The Cover Changes The Meaning / Songs A To F

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• "25 Minutes To Go" by Shel Silverstein became a signature song for the Danish singer Poul Dissing in the Sixties. The Danish lyrics are also about the last minutes of a condemned man; however, while he was an unrepentant murderer in the original version, a change of two-three verses turned him into a political singer who had run afoul of a dictator.
• "99 Problems": The Jay Z rap song enumerates the many problems Jay experienced as a young, successful black rap artist from Brooklyn. Hugo's reinterpretation turned it into a more existential bluegrass piece about reclaiming one's soul and finding meaning in life.
  • Jay Z's version also provides an example: In Ice-T's original "99 Problems", from which Jay Z's song takes its chorus, "I got 99 Problems / but a bitch ain't one", referring to (presumably human) prostitutes. In Jay Z's version, the same chorus refers to a literal female dog; specifically a drug-sniffing dog.
• "99 Red Balloons" by Nena: Jimmy J's Speedy Techno Remake only uses the first verse, thus leaving out the nuclear war references, and changes the line "something's out there" to "someone's up there", making it sound more like a case of Balloonacy.

A

• "Again" by Crusher-P is a song about the narrator regretting that her mental illness has led her to repeatedly sabotage her positive relationships. The Lollia rock cover, however, changes the lyrics to imply the narrator is blaming herself for her abuse trauma.
• "All I Ask of You": This cover by Raf Scrap and Lacey (also being a case of The Cover Changes the Gender) removes the implied threat of the original. Not only is this Christine choosing her Phantom, she is choosing someone who wanted her to have the choice.
  • Likewise, their cover of "Point Of No Return" has Raf's Phantom offering herself to be Lacey's Christine's Closet Key.
• "All That She Wants": Nathan Oliver's cover of Ace of Base's original sounds like a Nick Cave murder ballad crossed with a Spaghetti Western soundtrack and makes the woman in question sound more sociopathic than shallow.
• David Cook's cover of "Always Be My Baby" by Mariah Carey on American Idol removes the uptempo nature of the original, further emphasizing the Stalker with a Crush nature of the song.
• "Always On My Mind": The original, as made famous by Elvis Presley, is a pleading, sad affair, implying that he's trying to reconnect on the eve of a breakup.
  • Willie Nelson's version, which was an even larger hit that's more frequently remembered, is about a man who feels regret for a lost love, saying that she was "always on [his] mind".
  • The Pet Shop Boys' cover completely changed the meaning of the song by ending it with the line "Maybe I didn't love you".
  • The creepy and sorrowful cover in Silent Hill: Shattered Memories does its share of changing mood and meaning.
• "Amazing Grace"
  • The Blind Boys of Alabama set the lyrics to the tune of "House of the Rising Sun".
  • Meanwhile, Barry Cryer did the opposite on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue.
• "American Pie": Madonna's cover turns the fairly downbeat and abstract song about Don McLean's life starting from the deaths of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper ("the day the music died") into a patriotic American pop-dance song.
• "American Woman" by the Guess Who is a Canadian's opposition to certain unsavoury bits of Americana (loose women, warmongering, shoddy lower-class living quarters), directed at the Statue of Liberty (the titular American Woman). Every other cover changes its perspective:
  • Lenny Kravitz's version sounds like he's singing about an actual woman, and the music video reinforces this, indicating the titular woman (played quite well by Heather Graham) is sexually tempting, but the singer realizes that they are no good for each other.
  • The Butthole Surfers' version… God knows what it does to it, exactly. Safe to say they don't exactly approach it with the most reverential tone.
  • Krokus' version turns it into just another song about dumping a groupie.
• "Amor de Conuco": In a strange example of self-cover, Juan Luis Guerra recorded two versions of this song about ten years apart. The original was a happy song of a humble man declaring himself and his love interest accepting him anyway, sung in a duet with a female singer. The second version was more slow and downbeat… and he sang the parts that were originally from the girl's perspective, making the song the man's own full declaration and turning it into a declaration of hopeless love.
• "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going", from Dreamgirls, is usually performed as someone boldly and confidently declaring their love for someone else. In the original musical, it's a Sanity Slippage Song that main character Effie sings after being kicked out of the titular singing trio and abandoned by her lover Curtis, the group's manager (to make matters worse, she's pregnant with his child, though he does not know that). By the end of the number, Effie is practically screaming and seems to be hallucinating, as Curtis leaves the stage right before the bridge, but she's still singing as if he's there. The more positive interpretation is helped by most covers cutting a verse where the singer abandons all pretense and starts begging their lover to stay ("Please don't go away from me...").
• "Angel of the Morning": Merilee Rush's version is about a woman who wants to spend the night with a man she loves, even though she knows that it isn't likely to be anything but a one-night stand. Shaggy's cover is about a convict thanking his girlfriend for being true and waiting for him to get out of jail.
• "Arlekino", the song that put Alla Pugacheva on the map as a singer, was written by Bulgarian singer Emil Dimitrov about 10 years before Pugacheva's version. In Dimitrov's song, the titular Arlekino is a wooden puppet who wished to fall in love with a princess puppet and asked the puppetmaster for a living heart — and burned to ash from the flaming love. In Alla Pugacheva's Russian version, Arlekino is a circus clown who contemplates his role as an entertainer.
• "Army Ants", from Tom Waits' Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards, is made entirely out of quotes from nature encyclopedias, but sounds like a psychotic [[conspiracy theory]].

