5 Lyrics Artists Fixed Years After the Songs Were Hits
When a musician performs live, it gives them a chance to tweak their lyrics to suit the setting. Maybe they’ll change the words “Red Sox cap” to “Atlanta Braves cap.” The crowd will go wild, regardless of how poorly the substitute fits the song’s meter.
Or maybe, as in the following examples, they’ll get more creative than that.
‘American Idiot’ Now Namedrops MAGA
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The second verse of Green Day’s “American Idiot” starts with the lines “Well, maybe I’m the f*ggot, America / I’m not a part of a redneck agenda.” It’s been two decades since the song was new, and those lyrics aren’t so appropriate today. So, the band updated the song. Now, the verse says, “Well, maybe I’m the f*ggot, America / I’m not a part of a MAGA agenda.”
Even if you do subscribe to the MAGA agenda, you have to agree that the new words work better. Rednecks don’t have an agenda. Rednecks are poor rural white people, and while you might guess the sort of political beliefs that a redneck has, those still won’t be the agenda of the rednecks. The album American Idiot lashed out at the Bush administration, and the administration contained no rednecks, only people who pretended to be.
MAGA, however, is an agenda. Also, MAGA rhymes with “f*ggot” (or, at least, there’s assonance across the two lines). In fact, someone who hears the song for the first time today will surely assume the band started with the phrase “MAGA agenda” and worked backwards to come up with “f*ggot, America,” because why else would you go out of your way to use that slur?
As it happens, Green Day singer Billie Joe Armstrong is bi. His queerness doesn’t come up very often, since he’s been married to the same woman for 30 years, but he is. In one of the band’s biggest songs, “Basket Case,” the singer seeks therapy from a male sex worker.
More recently still, Green Day have changed the agenda yet again. At a concert last week, they sang, “I’m not a part of the Elon agenda.” This one doesn’t rhyme as well, but it responded to Elon Musk criticizing the MAGA agenda lyric. Also, they were performing in Musk’s home country of South Africa — a place where, incidentally, people also use the word “redneck.” Except, there, the word specifically refers to Englishmen living in South Africa, so the original lyric might have confused the crowd.
Madonna Changed ‘Papa Don’t Preach’ to Support Abortion
Madonna’s “Papa Don’t Preach” is about a pregnant teen girl who, ignoring the advice of everyone around her, decides to move in with the guy and raise the child. “I’m keeping my baby,” says the final line of the song and the final line of each chorus.
When she toured in 2019, she changed that line — to “I’m not keeping my baby.” Before, everyone was telling her to give the baby up. In the updated version, her father is telling her to carry the pregnancy to term, but she’s choosing an abortion. This change in meaning would also require just about every word of the verses to change, but she sidesteps that by singing the song for just a minute or so as part of a medley.
We don’t have a clip of Madonna singing that because she took the usual step of banning all cell phones and cameras from the concert. We do have footage of a more recent concert of hers, where she sings her song “Killers Who Are Partying.” The usual lyrics say, “I’ll be Israel, if they’re incarcerated.” No longer. For the past year or so, she’s been singing, “I’ll be Palestine, if they’re incarcerated.”
The Very Strange Update of ‘Islands in the Stream’
The Bee Gees wrote the song “Islands in the Stream” in 1983. They’ve sung it themselves, but the most famous version is from Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers.
Fifteen years later, a song called “Ghetto Supastar” used the melody from “Islands in the Stream” for its chorus. It was by Pras, Ol’ Dirty Bastard and Mya and was on the soundtrack of the movie Bulworth. The music video brought in the cast of the film, including Warren Beatty and Halle Berry, because music videos used to be amazing.
In 2001, the Bee Gees released a Greatest Hits album, featuring a new recording of “Islands in the Stream.” For the final part of the song, they instead sing the chorus of “Ghetto Supastar.” That’s pretty funny, if you know both songs. But if you weren’t the right age in 1998, there’s a good chance you’ve never heard of “Ghetto Supastar.” That’s means you’d listen in utter incomprehension as the guys end the song by singing, out of nowhere, “Ghetto superstar / That is what you are.”
P. Diddy Has Been Canceled From ‘TiK ToK’
Ke$ha’s “TiK ToK” from 2009 is another song whose original words been recontextualized by current events. No, we’re not talking about how the song’s title now refers to a video app that may or may not be legal, depending on what day of the week it is. We’re talking about the opening line, which says, “Wake up in the morning feeling like P. Diddy.”
The line was about waking up hungover, waking up feeling successful or possibly about waking up feeling puffy. The inspiration came from Ke$ha waking up in a Malibu beach house and noticing she was sharing the place with 10 beautiful women — though, in her case, these weren’t groupies but her roommates.
The line was not supposed to be about waking up taking pride in committing sex crimes, which is how people might interpret it today. So, now, Ke$ha does the line as, “Wake up in the morning like, ‘Fuck P. Diddy.’”
Which seems to please the crowd. Though, if she really wakes with that as her angry first thought, the implication is that P. Diddy victimized her last night. Sure enough, a later bridge talks of her having to smack drunken guys for trying to grope her.
‘Don’t Let Me Get Me’ Now Respects Britney Spears
In 2001’s “Don’t Let Me Get Me,” Pink sings, “I’m tired of being compared to damn Britney Spears.” Much like with “TiK ToK,” the music video makes it clear that we’re not supposed to be taking any of this too seriously.
Today, Pink sings that line differently. She sings, “I’m tired of being compared to sweet Britney Spears.” We suppose that’s her way of avoiding throwing shade at a fellow performer.
However, the original song already followed up the line with, “She’s so pretty,” clarifying that the damn signifies envy, not a real attack. In fact, if Pink is fashioning herself as someone cool, calling Spears “sweet” might represent scorn, more so than the resentful “damn” did.
The change was perhaps never necessary, particularly because the two artists already set aside all rivalry to defeat the Roman emperor.
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