In the mid-70s, Tom Lehrer did a song for “The Electric Company” to the tune of a famous song from “Rigoletto”:
I’m a very quiet hound,
I don’t bark or run around.
I just lie here on the ground,
With my head upon this mound.
No-one knows where I can be found.
If they did then they’d be bound
To come and take me to the pound.
That’s why I don’t make a sound!
I’ve never heard “Love is a many-splendored thing”. I’ve only heard the Sisters of Mercy song that contains the line “Love is a many-splintered thing”. So I guess if I ever hear the original it’ll be ruined for me.
“Love is a Many-Splendored Thing” was converted to “Love is a Many-Splintered Thing” for me when I saw a cartoon of Flo chasing Andy Capp with a cricket bat.
When I was in seventh grade, our class was studying Longfellow’s poem The Song of Hiawatha. I noticed that its meter was such that (given a few liberties) it could be sung to the tune of The Marines’ Hymn.
To this day, I cannot hear “From the halls of Montezuma…” without thinking “By the shores of Gitchee Gumee…”
This is the anecdote.
Someone sang it to him and he became obsessed with it. Later:
To top it off, sing the version from the National Lampoon that spoiled that poem for me forever:
Whose woods these are I think I know;
His house is in the village, though.
He will not see me stopping here
To write my name in yellow snow.
After I’d heard Kenny Rogers sing Coward of the County too many times, I wrote:
Promise me, son,
That you’ll bite your woman’s buns.
Wear a two-day stubble when you can.
Folks wont think you’re queer,
If you have another beer.
Damn right you have to drink to be a man.
An old friend was furious at me for doing that. He said if I laid a glove on Two Story House, he’d strangle me.
Allan Sherman warped Imagination forever with Automation.
…There’s an IBM 503,
Standing next to me, dear, where you used to be.
Doesn’t have your smile,
Doesn’t have your shape,
Just a bunch of light bulbs, and punch cards, and tape…
Flanders and Swann brilliantly ruined Mozart’s Fourth Horn Concerto forever:
I once had a whim and I had to obey it
To buy a French Horn in a second-hand shop
I polished it up and I started to play it
In spite of the neighbours who begged me to stop
Spike Jones has ruined (sorry, improved) many classic songs.
On occasion I am wont to dig out my Peter Lorre impression and perform this venerable favorite:
My old flame
I can’t even think of her name…
I’ll have to look through my collection of human heads. :eek:
Also, a good source for this sort of thing is Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs, in which he describes novel interpretations of incomprehensible lyrics.
For instance, the Beach Boys’ “Help Me Rhonda”:*
Well since she put me down
There’ve been owls pukin’ in my bed*
Well, I’m not one to talk. :o
“Little Honda” by the Hondelles:
Her ears is all right
“Doo wa dee diddy dum” (I’m not sure that’s right) by Manfred Mann
*Milwaukee, give me something to do"
“The Call of the Wild Goose” by Frankie Laine
Father goose, mother goose, witch’s vest
I could not understand the lyrics of “The Vatican Rag” by Tom Lehrer until a high-school friend of mine–who was Episcopalian–explained to me about the rite of communion and the Eucharist. (Words like “genuflect,” “kyrie eleison,” and “transubstantiate…”)
Well, my, my, this here Anakin guy
May be Vader some day later, now he’s just a small fry
He left his home, and kissed his mommy goodbye
Sayin’ “Soon I’m gonna be a Jedi
Soon I’m gonna be a Jedi”
-Weird Al, c/o Don McLean
Ya know, Id probably pay to see that=)
Susan Tedeschi does a blues song called Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean (the link goes to an Amazon.com excerpt from the song). The chorus is mostly the following line, repeated:
Mama - he treats your daughter so mean…
Mrs. Chef and I were on a trip when I played that song for her. She started singing, “Mama - he treats the dinosaur mean…” And of course, as soon as she said that, it was all I could hear Tedeschi say. In fact, I came up with a whole set of Flintstones-based alternate lyrics to the song. To this day all I can hear is “dinosaur.”
Damn you, Mrs. Chef!
Hope is the thang with fay-thers
H’it parches in yer so-wul
An’ sangs a tune that ain’t got wards
An’ niver stops at awl.
Yee-haw! Play that dang pianner, Jed!
The complete songbook here.
“Cecilia, you’re breaking my heart
You’re shaking my carpet with bay leaves.”
“The doorbell chimed, it rang several times,
I said ‘Would you get that, Edmund, it’s Gerald!’”
Eve beat me to the Toreador song on Gilligan’s Island and twickster beat me to the “Kill the Wabbit!” song.
Everytime the Ice Cream truck drives by and plays “Turkey in the Straw” I have to sing “Do your boobs hang low? Do they wobble to and fro…”, unfortunately I can’t remember the rest of the words.
I can’t hear Aerosmith’s “Love in an Elevator” without it becoming “Lovin’ An Alligator”.
Do your boobs hang low?
Do they wobble to and fro?
Can you tie 'em in a knot,
Can you tie 'em in a bow?
Can you throw 'em over your shoulder
Like a Continental soldier?
Do your boobs hang low?
Oh dear, my family does a lot of these…
*
People… People who eat people…
Are the hungriest people in the world!
One person, one very tasty person…
A feeling deep in your soul,
Says you are no longer whole!
No more hunger and thirst,
but first be a person who eats people…*
Some old song called “Jealousy” gets turned into:
*Leprosy!
Oh my god I’ve got leprosy!
There goes my eyeball
Into your highball…
Leprosy!
Oh my god I’ve got leprosy!
There goes my ear
Into your beer…
*
Actually, this one could very well be a Spike Jones song–it sounds like him, but all I know is that my mom used to sing it to us.
Sunshine…
On my choda makes me happy…
But a dildo
up my ass will make me cry…
This land’s not your land,
This land is my land.
I’ve got a shotgun
And you aint’ got one.
I’ll blow your head off
If you don’t get off.
This land is private properteeee…