B

• "Baby Got Back": Jonathan Coulton's version is a marginal example, making one of Sir Mix-A-Lot's most well-remembered songs less a song about liking fat ass, and more a love song about… fat ass.
• "Baby, It's Cold Outside": This Christmas (or rather, Winter, as the closest thing there is to a mention of Christmas is repeated references to a snowstorm) song has been covered numerous times over the years. Depending on the chemistry between the male and female^note or (if you're listening to the Glee version) gay male singers in the duet, it can come across as anything between a welcome seduction and the lead-in to date rape (its writers intended the former).
  • At least two versions — the She & Him (Zooey Deschanel's band with M. Ward) cover and the Meaghan Smith cover - end up flipping the genders of the speakers, thus adding another interpretation of the woman trying to seduce the man.
  • Additionally, the original appearance of the song in the film Neptune's Daughter has it sung alternately between two couples, one with the man pursuing the woman and the other with the woman pursuing the man. Unfortunately, the cover most often played on the radio omits the Gender Flip, thereby eliminating the comedic juxtaposition and creating the unfortunate implications the song is most famous for nowadays. Also, cold weather isn't involved in this context at all, seeing as they're in California in the summer.
  • The 1999 version with Tom Jones and Cerys Matthews was made into an ersatz music video reminiscent of Twin Peaks or Legend, in which Jones, a demonic prince, has Matthews trapped in a cage and dancing across a chess-board-patterned platform inside a fiery volcano. Rather than be coy, the video has him explicitly mix a dodgy-looking magic potion in front of her, which she questions but still drinks. This turns her (through the magic of bad editing) into a similarly demonic-looking being who enthusiastically participates in Jones' dance-seduction...only to trap him inside the cage.
    • Matthews flubs the line "At least now I can say that I tried!", having mixed it up with the earlier line "At least there will be plenty implied". While it comes off as cute, it doesn't do the interpretation of the song any favours.
  • Additionally, the new cover of the song modernized for the #MeToo movement by John Legend and Kelly Clarkson makes it sound like the man is saying, "Girl, it's getting very late and cold and snowing outside, so I'll text on the phone for your cab driver to come pick you up and drive you home... if you know what you're staying at home for. Oh, and I'm not gonna harm you; it's your body and your choice", while the woman is very clueless about whether she would either spend the night with him or just go home after a drink or a cigarette.
  • It doesn't help that each cover tries to put their own spin on it, in some cases adding their own lyrics that sometimes make the implications interpreted in the original more overt. The Michael Bublé and Idina Menzel cover, for instance, has "Ugh, you're very pushy, you know?" (said by Menzel) and "I like to think of it as opportunistic," (said by Buble) in between verses. Which is just all kinds of yikes considering this cover was released in 2014. Yet the official music video version on YouTube Bowdlerises some lyrics and omits the "very pushy" banter because it has kids lipsyncing.
• "...Baby One More Time" by Britney Spears: Dweezil Zappa's cover is... well, it's odd. And decidedly creepy. Gone from a song that seems to be about break-up sex to something straight out of masochistic stalker love.
  • Black Nail Cabaret actually managed to turn the pop anthem into a dark, gothic, and Head-Tiltingly Kinky fetish.
• "Back In The High Life Again" by Steve Winwood: Warren Zevon recorded a slower version with minimal production and instrumentation, turning it from an upbeat comeback celebration to a wistful retrospective and perhaps a prayer for the next time 'round.
• "Bad Company" by Bad Company: While the original was a song with a premise similar to the movie of the same name, about a gang of thieves in the old west, Five Finger Death Punch's version is about a Military overseas fighting a war (more specifically, in the music video, the US Military in Iraq and Afghanistan).
• "Bad Moon Rising" by Creedence Clearwater Revival
  • 16 Horsepower's cover is genuinely creepy instead of humorous.
  • Rasputina does a pretty damn eerie version of it with cellos.
• "The Beautiful People" by Marilyn Manson: Christina Aguilera's cover for her film Burlesque was criticized by Manson for completely changing the intended meaning of the song from a criticism of the standards of beauty enforced by the media to a celebration of fame and the celebrity life.
• "Beautiful World" by Devo is a sarcastic anthem to the facade of happiness in a very flawed and imperfect world. Devo 2.0's (a one-off "next generation"-type group funded by Disney) version of "Beautiful World" is a peppy tribute to life and how great it is. It almost seems like the first is a deconstruction of the second.
• "Because the Night" by Patti Smith: The Bruce Springsteen version changes the tone from a song about the passion of two lovers to a song about the plight of the working man, longing for the comforts of being off-the-clock ^note In other words, he sings it as a Bruce Springsteen song. Consider for example some of the lyrical differences: where Patti Smith's lyrics on Easter have "Come on now, try and understand / the way I feel when I'm in your hands", Springsteen has "Come on now, try and understand / I work all day pushing for The Man," and where Smith has "Touch me now," Springsteen has "They won't hurt us now." Interestingly, while Springsteen first wrote the song, he did not release or perform it^note He actually recorded it for Darkness on the Edge of Town but didn't like it and gave the song to his producer Jimmy Iovine, who was also working with Patti on Easter. until after Smith's version, and later performances have shifted closer to Smith's lyrics. He has since released two recordings using her lyrics.
• The remix "Cheating Warriors" mashes up Imagine Dragons' "Warriors" with Carrie Underwood's "Before He Cheats". The shift in background music drastically changes the meaning. Suddenly it seems like Carrie isn't just going to bust up her boyfriend's car—she wants to kill him.
