Not long ago it was pointed out to me that a lot of song lyrics fit well into other well-known tunes. Specifically, that the words for Amazing Grace fit nicely into the tune for Gilligan’s Island, and vice versa. I found it incredibly amusing to belt out the inverted tunes, and friends and family found it quite annoying.
Likewise discovering that O Little Town of Bethlehem and House of the Rising Sun could be interchanged (example on youtube here) was also a treat.
I came in to point out that America the Beautiful could be interchanged with Auld Lang Syne.
Then I realized that those two can also pretty much synch up with Amazing Grace, Gilligan’s Island, O Little Town of Bethlehem, and House of the Rising Sun!
Lately I’ve been playing with singing the words of The Star Spangled Banner to the tune of the old Soviet national anthem. There are some rough spots like gleaming/streaming only have one note for two syllables but on the whole, it works surprisingly well.
I’ve heard this done at a little fundie church. But my friends can beat that. At their little fundie church, the pastor intoned:
“And now, our young Middle School ladies Lulu and LaVerne are going to play Amazing Grace to the tune of House of the Rising Sun. As a flute duet.”
Notice? It was an instrumental.
And no one, at the social hour afterwards, remarked on the fact that they’d just been sitting in church listening to House of the Rising Sun. On flutes. Played by Middle School ‘ladies’.
I sing (in church, too) Amazing Grace to the tune of Knocking on Heavens Door - love that ballad meter. I have also sung O Come all Ye Faithful (with some slight lyrical modifications) to the tune of La Bamba.
The experts at this are the I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue team, for whom One Song to the Tune of Another is a regular game. I have heard some marvelous stuff, but much of it escapes me now. Check out Youtube (search on ISIHAC, or One Tune) for some examples. Rob Brydon is marvelous - he can really sing. The first show he did, he sang along with a Tom Jones number (with the music silenced at some point), and was spot on the timing after singing half the song without the music.
My real favourite, though, is Weird Al’s Money For Nothing/Beverly Hillbillies.
I heard one of the panel on this great show sing Squeeze’s ‘Cool For Cats’ (hardly a lyric with ballad metre) to the tune of ‘Windmills of Your Mind’. Brilliant.
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” can be sung to the tune of “Hernando’s Hideaway,” as can the traditional doxology (“Praise God from whom all blessings flow…”)
So can Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which is especially ironic, all things considered.
And your OP mentioned the one I came in to mention – O Little Town of Bethlehem to House of the Rising Sun. I heard it almost 20 years ago, on an album called “A Twisted Christmas.”