Songs where the lyrics changed over the years

March 8, 2013 10:45 AM

Please help me with a list of popular songs in which the commonly accepted lyrics have changed over the years.

Three examples off the top of my head:

• "Lola" by the Kinks originally had "tastes just like Coca-Cola," but after the band changed them for legal reasons, the accepted lyrics became "tastes just like cherry cola."
• "A Question of Time" by Depeche Mode has lyrics on record as "lift you up to bring you down," but in live performances Dave Gahan sings "mess you up to strip you down."
• "Candle in the Wind" by Elton John: "Goodbye Norma Jean" versus "Goodbye England's rose."

I'd prefer to have examples where the original artist has incorporated the changed lyrics into their current performances, but I'll accept examples where a cover band has changed the lyrics as well (for instance, a recent "Boys of Summer" cover talking about "a Black Flag sticker on a Cadillac"). What I don't really want are examples where a song had protean lyrics until they were recorded and became "official," like "Daydream Believer" popularized by The Monkees or "The End" as recorded by The Doors.

posted by infinitewindow to media & arts (59 answers total)

It may be apocryphal, but I've heard that on at least a couple instances, Jimi Hendrix really did change it to "'scuse me while I kiss this guy" when performing "Purple Haze".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:47 AM on March 8 [1 favorite]

Nirvana "Pay to Play" turned into "Stay Away"
posted by TheCavorter at 10:47 AM on March 8

R.E.M. changed the line in "Little America" from "Jefferson I think we're lost" to "Washington I think we're lost" after parting ways with Jefferson Holt.
posted by spilon at 10:48 AM on March 8 [1 favorite]

Take Me Back to Tulsa
posted by hydrophonic at 10:48 AM on March 8

"Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas"
posted by BillMcMurdo at 10:51 AM on March 8 [7 favorites]

Rock the Casbah is at least sometimes performed as "Fuck" the Casbah. We certainly used to sing it that way.
posted by 2bucksplus at 10:51 AM on March 8

Paul Simon's song "Kodachrome" sometimes says, "Everything looks better in black and white" and sometimes says "Everything looks worse in black and white." I think "worse" is the original (from Here Comes Rhymin Simon) but I don't know if he consistently does "better" nowadays.
posted by mskyle at 10:54 AM on March 8 [1 favorite]

Leonard Cohen has done this extensively with "Hallelujah".
posted by Jehan at 10:55 AM on March 8 [4 favorites]

Oh - I'm not clear what you mean by songs having protean lyrics, and I'm afraid this may be an "edge" case, but when Dylan was in his born-again-Christian phase he changed the lyrics to "Tangled Up In Blue" in concert:

Then she opened up a book of poems
And handed it to me
Written by an Italian poet
From the thirteenth century

became

Then she opened up the Bible
And she started quotin' it to me
Jeremiah chapter seventeen
From verses 21 and 33.

posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:56 AM on March 8

I seem to recall that Prince has changed a lot of his lyrics after becoming a Jehovah's Witness.
posted by Admiral Haddock at 10:56 AM on March 8

When Ben Folds performs Army live, he sometimes sings "I thought about... your mommy." instead of "I thought about... the army" at the end of the song.
posted by Strass at 10:58 AM on March 8 [6 favorites]

Non-pop example: Bernstein's "An die Freiheit" in Berlin. (Although in retrospect this isn't a long-term change in the accepted text, so maybe it's not helpful.)
posted by sleepingcbw at 10:59 AM on March 8

Oh, and there are several different versions of Jonathan Richman's Roadrunnner, as discussed in this article: The car, the radio, the night - and rock's most thrilling song.
posted by mskyle at 11:00 AM on March 8 [1 favorite]

God Blessed America for Me
posted by The corpse in the library at 11:02 AM on March 8

When I wrote protean lyrics, I was describing songs where often the lyrics would change performance to performance. For instance, "The End" by the Doors didn't always include the narrative passage about the Oedipal killer until after it was released on vinyl with those lyrics... and then it always did.
posted by infinitewindow at 11:03 AM on March 8 [1 favorite]