• "Believe It Or Not (Theme to The Greatest American Hero)": Pretty much the only difference between the TV and radio versions of the song is a bridge and a repeat of the chorus. But the words of the bridge "This is too good to be true/Look at me - falling for you" change the theme of the song from an everyman being amazed about the fact that he can now do incredible things like fly to an everyman who feels like he can fly because he's fallen in love.
• "Better Man" by Taylor Swift is sung with what feels like a sense of relief the relationship is over while the more popular (and first released) cover by Little Big Town has a feeling of regret that things didn't turn out better.
• "Big Yellow Taxi" by Joni Mitchell has been covered a number of times, often with minor changes to the lyrics. While the overall environmentalist message remains, the titular "Big Yellow Taxi" (which is the one part where politics gives way to the personal) keeps changing. Bob Dylan's version takes out the taxi entirely and replaces it with a bulldozer, thus keeping with the rest of the song, and by necessity the more recent versions make the taxi a literal taxi—which it originally wasn't. It referred to the Metro Toronto Police cars which were, up until 1986, painted yellow, and thus the line "a big yellow taxi took away my old man" actually means that he was taken away by the authorities.
• "Billie Jean" by Michael Jackson:
  • Chris Cornell's cover changes the tone of the song from a catchy dance song in which the singer seems to (at least try to) dismiss the titular character as crazy ^note (considering the original inspiration of a fan letter that made this very allegation of Jackson himself) to a mournful, emotional song where the singer must face what he knows to be true.
  • In the original song, it leans towards the interpretation that the baby isn't the singer's. EDEN's cover sounds more like the singer is denying his previous relationship/fling and refuses to acknowledge their son.
• "Bitches Ain't Shit": Ben Folds' joke cover turns the song into a slow ballad.
• "Black Magic Woman": Another self-cover by Fleetwood Mac. Back in the late '60s, Peter Green wrote the song from the perspective of a victim of the titular woman's charms. Decades later it would resurface, this time with Stevie Nicks claiming to be said woman.
• "Black Pearl" by The Checkmates was originally about falling in love with a black woman, but Kandystand, who has a female vocalist, turned it into a lesbian song.
• "Black Sabbath": Type O Negative actually recorded two different covers of the tune. The second version rewrote the lyrics to describe the same scenario (Satan rising from Hell and conquering the world) but from the perspective of Satan himself. The lines parallel the original in speaking to the person depicted in the original.
• South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut's "Blame Canada" presents itself as a gathering of troubled parents coming together and collectively deciding to organize and scapegoat all their bad parenting on Canada as a whole. The cover done by Robin Williams for the song's Academy Awards nomination, however, puts the lyrics into the mouth of one person rather than three separate mothers. Take note that the second singer has no personal stake in the matter (i.e. "Don't blame me/For my son Stan" to "Don't blame yourself/for your son Stan"), and he's the one who sings most of the lines dissing Canada too ("They're not even a real country anyway", "And that bitch Anne Murray too"), giving it an air of the singer putting the idea to organize into their heads and thereby centering the organization's formation on his own unspoken vendetta against the country.
• "The Blacksmith" is a traditional English folk song, sung from the point of view of a young woman who's been courted by the eponymous blacksmith, who's then gone off and married someone else. Steeleye Span did a fairly conventional version of it on their first album, making it a bittersweet folk-rock song, but then did a far more skeletal and desolate version of it on their second album, with just clanging electric guitars and bass and voice.
• The holiday standard "Blue Christmas" is traditionally a romantic love song, where the singer is sad that their lover/ex won't be spending Christmas with them. In The Year Without a Santa Claus, it's sung by a little girl to Santa Claus, expressing her sadness that he won't be coming to deliver presents this year.
• "Bodies" by The Sex Pistols: Babes In Toyland's cover is so much fiercer and more punk because it's an all-female group singing about abortions and a 'screaming bloody mess' in rather sweet voices.
• "The Book of Love" by The Magnetic Fields: Band member Stephin Merrit said the following about Peter Gabriel's cover:
  It’s a totally different interpretation. My arrangement and recording of it is emphatically skeletal and all about the insufficiency and helplessness [of love], whereas his sounds like he’s God singing to you about his creation.
• "Boss DJ" by Sublime: Reel Big Fish turned a mellow acoustic song into a reggae-styled ska song.
• "The Boys Are Back In Town" by Thin Lizzy: This Halloween-themed parody changes the upbeat rock song about a group of friends coming back to town after being away for a very long time into an electronic horror tune wherein "the boys" are instead an evil, likely supernatural force out to kill the listener and the singer is imploring the listener to run while they still can.
• "Boys of Summer", originally by Don Henley (male) and covered many, many times (most famously by pop-punk band the Ataris) changes the perspective depending on the gender singing, i.e. the female version by DJ Sammy. It's either the male singing he'll still be waiting for the woman after her summer relationships are over or the woman singing she'll return to him once her summer boyfriends leave. All without changing a single word, just the gender of the singer.^note Although, interestingly enough, some covers do change one lyric: "I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac" gets changed to "A Black Flag sticker on a Cadillac" (or some other anti-establishment band), which amusingly doesn't change the intended meaning of the lyric one bit
• "Born in the USA" by Bruce Springsteen is a brutal satire about the horrors of war and how terribly America treats its returning veterans. The Rascal Flatts cover, on the other hand, is played completely straight and glorifies The War on Terror. The band even invited real U.S. soldiers onstage while performing the song, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the song is about how said soldiers will be traumatized overseas and then be treated like crap when they get home.
