Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2016 April 21

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April 21

Pop music that gets borrowed into Christian hymns?

Beethoven's Ode To Joy (classical) gets borrowed into the Christian hymn, "Joyful Joyful We Adore Thee". What about other musical genres? Are there rock-and-roll music, disco music, rap music, metal music, jazz music, or blues music that gets borrowed into Christian hymns? 140.254.229.116 (talk) 13:33, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

Greensleeves, a traditional English folk song, has been made into Christmas songs. See Greensleeves#Alternative_lyrics. StuRat (talk) 15:22, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

Quite a few folk tunes actually: Kingsfold, Londonderry Air, The Ash Grove and O Waly Waly spring to mind. Alansplodge (talk) 17:37, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

If you count puppet shows as hymns, here are two subverting "Rock and Roll All Nite" (and six other parodies of songs I don't know, but seem popular). InedibleHulk (talk) 16:58, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

This is not exactly to the point of your question, but if you weren't aware of them, Stryper might be of interest. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 185.74.232.130 (talk) 18:46, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

Or one of their flock. InedibleHulk (talk) 19:02, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

• Hallelujah (Leonard Cohen song), a decidedly secular song (albeit with religious imagery) that Cohen explictly said had a non-religious context (see here for some quotes by Cohen himself), which has been reworked by Lincoln Brewster into a modern hymn, with explicitly Christian imagery, which he titled "Another Hallelujah", but which has the same tune, chorus, and overall song structure. --Jayron32 18:52, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

One does sometimes hear a hymn to Krishna being sung by some of the more happy-clappy sorts of Christians. DuncanHill (talk) 18:53, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

The original tune being a hymn to a cute boy. --Jayron32 19:02, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

There's a modern hymn called "Give Thanks" by Don Moen, which owes rather a lot to "Go West" by the Village People. Here's a video showing the similarity. Versatile song, also adapted as the rugby anthem Stand Up for the Ulstermen. --Nicknack009 (talk) 19:07, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

In my misspent youth as an evangelical Christian, I knew quite a few kids who started bands doing covers of secular songs with rewritten Christian lyrics. This thread has prompted me to discover they're still at it, only instead of playing to a couple of dozen people in the church hall they're putting their cringeworthy abominations on Youtube. Here are rewitten Christian versions of Katy Perry's "Firework", Adele's "Rolling in the Deep", Lady Gaga's "Born This Way", Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe" and Bruno Mars' "Uptown Funk". I am so, so sorry. --Nicknack009 (talk) 19:25, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

@Nicknack009: You should be sorry, those are terrible. "Born this way" is an odd choice for an evangelical re-write. Or maybe the perfect choice? Anyway, I thought you might appreciate Hank Hill's thoughts on the subject [1] :) SemanticMantis (talk) 21:07, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

Hank is wise. --Nicknack009 (talk) 08:40, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

There was a hodgepodge in California called Jesus music. InedibleHulk (talk) 19:08, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

Pachelbel's Canon begot "Christmas Canon" (and "Go West", kind of). InedibleHulk (talk) 19:13, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

(And Oasis's "Whatever") --TammyMoet (talk) 20:53, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

"C U When U Get There" sort of feels like a sermon. Not exactly Christian, and Coolio's only some sort of monotheist, but "Shepherd's Paradise" by ApologetiX is definitely lifted from the good book. They screwed with "Wonderwall", too. InedibleHulk (talk) 21:59, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

Back in my teenage years I spent many hours writing Christian lyrics to modern popular music. Anyway, off the top of my head, the Christmas carol "While Shepherds Watched" often gets sung to the tune of "Ilkley Moor Baht 'At" in Yorkshire. And William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, is reputed to have said "Why should the Devil get all the good music?" when asked why he wrote hymns that were based on the popular music of his day. So you could say any Salvation Army hymn, really. And you could also make a case for spirituals becoming jazz tunes, especially as played in New Orleans or Dixieland Jazz. --TammyMoet (talk) 20:53, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

Although Booth popularized the phrase, the original author is either Rowland Hill - not the chap who invented stamps - or George Whitefield. Tevildo (talk) 07:57, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

I used Lean on Me (song) unchanged as the Recessional during a Catholic Mass once. Mingmingla (talk) 03:03, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

I once heard Let it be sung as a tenor solo in an Anglican church service. Alansplodge (talk) 00:55, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

Drew Carey Show silent end credits

I've been watching old reruns on Laff (TV network), and many have silent end credits. This seems unusual to me, as they have music during the opening credits and have even had musical episodes. One guess is that they originally had music, but didn't want to pay the royalties, so removed it. Another thought is that they were removed to allow for voice-overs describing upcoming shows (although they haven't actually done this so far). A third thought is that it's done as a tribute to somebody who died, but then I'd expect some text, too. Note that many episodes have the end credits over a final (gag) scene, but the episodes I noticed lack this scene, and often just have a still or even black screen as the credits roll. So maybe I should be asking why those episodes are missing this final scene. Any ideas ? StuRat (talk) 17:13, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

Are there any episodes on Youtube? If so, you could compare them, as they might be the original versions of shows. There is precedent for this. As I understand it, the DVD's for WKRP in Cincinnati lack some or all of the credits music, due to the royalty situation. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:17, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

For WKRP, it's not just the end credits. One episode, I think it's the famous Thanksgiving episode, has Pink Floyd's Animals playing in the DJ booth. Arther Carlson comes in, looks at the album cover and says "There's a track on here called "Dogs"." To which Johnny replies, "I don't do requests." During the rebroadcast, the Pink Floyd music is replaced by some other music though the lines and scene are otherwise kept intact. Dismas|^(talk) 16:07, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

Perhaps if the plot of the episode ended on a tragic event, the episode ended without a gag and with a silent credit sequence. (Your question was posted at 1:13 PM Eastern time, right after Laff broadcast the Drew Carey Show episode "All Work and No Play" from 12:30 PM to 1 PM Eastern time. Wikipedia's List of The Drew Carey Show episodes says the plot of that episode includes Drew being in an accident and lists the next episode is "Drew's in a Coma".) But if you've seen many episodes with silent credits and no final gag, there are likely other reasons also. --Bavi H (talk) 03:26, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

Interestingly, the "Drew's in a Coma" episode does have the gag reel at the end. StuRat (talk) 17:04, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

Could well be a licensing issue. Google around for Grey's Anatomy, The Wonder Years, WKRP in Cincinnati. Those are just the most famous shows I know of where people have complained because the music in syndication/DVD is not the same as the music in original broadcast. SemanticMantis (talk) 19:27, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

I believe that is because they use "hit songs". That is, songs that are likely to make a profit. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 21:00, 22 April 2016 (UTC)