My Old Kentucky Home
posted by jbickers at 11:04 AM on March 8

I saw Warren Zevon play back in the 80s, and, during "Werewolves of London," he sang "I saw Judge Bork walking with the Queen... and his beard was perfect." I kind of assume he did that kind of thing more than once.
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:06 AM on March 8

Not sure if it counts, but sometimes, back in the day, lyrics were changed just so they'd be acceptable to network censors: one prime example was when the Rolling Stones were on the Ed Sullivan show back in the '60's.
posted by easily confused at 11:09 AM on March 8 [1 favorite]

The Cole Porter song "I Get a Kick Out of You" has several versions of the lyrics, the original referenced Lindbergh, but it was changed after the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, from:

I get no kick in a plane
I shouldn't care for those nights in the air
That the fair Mrs. Lindbergh goes through
But I get a kick out of you.

To:

I get no kick in a plane
Flying too high with some guy in the sky
Is my idea of nothin' to do
But I get a kick out of you.

And a verse that was originally about cocaine got changed from:

Some they may go for cocaine
I'm sure that if
I took even one sniff
That would bore me terrifically, too
Yet, I get a kick out of you

To:

Some like the perfume in Spain
I'm sure that if
I took even one sniff
That would bore me terrifically, too
Yet, I get a kick out of you

Or sometimes:

Some like the bop-type refrain
I'm sure that if
I heard even one riff
That would bore me terrifically, too
Yet, I get a kick out of you

posted by brainmouse at 11:14 AM on March 8 [3 favorites]

Gordon Lightfoot has changed a line in live performances of "The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald" from "at 7pm a main hatchway gave in, he said..." to "at 7pm it grew dark, it was then he said..." because research showed there was no crew error involved in the sinking.
posted by otters walk among us at 11:17 AM on March 8 [4 favorites]

Neil Young/Crazy Horse's "Dance Dance Dance" became "Love is a Rose"
posted by JPD at 11:18 AM on March 8 [1 favorite]

Cole Porter's song "Let's do it, let's fall in love" no longer starts with these lines:

Chinks do it, Japs do it,
up in Lapland little Laps do it . . .

and now typically starts with:

Birds do it, bees do it,
Even educated fleas do it . . .

along with other changes.

(On preview, it looks like Cole Porter was more than willing to change a lyric or two.)
posted by slkinsey at 11:18 AM on March 8 [4 favorites]

Oh, just thought of another one - on occasion U2 changes the lyrics to "Pride" from "Early morning, April 4...." to "Early evening, April 4...." after they finally found out that Martin Luther King wasn't assassinated in the morning.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:19 AM on March 8 [2 favorites]

I don't know if this is what you're looking for, but I honestly cannot hear the melody of "Jingle Bells" without thinking of how much Batman smells and how Robin laid an egg.
posted by antonymous at 11:21 AM on March 8 [9 favorites]

Billy Bragg includes the lyrics he wrote for Kirsty MacColl in his contemporary live performances of A New England as a tribute to her memory.
posted by peagood at 11:22 AM on March 8

For instance, "The End" by the Doors didn't always include the narrative passage about the Oedipal killer until after it was released on vinyl with those lyrics... and then it always did.

This is the nature of recorded music -- I have been in bands where songs have mutated constantly until they are recorded, at which time they become static.

As to your question, I had a few examples that have already been cited above. One I would add: Violent Femmes have changed "American Music" to "Canadian Music" at shows in Canada.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 11:24 AM on March 8 [1 favorite]

"Hang Onto Your Ego" became "I Know There's an Answer"
posted by chrchr at 11:24 AM on March 8 [1 favorite]

Bono changes the lyrics to many songs in concert, oftentimes weaving in lyrics from other songs by other artists. He makes it seem improvisational, but of course it's very calculated, like putting a Beatles sing-a-long of Help! into Ultraviolet (Light My Way).
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 11:37 AM on March 8 [1 favorite]

The Strokes have done this on many, many songs- if you can find any old recordings of their hits, they will have at least half-different lyrics.
posted by jitterbug perfume at 11:38 AM on March 8

Lloyd Price had two versions of "Stagger Lee"
posted by kimota at 11:40 AM on March 8