• "Boyz in the Hood" by Eazy-E: Dynamite Hack's cover takes a hardcore rap about drinking, smoking crack, and throwing hoes at their fathers and turned it into a pleasant acoustic guitar song about the same damn thing.
• "Breaking The Law" by Judas Priest is about a guy who is down on his luck, bored, and has nothing to lose. So he decides to have some fun and get some excitement by breaking the law doing things you'd expect from a young rebel. It's all done in a "rebel without a cause" sort of way.
  • "Breaking The Law" by Fightstar however tells a very different story, by simply changing music and revamping the chorus we get a tale of someone who is driven to his edge, psychologically and physically to the point where all he cares about is his own survival. Taking out his bitterness on society, the chorus serves as a soundtrack to his rampage of destruction.
  • Pansy Division's version inserts the word "sodomy" and takes it to a different place. Though, given that Rob Halford has since come out as gay himself, perhaps it's not that different after all...
• "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do" by Neil Sedaka is a rare case of an artist covering one of his older tunes, Sedaka had his first No. 1 hit in August 1962 with the song, which spoke of a typical teen-age romance that ultimately failed but that it was still difficult. In 1975, Sedaka – in the midst of his mid-1970s comeback – re-recorded the song in a vastly different arrangement; now done as a ballad, Sedaka changed the meaning to one of reflection and that while still difficult and bittersweet, there is still a lot of good that can be taken from the relationship; the remake was a top 10 hit in February 1976.
• Billie Eilish's song "bury a friend" is inspired by the singer's experience with sleep paralysis, and hints at the narrator being the monster itself. The Creature Feature cover, however, uses a more jaunty tone and changes the line "I wanna end me" to "I wanna end you", making it more of a traditional Villain Song.

C

• "Call Me Maybe" by Carly Rae Jepsen is a teenage fantasy about a girl shyly flirting with a boy she has a crush on. The cover by Pomplamoose, retitled "Do Not Push", changes it into a disaffected and plaintive song about a relationship that's being torn apart by replacing its chorus with that of "Somebody That I Used To Know" by Gotye, and setting it to a video based on the The Twilight Zone (1985) episode "Button, Button".
• "Can't Buy Me Love" by The Beatles is about a young man who doesn't care about money because the important things in life aren't for sale. Peter Sellers' joke cover is about a rich woman explaining to her suitor that he can't win her over with expensive gifts ("money can't buy me, love") because she already has so much.
• "Can't Help Falling In Love" by Elvis Presley: UB40's cover was done for the soundtrack of Sliver and makes very effective use of synth to turn a mushy love song into an ice water-creepy, Stepford Smiler stalker song.
  • Meanwhile Blackmores Night did a version with a joyous theme: I can't help falling in love with you... and it seems I don't want to help it.
• "Can't Take Love For Granted" by Mary Chapin Carpenter: Carpenter did two versions. The original album version was slow and regretful, but a later compilation album featured a live version that had a much more upbeat, rock-type tempo. It turned it from a sad post-breakup song into a "well, you're gone and I learned my lesson, but hey, I'm feeling okay about it!"
• "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You": Muse's version turns it into a Nightmare Fuel Obsession Song.
• "Cathy's Clown" by The Everly Brothers is a song about a young man who is being mocked and used by his girlfriend, knows this, and is quite resentful about it. The Reba Mc Entire cover changes the song into a sympathetic, third-party song about a woman in love with the eponymous "clown" who wishes he'd stand up for himself.
• "Cats in the Cradle" by Harry Chapin:
  • Ugly Kid Joe turned it from a song of regret into something far more... wrathful. There are just as many who see this cover as being Joe's Pet the Dog moment, and tellingly, it's been played on soft rock stations nearly as often as the original, as well as derided by more metal-oriented fans as the song they can't believe the band did. The only thing that really feels "wrathful" about the cover is the heavily distorted guitars during the chorus, and that still makes it feel pretty tame from a band that wrote a song about a serial killer in Disneyland.
  • At one point during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, "Cats in the Cradle" was used in a TV anti-terrorism ad, with the lyrics kept the same but the video showing that the reason the singer wasn't around for his son was that he was in prison — by the time he gets out and tries to reconnect with his grown-up son, it's too late, his son's followed in his footsteps (gunning down an unarmed man in front of the man's child).
  • Rapper DMC, backed by Sarah McLachlan, put his own spin on "Cats in the Cradle", adding his own rap lyrics that explore his coming to terms with the discovery that he was adopted and finally meeting his birth mother. The song ends on a positive note as DMC announces, "I'm alright, Mom."
• "Centerfold" by J. Geils' Band: When [spunge] covered the song, they turned the upbeat yet regretful tale of a crush-turned-nudie model, into a quick-paced skaterpunk's tale of almost drunken woe over a lost love's new life as a magazine model.
• Black Sabbath's "Changes" is a Break-Up Song.
  • When Ozzy Osbourne recorded a version with daughter Kelly, they changed some lyrics to make it a Parental Love Song where the daughter is leaving home.
  • Charles Bradley's version is about the guiding light in his life: his mother.
  I was learning "Changes" at the time that my mom was sick and she was leaving me. And those last verses in that song, they really struck my soul, totally.
• Cheers theme: The Scrubs sitcom fantasy episode ended with a melancholy cover of the Cheers theme, as JD leaves the harsh tragedies of the hospital to seek some comfort and escapism in television sitcoms. Tragically, this performance is removed for the DVD release of the season.
