“The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five (“Don’t push me 'cause I’m close to the edge…”)
The first song that came to my mind was “It’s in His Kiss” by Betty Everett. Except the title is “The Shoop Shoop Song.”
One that I didn’t realize until very recently was DMX’s “Party Up” (“Y’all gon’ make me lose my mind, up in here, up in here”).
Re: “Three Little Birds”: When my oldest niece wore a Bob Marley T-shirt to middle school one day, an upperclassman challenged her to name a song of his. She chose that one.
Thanks. Knew I should have cut-and-pasted that one.
Just thought of a couple more while walking the dog:
Iris by The Goo Goo Dolls. “and I don’t want the world to see me”
Bad by U2. “I’m wide awake”
There are a few that had the “hook” lines tacked on, probably to appease the record company:
Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life) - Green Day
Annie’s Song (You Fill Up My Senses) - John Denver
Superman (It’s Not Easy) - Five for Fighting
and the aforementioned Buffalo Springfield.
So I repeated one song. Big freakin deal. Here’s a replacement, and one from this century:
The Killers: Mr. Brightside(" Jealousy, turning saints into the sea…"), always expected the title to be “Jealousy”
Gorrilaz: Clint Eastwood (“I ain’t happy, I’m feeling glad / I got sunshine in a bag…”)
Clapton added “Where is my badge?” to the end of some of his performances in the 70’s: https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/do-you-like-the-where-is-my-badge-lyrics-for-eric-claptons-badge.748950/
More Cream weirdness:
Swlabr (She Waa Like A Bearded Rainbow)
N.S.U. (Non-Specific Urethritis) - In an interview, Jack said someone in the band had a sexually transmitted disease…the guitar player!
That’s a pretty good one cuz it sort of turns it on its head. The real name sounds like what you’d say if you couldn’t remember the title at all!
Would you believe I am listening to “Positively 4th Street” for quite likely the first time? I’ve seen many references to it over the years, but probably never heard it until NOW.
In traditional jazz there’s a song that most people think is called “Shake It and Break It,” but the real title is “Weary Blues.” To make things more confusing, there’s a separate song whose actual title is “Shake It and Break It.”
Weary Blues:
Shake It and Break It:
Here’s Joni:
Bob Dylan’s “Positively 4th Street,” that particular song showed me. I remember thinking “the American pop song has finally grown up.” You can sing about anything now. “You’ve got a lot of nerve to be my friend.” Just in that statement was a different song than any I had ever heard.
Just a simple thing like being a singer-songwriter – that was a new idea. It used to take three people to do that job. And when I heard “Positively 4th Street,” I realised that this was a whole new ballgame; now you could make your songs literature. The potential for the song had never occurred to me – I loved “Tutti Frutti,” you know. But it occurred to Dylan. I said “Oh God, look at this.” And I began to write. So Dylan sparked me.
Interestingly, Joni Mitchell performed a lot in Toronto, where the police cars were painted schoolbus-yellow at the time. Nobody knows whether her “Big Yellow Taxi” refers to an actual taxicab or a police car. I tend towards the latter; I lived in Toronto when I was younger, and my friends and I knew that a “Big Yellow Taxi” was a police car. A Yellow Cab was just a taxi painted yellow.
And then there’s this.
“You Can Get with This” (Black Sheep) was grievously misnamed “The Choice is Yours.”
These might fit the OP:
- “Space Oddity” by David Bowie (Ground Control To Major Tom)
- “Life During Wartime” by Talking Heads (This Ain’t No Disco)
- “Under the Bridge” by Red Hot Chili Peppers (I Don’t Ever Wanna Feel)
- “Roadhouse Blues” by The Doors (Let It Roll, Baby, Roll)
mmm
That sucked. I prefer the original ending and it is one of my most quoted paraphrased lines to people “You cried away your life since you fell out the cradle”. The original ends abruptly right there because that’s the message.
Evidently not enough for her to quote him correctly.
Ironically, it now often takes 2 or 3 performers, plus up to 9 writers, to make a hit song.
Instrumentals have more flexibility with naming, but this one I found particularly perplexing:
The other night my gf asked Alexa to play Tom Waits, Waltzing Mathilda, but Alexa couldn’t. She tried again, still no joy. She thought a bit and asked Alexa to play Tom Waits Wasted and Wounded (first words in the song). Nope.
I cleared my throat and said, "Hey, Alexa, play Tom Waits, Tom Traubert’s Blues (Four Sheets to the Wind in Copenhagen). Which worked, of course, since that’s the name old Tom gave his song.
