Songs that use the same tune

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In the early days of popular music, before copyright laws, when people would write songs, instead of writing music and lyrics, they would write lyrics, but just put them to a pre-existing tune. My favorite one of these is the US national anthem. The original lyrics were a British drinking song called To Anacreon in Heaven. I'll post that one as soon as I find my favorite version.

When Al Capone was in Alcatraz he would write lyrics to existing pieces of music. One of them was 'Humoresque' by Dvorak. When the sheet music with Capone's lyrics came up for auction in 2017, they were bought by blues rock musician Jack White who recorded it and used it on one of his albums:

These songs have the same feel to them, but I am not sure if it was intentional.

There was a children's song called Head and Shoulders, knees and Toes, but the original was There Is a Tavern in the Town.

Battle Hymn of the Republic just replaced the lyrics of "John Brown's Body" which was from the civil war era.

The Battle Hymn of the Republic has lots of parodies and alternate lyrics.

weird al did a whole host of such songs.

so did alan sherman.

In 1797 classical composer Hayden composed the hymn "God Save the Emperor" to honor the Emperor Franz Joseph...Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, and of Austria.

In 1922, the same tune, but with different lyrics became the official national anthem of Germany. The song best known as "Deutschland Uber Alles".

The last stanza is still the national anthem of the post war and post unification Germany. The first two stanzas are too Nazi sounding to be officially performed anymore though.

The Black American church hymn "I will be alright someday" penned around 1900 morphed into "We Shall Overcome Someday" in the post WWII Civil Rights Movement.

There was a...rather naughty...folksong in Medieval England ...though the naughty double meanings are now forgotten by modern music listeners. We just know it as that lovely song "Greensleeves".

And Greensleeves became the Christmas Carol "What Child is this?", then it crossed the Atlantic and became "St. James Infirmary Blues".

The song “All By Myself” is based on the melody from the second movement of Rachmaninoff’s second piano concerto. I prefer listening to Rachmaninoff, but I still think it’s cool when people are inspired by classical music composers.

Barry Manilow uses Chopin’s Prelude Op. 28 No. 20 in his song “Could It Be Magic.”

Tom Parker's "Joy" was based on Bach's "Jesu, joy of man's desiring."

The melody for twinkle twinkle little star, also used by people to sing the alphabet, is taken from a french folk melody called "Ah, vous dirai-je, Maman".

Pachelbel's Canon is everywhere

^ Interesting.

I associate that piece with wedding receptions I worked at as a party DJ. Didnt realize that the piece is hidden in plan site over much of the radio.

And there is one more song.


https://youtu.be/NPFGz1AbrxE

Personally I wouldn't consider using the same chord progression to be anywhere near the same as using the same melody.

Especially not when there's examples like this:





So, Dave Mustaine originally wrote Mechanix for Metallica. When he was fired Metallica wrote new lyrics and added some additional parts to their version, resulting in The Four Horsemen. Dave Mustaine still owned the original version and included a recording of Mechanix on Killing Is My Business.

As for that slowed-down bridge in The Four Horsemen...

The melody for The Flintstones theme song, "Meet the Flintstones", is believed to have been inspired by the second movement of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 17 (The "Tempest").