• "The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)" from Alvin and the Chipmunks:
  • The Lost Dogs' cover altered the banter between the verses, changing it from a song about wanting a hula hoop for Christmas to a song about synthesizeritis, Y2K paranoia (the cover version was recorded in 1999)...and wanting a hula hoop for Christmas.
  • The Nostalgia Chick, on the other hand, changed the meaning of the original recording simply by slowing it down to the speed at which the singers' voices were originally recorded. Juxtaposing it with assorted Nightmare Fuel clips didn't hurt, either.
  • Patton Oswalt has a routine where he mimics Dave's "demonic" slowed-down voice.
  • Parodied in Jaci Velasquez's version, with the Chipmunks themselves providing guest vocals. Here, Alvin is smitten with Jaci to the extent that the line about wanting a hula hoop being changed to "Me, I want a date with you" and attempting (with help from Theodore) to woo her by trying to speak some Spanish, only to be reminded that Theodore failed Spanish.
• "Christmas Wrapping" by The Waitresses: Save Ferris did a cover with entirely original lyrics. The original is about a woman wanting to spend a quiet Christmas alone while reflecting on a guy she met and, thus far, had not been able to connect with. The Save Ferris version is about a Jewish woman dealing with the holiday season.
• "Closer" by Nine Inch Nails: The version by Jane Distortion has the psycho-sexual oddness of the original, but it's very... different, mood-wise.
• "Cod Liver Oil" (a 19th Century advertising jingle): Great Big Sea changed the key and transformed it from another happy, mindless bit of fluff into a dark, suspicious diatribe.
• "Cold, Cold Heart" by Hank Williams: The Joker's version (performed by Troy Baker) in Batman: Arkham Origins turns a brokenhearted love ballad into a crazy Obsession Song about Batman. Many of the words are changed slightly: "Another love before my time made your heart sad and blue / And so my heart is paying now for things I didn't do" in the original becomes "Another crime before my time made your heart sad and blue / And so now you make me pay for things I didn't do"; and "The more I learn to care for you the more we drift apart" becomes "You won't admit that we're the same, and it's tearing me apart!" The entire third verse is changed from the original so it now reads like this:
  You'll never know how much it hurts
  To never see you smile.
  You know you need and want to laugh,
  Yet you claim it's not your style.
  Why do you hide behind that mask?
  I'm trying to do my part!
  Why can't I free your doubtful mind
  And melt your cold, cold heart?
• "Come Little Children" from Hocus Pocus is sung by a witch who is trying to lure children in order to suck their life-forces. A popular fan-animation for My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Children Of The Night (Duo Cartoonist), instead changes the meaning so that it's about Princess Luna taking away orphaned foals to a better place in the night, similarly to The Pied Piper.
• "Come On Eileen" by Dexys Midnight Runner: The original is a herald to Eileen to stop being fleshcandy and trying to seduce him. Save Ferris's version seems to be more in the vein of not growing up so quickly and making foolish choices.
• "Comfortably Numb" by Pink Floyd:
  • Scissor Sisters' not universally loved cover brings out a different facet. The original is overflowing with angst, about someone who can't quite get numb enough. The remake sounds like someone who really has been medicated into oblivion, to the point of losing both their neuroses and their identity, and is loving every minute of it.
  • Dar Williams and Ani DiFranco also did a cover that was closer to the original in overall feel, except that Ani's higher-pitched backing vocals matched with Dar's mezzo-soprano sound less like Roger Waters' creepy doctor singing through a drug haze and more like auditory hallucinations in the midst of a thundering hangover.
• "Cool for the Summer" by Demi Lovato is a song about a secret lesbian sexual relationship, but the rerecorded 2023 version, changes the line "don't tell your mother" to "go tell your mother" meaning it's no longer a secret.
• "Cotton-Eyed Joe": The folk song has a large number of traditional verses. Depending on which ones the singer chooses to include, it might not be saying anything at all, it might be a song about dancing and having fun — or it might be a murder ballad.
• "Crank Dat" by Soulja Boy: Not quite a cover, but Scroobius Pip did a track based on a quotation from "Crank Dat" to make it about literal soldier boys. "Soldier Boy, now kill 'em, we need YOU!!!"
• "Crazy" by Seal is a somewhat whimsical love song based around the line, "But we're never going to survive unless we get a little a crazy." When Cleveland-based metal band Mushroomhead released their version, it comes across as a man losing his religion and resigning himself to madness.
• Crazy He Calls Me, by Billie Holiday: Emilie Autumn's cover turns it simultaneously into a post-apocalyptic echo and a song about a woman's slide into madness.
• "Crazy In Love" by Beyoncé is a strange example, since Beyonce herself did the cover in question. The original is a Silly Love Song about how great it is to be in love, and the "crazy" refers to being punch-drunk with happiness. When the film adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey came out, Beyonce re-recorded the song at a much slower tempo and using deeper vocals, making it Hotter and Sexier. The "crazy" in this case sounds more like someone dangerously obsessed with their lover. Sofia Karlberg would later cover this cover in the same vein, albeit with a few edits that make it sound slightly less creepy but just as sexy.
• "Creep" by Radiohead:
  • Northern Kings' cover is infinitely more creepy, changing the mood from that of a shy, depressed man unable to express his feelings to a possibly mentally ill stalker, especially with the raspy whisper of "I don't belong here" that ends the song and the discordant sound resembling a broken music box.
