For instance, right now I’m rewatching an old episode of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. They are at a dance. Maneater is playing. The song goes
Ooh, she’s sitting with you
But her eyes are on the door
and is immediately following by
Oh-oh, here she comes
She’s a man-eater
deleting nine verses from the song.
It happens all the time, and it never doesn’t distract me and draw my attention away from the story.
Was that old episode of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina about that particular song? If not, then I see no problem with cutting the background music and getting on with the show.
I rarely listen to songs closely enough to know what the lyrics are. I doubt I’d even notice. I watched a lot of Sabrina, and probably saw that episode, but didn’t their that sing at all and certainly wouldn’t’ve noticed.
The closing credits of The World According to Garp use The Beatles “When I’m Sixty-Four” for the entire credits. But they left out one line. Why? It’s the credits! Extend it by ten seconds, who cares!
Abridged versions of songs in movies don’t bother me. I’m also not bothered by chase scenes that show areas of a city that are unreasonably far apart. It’s just a movie, after all.
It depends on the particulars of the changed lyrics. There’s a Mexican telenovela, Marisol, from 1996, whose theme song is sung by Enrique Iglesias. He took one of his own songs, Por Amarte, and changed the lyrics a little to better suit the plot of the novela. That was done well. In other instances, it does annoy me.
I notice it. I wouldn’t say that it bothers me but I might feel a little “aww” if it was a song I liked. I understand that they just don’t want to spend an extra 30-90 second waiting for the oh-so-fitting-and-meaningful part of the lyrics that are supposed to tie into the scene. I’ll vote “Yes” but it’s less annoy and more takes me out of the moment because I notice it.
When lines are cut for content reasons, it’s more amusing. Play the whole verse, you cowards!
I object to any censorious tweaking to avoid pearl-cluthing sensibilities. As Good as it Gets closes with Art Garfunkel singing Monty Python’s “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” over the closing credits, and the line “Life’s a piece of shit/When you look at it” is changed to “Life’s a counterfeit/When you look at it” and really, nothing is sacred?
Men in Black uses Elvis’ cover of Chuck Berry’s “Promised Land” during a car chase…I can’t remember if Elvis’ version chops the lyrics up, but onscreen there are many lines missing.
When me and Vaderling went to see the cash grab they called “The Fall Guy”, when they were playing the theme song I kept telling Vaderling that it was wrong, they cut out all references to celebrities, living or dead, that were originally in there. I assume for mostly monitary and legal reasons. Didn’t detract from the movie, it wasn’t really “The Fall Guy” despite the fan-service throughout, being only played during the closing credits, but it did bug me in that earworm sort of way.
If you want to hear an unabridged version of Maneater, have I got a movie for you:
Wow, those replacement lyrics were as terrible as I imagine the movie was. Terrible voice, too
But the names had to have been changed because they are so incredibly dated. Not to mention kind of sexist. But still one of the best TV theme songs of all time.
I’d rather hear an actual song with missing lyrics than what I call Brady Bunch Rock n Roll. When the Brady kids would be dancing to the radio or their record player it was always some awful, generic “rock” music.