Taylor Swift changed "Sparks Fly"'s lyrics to be less indicative of a one-night stand than it started out being when it went from a song she played live to a studio recording. I'm guessing that was a label decision.
posted by jitterbug perfume at 11:40 AM on March 8

Radiohead sometimes includes minor lyrical tweaks during concerts. Probably the most significant is for Creep. They change the "want a perfect soul" line to "so I can look good next to you."
posted by Diskeater at 11:47 AM on March 8

Money for Nothing has had some amount of controversy over the use of "faggot." In this live performance he changes it to "queenie" " momma" and "trucker."
posted by O9scar at 12:06 PM on March 8

Moxy Fruvous started off as band doing topical songs and with topical songs the references get stale fast. There are two songs that are on their first, independent six-song cassette that were rerecorded for their first LP a year or so later -- "King of Spain" and "My Baby Loves A Bunch of Authors" -- that had lyrics altered and updated.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 12:08 PM on March 8 [1 favorite]

Not sure if you're interested in this one, but the official lyrics to O Canada have been changed a few times.
posted by ceribus peribus at 12:10 PM on March 8 [1 favorite]

Back in the late nineties, Mojo Nixon would change the line about Michael J. Fox being the Anti-Elvis in "Elvis is Everywhere" to Joan Collins. However, when Fox became poltically active again as his disease progressed, Mojo reverted back to the old line.

He also changed "Debbie Gibson is Pregnant with my Two-headed Love Child" to be about Britney Spears in one or two concerts.

And I think it's required by Rock N' Roll law that if a band has a song with the name of a particular city in it, that city name is changed to whatever town they are playing in.
posted by teleri025 at 12:15 PM on March 8 [1 favorite]

fun. changes the lyrics slightly in many of their live vs. recorded songs and also from their published lyrics. For instance, in "We Are Young" Nate sings "so let's raise a toast" instead of "so let's raise a glass." That's just one example, he does it all the time.
posted by vegartanipla at 12:17 PM on March 8

Winter Wonderland had the whole "Parson Brown" bit replaced in the 50s with the "Circus Clown" bit.
posted by gyusan at 12:26 PM on March 8

Dance Dance Dance and Love is a Rose are two different songs with the same melody. Neil Young tends to plaigiarize himself.

But in After The Gold Rush he now sings "Look at Mother Nature on the run, in the twenty-first century" instead of "..in the 1970s"
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 12:27 PM on March 8

Paul Slade has some interesting articles on the various versions of some murder ballads:

Stagger Lee
Frankie & Johnny
Tom Dooley
Pretty Polly

And yeah, Cole Porter lyrics were pretty fluid -- he often would write additional verses to suit a particular occasion or event.
posted by trip and a half at 12:35 PM on March 8 [1 favorite]

Joe Walsh's Rocky Mountain Way...In the original album version he sings "Bases are loaded and Casey's at bat..." whereas on the live version he sings "Bases are loaded and Nixon's at bat...", to tie-in with the upcoming line "Time to change the batter".

Ah, the '70's.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:45 PM on March 8

"The House of the Rising Sun" was the ruin of many a poor girl, until The Animals got a hold of it (along with other lyric changes).
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 12:53 PM on March 8 [1 favorite]

There are two lines in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado which have been cleaned up for modern audiences: "I've Got a Little List" historically includes the "nigger serenader" among the catalog of social offenders, and "A More Humane Mikado" includes the punishment of being "blacked like a nigger". There are probably many other old songs which have been updated either for linguistic obsolescence or shifts in acceptability (the awkward case of Kentucky's state song got mentioned above; shame that nobody's fixing Maryland's).

Musical theatre lyrics tend to generally have a little bit of flex in them, and long-running shows have sometimes been tweaked over time.
posted by jackbishop at 12:57 PM on March 8 [2 favorites]

Dylan, constantly, as has been mentioned.

Wilbert Harrison's Let's Stick Together was remade as Let's Work Together by Canned Heat. Bryan Ferry then restored the original lyric a few years later.

Arab Strap used to always re-work The First Big Weekend to describe the previous weekend's hi-jinks.
posted by anagrama at 1:00 PM on March 8

I have one live recording of The Doors' "Alabama Song" where Jim sings "Show me the way to the next little boy"

Devo, "Speed Racer": "I've got brains and I like sex/She's got brains and she likes sex" was originally "I've got brains and I like to fuck/She's got brains and she likes to fuck." The lyrics were sometimes changed in concert

And Devo's version of "Secret Agent Man" is much different lyrically than the original.
posted by luckynerd at 1:00 PM on March 8 [1 favorite]

"If I Had a Million Dollars" by Barenaked Ladies used to say "I'd buy you a green dress / with a tastefully rounder neck", but now the band sings "I'd buy you a green dress / but not a real green dress; thats cruel."

The change was made to make the response line of the lyric line call-back to the same lyric earlier in the song. And BNL tease themselves that they act ike 12yo boys, and green means "boogers" when you are 12 years old.
posted by TinWhistle at 1:03 PM on March 8 [1 favorite]

Ginger Wildheart changed a line in 29x The Pain a couple of times: "and I'm gonna miss Kurt Cobain" became "I'm gonna miss Richey James", and later "I'm gonna miss Alice In Chains" after Layne Staley died.
posted by anagrama at 1:06 PM on March 8

I know this was done to have a more radio friendly version of the song, but I can't tell you how many people were surprised when Charlie Daniels would be heard singing "song of a bitch" instead of "sun of a gun" from the speakers of my car.
posted by theichibun at 1:20 PM on March 8 [1 favorite]

Okay, this is even more of an envelope-pusher in terms of "the recording fixes it in place," but - actually, in this case, an initial recording didn't fix it in place.

There's a Dave Matthews Band song that started life as an untitled work about a South African activist named Chris Hani, and the lyrics reflected it being essentially a protest song against his assassination. The chorus was simple: "Hani, Hani, Come and dance with me." But the song sounded way too cheerful in tone, and American audiences, who never heard of Chris Hani, thought he was singing "Honey, honey, come and dance with me."

So then for a while it became a love-songy sort of thing, with the chorus "Honey, honey, come and dance with me." At this time it was titled "#36" (Dave Matthews gives numbers to all his as-yet-untitled songs); it was a fan favorite, with the verses usually improvised on the spot. A recording of "#36" made it onto the live album Listener Supported in 1999.

But the song underwent even more evolution over the next couple years, and finally got a completely new set of lyrics and a new instrumentation in 2001 - and now is called Everyday. The band does a nod to the earlier versions for longtime fans by incorporating some of the old "Honey, honey, come and dance with me" into live versions of "Everyday".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:36 PM on March 8

When Snoop Dogg does "Nuthin' But a G Thang" he changes "Death Row is the label that pays me" to whatever label he's currently signed to.

Eminem's "My Name Is" was originally recorded with two gay jokes in the lyrics; the song sampled openly gay singer Labi Siffre, who asked they be removed before clearing the sample. The album version has the new lyrics but the original was all over the Internet in 1999, so most fans have heard it.
posted by Smallpox at 1:49 PM on March 8

When I wrote protean lyrics, I was describing songs where often the lyrics would change performance to performance.

There's a lot of songs like that where there's never been one version that became "official" because so many different people covered the tune. There's also the sort of old traditional songs that people sing without it being a "performance" per se. Songs that arise out of oral traditions tend to have lyrics that change over time as well.

There's probably hundreds of these. One that jumps to mind is "Stack-o-Lee" or "Stagger Lee", and it's probably known by other names as well. Completely different lyrics in some versions. Here's lyrics (probably not entirely accurate, like most lyrics you can find on the web) three very different versions: Woody Guthrie, Mississippi John Hurt, and the Grateful Dead. Wikipedia lists several more spellings for the song name, more artists that have covered it, and that a version of it hit #1 on the Billboard charts at one point.

There's a wealth of other old classic blues and folk songs that have been covered by many artists.

The Smithsonian has a series of recordings which probably includes many examples of this, old blues songs certainly, but there are probably many more examples of songs that were popular in the United States and in other countries. The archive.org audio collections may also have some useful stuff, but I will leave you to do your own research there.
posted by yohko at 2:00 PM on March 8

Hot Rod Race/Hot Rod Lincoln
posted by anaelith at 2:40 PM on March 8

You can hear more examples of Moxy Fruvous changing up the lyrics if you compare studio recordings to their live album. Too many to count.

For like twenty years now, They Might Be Giants have been changing the line "powerful man, Universe Man" to "excellent man, Universe Man" when they perform "Particle Man." The reasons for the change are obscure to me. I also remember a live recording where Linnell claims to be singing "human hair" instead of "humid air" in the song "Ana Ng", but that's funny because HOW WOULD WE TELL. Finally, the spoken parts of "Why Does the Sun Shine?" are often ad-libbed at shows.
posted by clavicle at 2:52 PM on March 8

Ol' Man River has been through several iterations, each with a little more politically correct language than the last.


Bewitched, Bothered And Bewildered started out unequivocally about sex and keeps getting just unforgivably "cleaned up".

I'll sing to him, each spring to him
And worship the trousers that cling to him

becomes

I'll sing to him, each Spring to him
And long for the day when I cling to him

And lines like:

Horizontally speaking
He's at his very best
...
Vexed again, Perplexed again
Thank God I can be over-sexed again
...
I'm dumb again, And numb again,
A rich, ready, ripe little plum again

just get dropped.
posted by still_wears_a_hat at 2:54 PM on March 8 [2 favorites]

Depending on who sing the song, Blues in the Night has a few changes.

When a man sings it (as Cab Calloway does here), it goes:

"My mama done tol' me, when I was in knee-pants
My mama done tol' me, Son, a woman'll sweet talk
And give ya the big eye, but when the sweet talkin's done
A woman's a two-face, a worrisome thing who'll leave ya to sing
The blues in the night."

If a woman sings it (listen to Peggy Lee here), it can go:

"My mama done tol' me, when I was in pigtails
My mama done tol' me, Hon, a man's gonna sweet talk
And give ya the big eye, but when the sweet talkin's done
A man is a two-face, a worrisome thing who'll leave ya to sing
The blues in the night"

The "knee-pants/pigtails" line is sometimes changed to "blue jeans". The "big eye" is sometimes changed to a "glad" one. And Katie Melua's version of the song goes straight to telling us a man is a two-face instead of warning us of his sweet talk.

She then proceeds to omit a whole verse, i.e.:

"The evenin' breeze will start the trees to cryin'
and the moon will hide its light
when you get the blues in the night."

"Take my word, the mockingbird
'll sing the saddest kind of song,
he knows things are wrong,
and he's right."
posted by MelanieL at 4:05 PM on March 8 [1 favorite]

Real quick --

I seem to remember that Morrissey has updated a few lyrics to The Smiths' Bigmouth Strikes Again.

And I do believe LL COOL J omits the shout out to Farmers Boulevard in recent versions of "Mama Said Knock You Out".

Sorry, running out the door!
posted by 99percentfake at 5:49 PM on March 8

Elvis Costello's song "Less Than Zero" features lyrics that refer to a "Mr. Oswald." While American audiences reportedly thought it was a reference to Lee Harvey Oswald, Costello explained that it was, in fact, about the notorious British fascist leader Oswald Mosley, who was still alive (albeit very old) when the song was recorded. Indeed, explains Elvis:

"Less Than Zero" was a song I had written after seeing the despicable Oswald Mosley being interviewed on BBC television. The former leader of the British Union of Fascists seemed unrepentant about his poisonous actions of the 1930s. The song was more of a slandering fantasy than a reasoned argument.

But (and here's why I mention the song), at a 1978 concert in Toronto (which was released on CD many years later), Elvis sang a different version of the lyrics that he'd rewritten to, in fact, refer to Lee Harvey, in a nod to his (North) American audience. It's known among fans as the "Dallas version," for obvious reasons.

Here's a link to the original lyrics, and here's a link to the Dallas version.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 9:45 PM on March 8 [1 favorite]

"You're a Grand Old Flag" was originally titled and sung as You're a Grand Old Rag. Some people objected to calling the flag "a rag" no matter how affectionately, so the author changed it due to public opinion.
posted by fings at 10:50 PM on March 8

Just in case, some links to clarify the "Everyday"-"#36" connection:

"Honey, honey, come and dance with me..."

"Pick me up love, from the bottom, up to the top love, every day...."

In which we learn that they're the same song.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:24 AM on March 9