Always interesting to me when an artist resurrects and repurposes a previously released tune as something different later on. In this case, John Phillips wrote a tune, sung by Mary Clayton, for Brewster McCloud and then used the same (pretty much?) chord progression/melody for his then wife’s solo album.
John Lennon’s ‘Child of Nature’ with the Beatles becoming ‘Jealous Guy’ on the Imagine album comes to mind as well but examples don’t have to be musical. Like for example when Ridley Scott used the unicorn footage from Legend for the dream sequence in Blade Runner. There must be some video game examples, too…
You’re right, I did say “released” and I tend to think of those Anthology/Deluxe Edition tracks as such even though they’re not but also…I’m interested if a demo has such a different vibe and transformation several years later.
Hope your hands feel better, I always enjoy your input.
this whole album is comprised of re-imaginings of prior material: Thing-Fish - Wikipedia
it’s one of the most divisive/hated zappa albums lol. and yeah it’s extremely unpleasant, i’m not gonna defend it even a little bit lmao… there’s so much great zappa i haven’t bothered
really zappa just was always writing and the quality of his writing was so consistent (…in some ways…) that he could comfortably pull things from all over his catalog and play around with them. he built his entire ouevre out of this sort of reflexivity
you might like comparing the smashing pumpkins in the last tour in ~2000 to their recorded output, too - they loved to make shit sound weird and different to the records which i have always really enjoyed about that first gen pumpkins live show (no idea if they still do that, who cares lol)
Faith No More’s Last Cup of Sorrow’s chorus used lyrics recycled from one of the songs on Mr. Bungle’s pre-first album demos (I think it was Bloody Mary on Goddamit I love America?), and then Rammstein’s remix of Last Cup of Sorrow was reworked into their Nebel on Mutter.
I’ve been sitting on this knowledge for 20 years but no one has ever asked.
the bobettes did a good answer record to their own “mr lee” (about dating the high school teacher) by writing another song with the same tune about shooting the same guy in the head
also it’s not from his own back catalogue but really like this story about the great link wray’s approach to lyrics
I truly enjoy how everyone’s picks are slightly different than what I had in mind but I also muddied the waters from the very beginning, interesting takes. Mayeb one of the R’s should be “Reimagined”.
Another demo example I guess but quite a transformation. From the Hunky Dory era I think, hung around in Bowie’s head until Scary Monsters and became ‘It’s No Game’.
Also neat that ‘Move On’ uses a backwards version of the chorus from ‘All the Young Dudes’ (starts at 0:36).
Thomas Dolby did this in reverse: a completed track became a demo!
He was in a little synthpop band called The Fallout Club before he went solo and hit it big. They had this kinda cool new wavey song called Pedestrian Walkway.
When Dolby was working on his big solo debut The Golden Age of Wireless, he recorded his own version of this song as a quite slight demo, but it never made it to the album. Years later it got released as a bonus track.
Forum favorite Haruomi Hosono did the soundtrack for the 1985 anime adaptation of Night on the Galactic Railroad. This lovely ambient synth piece appeared on it:
Four years later, it was completely transformed into the prettiest pop song of his entire career and my personal favorite:
