Try singing ‘Rising Sun’ to “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” Makes the bit about going back to New Orleans to wear that ball and chain sound downright peaceful.
A short list of songs to ballad meter:
House of the Rising Sun
Amazing Grace
O Little Town of Bethlehem
Auld Lang Syne
America the Beautiful
Yellow Rose of Texas
“Gilligan’s Island” theme
I’m sure others can add to this.
I like his Safety Dance/Brady Bunch.
One that I learned in girl scout camp in the seventies was Amazing Grace to the tune of I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing. What can I say? It was the seventies. 
Evidently there are a bunch of songs compatible with the meter of Amazing Grace and Gilligans Island. I used to insert the lyrics of Gilligan’s Island into Stairway to Heaven and get Stairway to Gilligan’s Island.
The tempo change “And as we wind on down the road”
becomes; The weather started getting rough pretty funny
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
now I’m never going to be able to get that out of my head
:smack: get out :smack: get out :smack: get out
nope, still there
Also, his Brady Bunch (to the tune of Safety Dance)
There’s also the theme from The Muppet Show done to the tune of A Whiter Shade of Pale.
Interesting, I slowed the lyrics down quite a bit more when I do it.
Pink Floyd’s “Run like Hell” and the Springsteen version of “Jersey Girl” are interchangeable.
As well as “Oh! Susanna”
Don Francks used to sing ‘My Favourite Foolish Things’ - ‘These Foolish Things’ sung to the melody of ‘My Favourite Things’ and vice versa.
Here’s a list I compiled from the previous times this subject has come up. Thanks to the original posters. Sorry for duplicates already mentioned.
One I’ve been doing for ten years or so is “I’m a Little Teapot” to the Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Sedated.” It needs to be forced a tad, which works because you leave just enough Ramones in there for people to figure out what you’re doing even if you’re drunk and/or off tune:
**Twenty-twenty-twenty four hours to go, I’m a little teapot
Nothin’ to do and nowhere to go-oh-oh, I’m a little teapot
I’m a little teapot, I’m short and I’m stout
Here is my handle, and here is my spout
When I get all steamed up, you can hear me shout:
‘Tip me over and pour me ooooouuuuuuuut!’
Bam-bam-bamp-bam ba-bam-bam-bamp-bam - I’m a little teapot**
I’ve not yet gotten up the nerve to do this at karaoke night yet, but I occasionally amaze/amuse/annoy my friends/pets/strangers with it.
I’m not sure about that one, but it works pretty well set to the tune of Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
Here’s my list:
**
SONGS THAT CAN BE SUNG TO THE TUNE OF “THE BALLAD OF GILLIGAN’S ISLAND”**
Mickey Mouse Club Theme Song
Stairway to Heaven
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xG2lTB-UVvs
House of the Rising Sun
Yankee Doodle
Pop Goes the Weasel
Peaceful Easy Feeling
I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing
Yellow Rose of Texas
Ghost Riders of the Sky
Rocky Top
Lion Sleeps Tonight
Tangled Up in Blue
Whiter Shade of Pale
Light My Fire
O Little Town of Bethlehem
Jingle Bells
God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen
Greensleeves
Jolly Old St. Nicholas
The First Noel
O Tannenbaum
It Came Upon a Midnight Clear
I’ll Be Home for Christmas
Take Me Out to the Ball Game
In-a-Gadda-da-Vida
Marines’ Hymn
Wabash Cannonball
America the Beautiful
The Internationale
Onward Christian Soldiers
Ode to Joy
Mack the Knife
A Hundred Bottles of Beer
Clementine
La Cucaracha
Semper Paratus
The Wearing of the Green
(The Rising of the Moon)
The Itsy-Bitsy Spider
I’ve Been Working on the Railroad
Sympathy for the Devil
Rollin’ Down to Old Maui
Acres of Clams
Bread and Roses
Sink the Bismarck
Poems that apply:
Jabberwocky
Little Miss Muffet
Jack and Jill
Doctor Foster went to Gloucester
Little Jack Horner
Itsy Bitsy Spider
Mary Mary Quite Contrary
Anything by Emily Dickinson
Some need a little tucking and tweaking, of course, but they all work interchangeably.
Oh, and since "Spider-Man" and "Edelweiss" have different rhyme schemes, they don't really work interchangeably.
Likewise, "Kubla Khan" has a whole extra line that precludes it fitting the above.
Since Qadgop started this thread, and led off with a Christmas carol, I’ll mention that someone here once mentioned singing “O Elbereth Gilthoniel” to the tune of “O come o come Emmanuel”, and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head since.
Although, to be fair, for all we know “O Elbereth Gilthoniel” really is sung to that tune.
Also on the Christmas note, but going secular, since last Christmas I’ve been playing around with swapping the tunes to “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Frosty the Snowman”. I’m not very good at it, though… I kept on slipping back into the “right” song.
Not that far off, per Howard Shore’s version of Elbereth Gilthoniel
:eek:
Fascinating. You can also sing it to Ave Maris Stella (which seems a bit more appropriate) and Pange Lingua.
Not quite what Qadgop was looking for, but I ran into this wonderful mashup the other day. It’s now on my iPod.
A local group in St Louis has recorded the lyrics of Rudolph the Red- Nosed Reindeer to the melody of Free Bird.
Actually, “Emmanuel” was later (somewhere in the 6th or early 7th age) ret-conned onto the real tune of “O Elbereth Gilthoniel” and no one now remembers that it was so.