  • Amanda Palmer's ukelele version of "Creep" changes the mood from that of individual isolation and depression to that of people acknowledging they're alone in the world like everyone else - especially in this (sing-along version) from the 2009 Coachella Festival.
  • Ingrid Michaelson's cover turns it around completely. It goes from being critical of the narrator to being critical of the other person.
• "Cruel Summer" by Bananarama: Kari Kimmel's cover of the song used in the final scene of the second season of Cobra Kai changes the song from being about someone wanting companionship during the summer time to how the events of summer vacation have left the protagonist alone, reflecting how the events of the season, which take place during summer, have left Johnny without his dojo, relationship, surrogate son, and actual son.

D

• "Dancing With Myself" by Billy Idol (originally by the band Generation X which included Idol): Nouvelle Vague takes the upbeat hit and changes it into a Bossa Nova song about depression and alcoholism.
• "Danny Boy": Brian Setzer plays an extremely upbeat rock version as "Irish" Terry Conklin's boxing ring entry music in The Great White Hype. ^note This version was never released on CD and fans have been clamoring for it for years.
• "Danny Says" by The Ramones: Tom Waits' cover from Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards sounds like he's been riding on a bus for several days and his heart has just been broken at a truck stop.
• 19th century popular song "The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze" is usually a lighthearted song about a love triangle between a man, his young girlfriend, and the title circus performer, from the man's point of view. On his album The Big Problem, Crispin Glover deconstructs the song into something creepier: the narrator is the man on the flying trapeze, and the snarling way he performs the song makes it sound like it's a Villain Song where he's boasting about breaking the man's heart and using his fame to manipulate the girl. There's even an added verse where the trapeze artist admits that he regularly tries to flirt with female audience members and describes himself as "a louse", but claims it doesn't matter because his performances are so popular.
• "Day Tripper" by The Beatles: Type O Negative's cover from World Coming Down transformed a lighthearted ode to LSD into a mournful lament on being driven to suicide by an apathetic lover.
• "Death Is Not The End", originally by Bob Dylan: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds covered it on Murder Ballads with pretty much an all-star cast of singers: PJ Harvey, Kylie Minogue, Shane McGowan, and various members of the band. The orchestration and singing are deliberately upbeat, which somehow makes the apocalyptic content of the song bleaker than the original. Just the fact that the Nick Cave version is the last track on an album full of, well, murder ballads puts a darker spin on it as well.
• "Diamonds" by Rihanna: The steampunk band Steam Powered Giraffe, whose stage personas are robots, did a cover. Instead of being about love and loss, it becomes a song about how shiny one of the robots is.
• "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" by AC/DC: At the end of the song, Joan Jett's cover simply omits the usual lead vocals that would name a bunch of random tools of destruction, meaning you can take a far different meaning from it than the original.
• "Dle Yaman", an Armenian song about a woman who misses her beloved changed after the genocide.
• "(Don't Fear) the Reaper" has had a couple cases. (And all of them happen to be completely devoid of cowbell.)
  • HIM's cover - rather than the spaced-out mellowness of the original, it now sounds like someone is actually being murdered in the studio.
  • Unto Ashes cover is really depressing.
  • Evanescence did a live cover in their early days of performing, slowing the tempo down and adding violins. It sounds like a wistful song about longing for death.
  • Babes in Jazzland also covered the song, making it sound like a plaintive reassurance for someone to Face Death with Dignity.
• "Do You Hear What I Hear?" was written in October of 1962, concurrently with the Cuban Missile Crisis. The threat of nuclear war appearing imminent, the husband-and-wife songwriting duo wrote it as a plea for peace. In decades since, this context has largely been lost, and it's performed as a straight Christmas carol about the birth of Jesus.
• "Don't Cry For Me, Argentina" from Evita is, in its original context, a song sung by Eva Péron to her followers, about her relationship with them. The version by Sinéad O'Connor is almost identical in sound and production to every other version (which is kind of what you'd expect, given that it was produced by Phil Ramone) but it comes across as a song sung by Sinéad O'Connor to her fans, and indeed everyone else, about her relationship with them.
• "Don't Say a Word" by Sonata Arctica: Xandria's cover changed several lyrics, most prominently changing "I promise you your death before the first light" to "The king is dead but the queen is alive" changing it from a song about a Straw Misogynist attempting to kill his ex-girlfriend to a song about a woman killing an abusive ex-lover, making it double as an example of The Cover Changes the Gender.
• “Don’t Turn Around” was originally recorded by Tina Turner, with its most well-known cover being by Swedish pop group Ace of Base. Just backing the key down 1 1/2 notes from Turner’s version makes the song sound much sadder. And the lines added by Ulf “Buddha” Ekberg provide a different perspective with the same feeling. While the Tina Turner version is a bittersweet-to-triumphant ballad about a woman putting on a brave face at the end of a relationship, the Ace of Base version is an unambiguously sad song about two people being too proud to recognize that such end might be a mistake.
• "Don't Worry Be Happy" by Bobby McFerrin: Kat McSnatch reworked it into "Don't Worry Be Ugly".
  Kat: I've decided that "ugly" is just a word that makes us feel bad for no good reason, so I'm going to have some fun with it instead. I'm tired of feeling the pressure to worry about pimples, bad hair, waxing, crooked teeth, wrinkles, make-up, and all the other bullshit that we think we need to make us feel less "ugly." None of it works! I hope this video inspires us to stop worrying.
