monika" and sings it (due to a character in-game named Monika who is very iconic in the game). Then he made a cover of the song with the help of Party In The Background and let's just say many people would know his version of the song better than the 2004 version.
It is impossible for gay men to listen to "Girl on Fire" by Alicia Keys without hearing the Drag Queen parody "This Boy is a Bottom" by Willam Belli.
"What's Up" by 4 Non Blondes was a major touchstone for Generation X. Younger generations will probably lack the same visceral, angsty response to the song, instead being surprised that it doesn't have a red-hot gaybar dance beat, and isn't sung in increasingly silly falsetto voices by He-Man.
"The Sex Offender Shuffle", a comedy sketch by Scott Gairdner, parodies the "Super Bowl Shuffle", which stopped being popular in the 1990s. People born in and after that period are more likely to know the viral "Sex Offender Shuffle" (particularly the memetic line "we were bad, but now we're good") than the "Super Bowl Shuffle".
Most people who recognise the line "The stately homes of England, how beautiful they stand" will immediately think of Noël Coward's sardonic continuation "To prove the upper classes still have the upper hand". Coward was parodying a poem by Felicia Dorothea Hemens, which has a rather more idealistic view of the stately homes and their occupants.
When it was first released in 1962, "The Monster Mash" was a spoof of the popular dance craze songs of the late 50's and early 60's, specifically those featuring the "Mashed Potato." Since then, "Monster Mash" has proven to be far more enduring in its own right, to the point where it has spawned many parodies of its own.
"Hunger Games", a Minecraft-themed parody of Borgore's "Decisions" by Bajan Canadian, has nearly triple the YouTube views of the song it's based on.
The legacy of Tom Browne's jazz-funk hit "Funkin' For Jamaica" is pretty much split down the middle between those who remember the original, and those who know it principally from The Evasions' "Wikka Wrap" which rewrote it as a parody of the British travelogue host Alan Whicker.
The song 'Flying My Colors' from Care Bears Movie II: A New Generation is far, far less known than the Lemon Demon remix 'Everybody Likes You', which loops the sample of the titular line (As well as the 'I Like You, I Like You' chorus) to create a disturbing Madness Mantra.
, which was one of his less-successful hits. It was also a sarcastic response to a now-obscure buy-native-made-goods ad campaign which used the slogan "I'm Backing Britain"