• "Down By The River" by Neil Young is creepy enough. It's a murder ballad, possibly inspired by Banks of the Ohio, combining Neil's mournful voice with occasional frenetic blasts of guitar jamming, over minimal background and an implacable walking bass line.
  • Indigo Girls' version is fairly straightforward aside from the Les Yay.
  • On the other hand, McKendree Spring's version sounds more like Johnny Rivers.
  • Low and Dirty Three's version sounds as if it were recorded in the river.
  • Empty Mansions' version sounds like it's coming from the afterlife.
• "Down In the Park" by Gary Numan is a dark '80s synth song about robots. The Foo Fighters cover is substantially more apocalyptic, somehow.
  • Gary Numan sings the original in a cold, emotionless tone that makes the narrator seem desensitized to the robot-on-human violence depicted in the lyrics - Marilyn Manson's cover starts out with similar vocal delivery, but he eventually ramps up to screaming the lyrics, making it seem like he's actually excited by the spectacle.
• "Down with the Sickness" by Disturbed: Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine recorded a cheery show tunes version. They also altered the lyrics slightly to make it about an actual sickness, rather than a metaphor for societal oppression.
• "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy" by Rod Stewart: N-Trance did a cover version that comes off more as a Eurodisco crowd song than Rod's original intentions!
  • The Revolting Cocks' cover is also an example, especially if you listen to the original after you hear the cover. Aside from converting it to sleazy industrial metal, they make the Intercourse with You aspect more blatant (and possibly more current) by adding lyrics referencing condoms and KY Jelly.
• "Dreams" by FleetwoodMac: The cover band the Bon Bon Club released, as part of their first EP, an incredibly, incredibly creepy version that seems to make it about someone imprisoning their lover.
  • Gabrielle Aplin and Bastille's cover is also rather creepy. Dan Smith's parts in particular have an intimidating quality to them, especially when contrasted with Gabrielle Aplin's.

E

• "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)" is a classic cheesy '90s boy band song about partying and having a good time. Andrew Huang's cover is much different, slowing down the tempo a fair amount, putting it in a lower key and giving the instrumental a more techno feel to it. The result makes it sound more like a Villain Song, as a young supervillain reveals themselves to the world, ready to destroy the city...and anyone who lays in his path.
• "(Every Day Is) Halloween" by Ministry is about someone who is looked down on by society for being a Goth, but has also been adopted as a Halloween song because of the title - The Postmarks took it a step further by rewriting the lyrics to be about someone who's obsessed with Halloween and literally wants to celebrate it every day.
• "Enola Gay" by OMD: The cover by Nouvelle Vague completely changes the tone of this poppy, bouncy Hiroshima bombing-themed song into something yet more creepy and intense.
• "Everybody Knows" by Leonard Cohen: Rufus Wainwright's cover changes...well, suddenly it sounds like it's set amidst a casino underworld that's about to crumble and is having one last revel in its own shallowness and debauchery. Worth a listen
• "Everybody's Got Somebody But Me" by Hunter Hayes is an upbeat (though bitter) song about being single, surrounded by couples, and wanting to get back together with an ex-girlfriend. Sam Tsui's cover of this song is exactly that- but without the "upbeat" part of the equation, turning it into a regretful, heart-wrenching piano ballad.
• "Every Breath You Take" by The Police:
  • Aaron Krause and Liza Anne's cover slowed the song down and transformed it from a creepy Obsession Song into a sensual and dreamy Silly Love Song.
    • When this arrangement was featured on Dancing with the Stars for Bindi Irwin's performance in honor of her father Steve, the meaning was changed even further by using it in the context of a late father watching over his daughter as she grew up.
• "Everybody Wants To Rule The World": The song was originally by Tears for Fears, who wrote about the Cold War. ^note The original title was "Everybody Wants to Go to War", but their producer nixed the idea because it wasn't catchy enough. Lorde's cover makes it into a dramatic Villain Song about wanting to literally rule the world.
• "Everything Counts" by Depeche Mode: The In Flames cover completely altered its meaning. The original was a simplistic synth-driven pop song about the greed, competitiveness, and materialism of '80s Wall Street capitalism. However, in the In Flames version, the song describes the failure of humanity as the greedy and selfish nature of people destroys their Utopian society. And how only after the world ends the people realize their failure.
• "Everything I Own" by David Gates was the lament of a grieving son at the death of the father who had brought him up and was responsible for much of the person he became. Boy George's cover version was the lament of a man for the death of his gay lover, presumably from AIDS.
• "Everything's Coming Up Roses": When covered, this song from Gypsy is often a genuine statement of support for a friend or loved one ("You'll be swell! You'll be great!"). In the original musical, though, it's a Sanity Slippage song that closes Act I after Mama Rose faces a Heroic BSoD when her daughter June elopes with Tulsa, a boy from their act. After reeling for a moment, Rose abruptly turns—after years of trying to sell June as a star—and declares that Louise, her other child and The Unfavorite, will now be the key to their success. Most stagings have Louise and Rose's boyfriend Herbie staring in utter horror as Rose's declarations about Louise's guaranteed stardom get more and more fanatical.
• "Eyes On Me: Obsession": The OC remix by Children of The Monkey Machine feat. Dani changes the Silly Love Song from Final Fantasy VIII into an Obsession Song. The lyrics are spoken out loud and sound like Julia explaining to the police in an interrogation room why she had to murder Laguna.

F

• "Fashion Party" by Ace of Base is a song of disdainful decadence. The cover by Beatdrop reinvents it into a song about nightmarish inquisition.
• Irene Cara's theme song for the movie Fame^note Not to be confused with the David Bowie song of the same name.: Amy Gerhatz and John Roberts take this peppy, upbeat number about wanting to be famous and turn it into a tragic, desperate song about needing to be ubiquitous. It doesn't help that it was used in the trailer for a Lifetime movie about Anna Nicole Smith.
• "Feeling Good" from the musical The Roar of the Greasepaint, the Smell of the Crowd went through this at least twice:
  • Muse's cover is downright creepy.
  • Michael Bublé's cover sounds like the theme from a lost Sean Connery era James Bond movie. The video might have something to do with that impression.
• "Feelings", originally a romantic song made by Morris Albert in The '70s, was picked up by The Offspring and reworked into a fast and furious song about hatred.
• "Fields of Athenry" is typically played by bands like The Dubliners as a sad, wistful ballad about carrying on in the face of a sad parting. The Dropkick Murphys turn it into an enraged rant against an uncaring and destructive government. It's amazing how differently one can interpret a line like "Against the famine and the crown/I rebelled, they cut me down/Now you must raise our child with dignity."
• The Beastie Boys' "Fight For Your Right" is typically performed as a parody of a fiery teenage rebellion song and mocks teenagers who complain about their parents not letting them do what they want. The Coldplay tribute cover to MCA, however, portrays it as having the same teenage frustration, but the different instrumentation and slower tempo make it come off as a more introspective look into the mind of the singer, and the clear feeling of powerlessness he has dealing with his parents and school in his attempts to have something for himself.
• "Fire" by Arthur Brown: Originally the song was a gleeful upbeat song that chimed about creating suffering and misery for others.
  • God Dethroned's version is psychotic, menacing, and extremely aggressive. It features the same lyrics accompanied by death metal guitar storms and demon-like screams and growls.
  • The Who covered "Fire" as part of Pete Townshend's solo album The Iron Man, where it becomes one of the space dragon's villain songs.
  • Monkey Dust Crosses the Line Twice, with The Paedofinder General playing and singing it while he turns his usual activity into a light-and-music show.
• "The Foggy Dew", an Irish traditional song, has been played in a variety of manners by many artists, anywhere from a melancholy lament to a furious rebel anthem.
• "Folsom Prison Blues" by Johnny Cash:
  • It was a dark song to begin with, but Nine Pound Hammer's cover of it is grittier and rawer than the original, making it come across as resigned, rather than regretful.
    • Cash himself changed the meaning, if not unwittingly, with his live uptempo version, recorded at Folsom Prison, still a vow (although now optimistic rather than pessimistic as in the original) to one day leave the prison and never return; the line about murdering a man in Reno "just to watch him die" had a man hooting and hollering after said line, as though he was celebrating said actions. ^note (Although later stories had it that sound effects of the man cheering was added in post-production.)
  • When blues singer Keb' Mo' covered it for a tribute album, he altered a couple of lyrics, so that in his version the narrator is a wrongly imprisoned victim, rather than an admitted murderer who hates being imprisoned but fully realizes he deserves it. The famous line "I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die" becomes "They said I shot a man in Reno, but that was just a lie", while "I know I had it comin', I know I can't be free" becomes "I didn't hurt nobody, I know I should be free". Cash fans generally were not happy about this.
• "Forever Young" by Alphaville is about making the most of one's youth in the face of the fear that they'll drop the Bomb any day now. Jay-Z did a rap number based on and sampling the tune ("Young Forever"), which is based more on the idea that you can be young forever as long as people remember you after you die.
• "Forget Me Nots" by Patrice Rushen is a song about wanting to remember a lost relationship ("Sending you forget-me-nots to help me to remember"). Will Smith would sample up the song as the title theme to Men in Black, a top-secret government agency whose mission involves erasing peoples' memories, namely those about the presence of alien life ("Here come the Men in Black / They won't let you remember").
• "Friday" by Rebecca Black got covered by Matt Mulholland in a True Art Is Angsty way that twists the meaning with a lot of Lyrical Dissonance.
• "Friends in Low Places" by Garth Brooks: Early in 1990, the song was recorded by a fellow country music artist named Mark Chesnutt for his first album, to be released later in the year^note Brooks' version (on his second album No Fences) was actually released before Chesnutt's version (on his self-titled debut album).. Chesnutt's reading is that of a man depressed over the breakup (from sometime earlier) with his girlfriend and intends to wallow in his misery on the night of her wedding. Brooks (who had earlier recorded a demo version) decided to completely change the meaning...while still reeling from his breakup, he turns it into a kiss-off version and decides that his ex's wedding night is one to party with his real friends at a nightclub and that she can screw herself. Gee, which one succeeded?
• "Fuck It (I Don't Want You Back)" by Eamon is a song about a man pissed off with his girlfriend and leaving her. The Italian version, "Solo" ("Alone [with you]"), sung by Eamon itself... is about a man thinking back about the girl he met on the beach last summer which he'll never see again.
• "Further" by VNV Nation carries Lyrical Dissonance by having such lines as "I know in darkness, I will find you've given up inside like me." while having a distinct upbeat tone to it. The Lifeforce cover resolves this by giving the song a more somber tone. It was later used in the ending of Iji... Let's just say it was appropriate.
• "The Future Soon" by Jonathan Coulton is a sad song about a guy getting rejected by a girl becoming a Mad Scientist and almost destroying humanity with a robot army. This animation manages to completely reinterpret it as sweet teenage romance.

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