"Fun" was too mainstream.

September 2, 2014 1:10 PM

Chase Holfelder covers Cyndi Lauper's Girls Just Want to Have Fun in a minor key.
(previously, previouslier, previousliest)
posted by schmod (37 comments total)

I love this.
posted by mochapickle at 1:11 PM on September 2, 2014

I really like this arrangement, actually, but jesus dude, take it easy on the vocal tuning a little bit. It's brutal.
posted by uncleozzy at 1:13 PM on September 2, 2014 [7 favorites]

The change in the timing reminded me of the Postmodern Jukebox version of the same song a bit.
posted by immlass at 1:17 PM on September 2, 2014

The original was by Robert Hazard
posted by Lanark at 1:18 PM on September 2, 2014 [4 favorites]

I prefer Gillian Welch and David Rawlings' version, which they've been doing since at least 2002.
posted by entropicamericana at 1:21 PM on September 2, 2014

Never heard the Robert Hazard version before - it's great!
posted by Foci for Analysis at 1:28 PM on September 2, 2014

One of my favorite mood shifted covers: Friday by Matt Mulholland.
posted by stavrogin at 1:44 PM on September 2, 2014

jesus dude, take it easy on the vocal tuning a little bit

American Idol demo tape, maybe.
posted by Mr. Six at 1:54 PM on September 2, 2014

Nice.
Don't forget Cortex's E-minor version of Margaritaville.
posted by MtDewd at 1:54 PM on September 2, 2014 [1 favorite]

A tragic, pathos-laden cover of "I Kissed a Girl".
posted by kenko at 1:54 PM on September 2, 2014 [1 favorite]

this street organ cover from Bioshock Infinite is the likely inspiration for the Postmodern Jukebox take above.
posted by The Whelk at 2:03 PM on September 2, 2014 [1 favorite]

These versions seem more... natural to me. Like menace is built in, but hiding.
posted by poe at 2:18 PM on September 2, 2014

I prefer Gillian Welch and David Rawlings' version, which they've been doing since at least 2002.

...which is in the major key as originally written, and thus better.
posted by jimmythefish at 2:25 PM on September 2, 2014

For some reason I've always found the lyric, "Girls just wanna have fun" devastatingly melancholy. Guess I'm not alone.

Still, I think it's sadder in the major key.
posted by Zerowensboring at 2:45 PM on September 2, 2014 [1 favorite]

I've always detected a perfect edge of pathos in the original version of the song. This version just makes it a bit too over the top.

(Or exactly what Zerowensboring said.)
posted by naju at 2:45 PM on September 2, 2014 [1 favorite]

I have loved Greg Laswell's downtempo "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" since I first heard it on Coverville in 2007.

There's some covers of Spears' "Baby one more time" that make it into a really spooky and haunting song. I can't remember which one really made my hair stand up but this one is good too.
posted by phearlez at 2:48 PM on September 2, 2014

I think maybe there's a problem with a general assumption that major = happy, minor = sad
posted by naju at 2:49 PM on September 2, 2014 [3 favorites]

I listened again. It's the perfect backdrop for a story of a young woman who's run away from home and finds herself in some hot, lonely place in the desert, and she's washing dishes at the window while a piece of flypaper blows, watching the tail lights of a car getting further and further away.
posted by mochapickle at 2:49 PM on September 2, 2014 [1 favorite]

And then when the chorus revs up, she breaks things. Just smashes them to bits!
posted by mochapickle at 2:50 PM on September 2, 2014 [1 favorite]

...my hair stand up but this one is good too.

If your version of something comes after both Children of Bodom and Richard Thompson have already done it, you're late to the party.
posted by Wolfdog at 2:51 PM on September 2, 2014

Travis version of Baby One More Time.

Marty Casey version. (Oh hush now, I loved that show and Marty was robbed.)
posted by mochapickle at 2:53 PM on September 2, 2014

Oh, wrong song, I'm stupid.
posted by Wolfdog at 2:54 PM on September 2, 2014

This is the perfect backdrop for a Far Side story of two flies stuck to a piece of flypaper hanging next to a runaway woman washing dishes in a hot, lonely shack in the desert, as the taillights of a car recede in the distance. One fly says, "Does flypaper blow, or what?"
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 3:19 PM on September 2, 2014

I'm in the minority here as I hated it - this works best as a bouncy, happy, poppy song that slips in the melancholy and is not overt about it. Then you get a layering effect that is more satisfying, imho.

(cyndilauperforever!)
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 3:22 PM on September 2, 2014 [2 favorites]

This was pretty neat, at least for those of us who were (male fwiw) children when the original came out and did not really have the tools to examine any implied pathos to the song. I'm not attacking naju and Zerowensboring! Quite the opposite, if I'd been exposed to the song add an adult I think I'd have the same reaction. And that makes me wonder, is there a place that consolidates that sort of exploration of familiar music? Between this and the time I saw Ben Folds perform "Song for the Dumped" in minor key, it makes me want to explore a lot more of those sorts of comparisons. What does "Eye of the Tiger" sound like in Phrygian mode? Can you map "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" to a pentatonic scale?
posted by solotoro at 3:26 PM on September 2, 2014

A few years ago I was at a friend's house and his 18 year-old cousin was there. She was a pianist who was working on the music for a play and excitedly told us about how she had altered the mood of one song by changing it from a major key to minor. She was so excited to have thought of that it almost broke my heart.
posted by The Card Cheat at 3:32 PM on September 2, 2014

this street organ cover from Bioshock Infinite is the likely inspiration for the Postmodern Jukebox take above.

Indeed. As the About section of the PMJ version says:

Some of you may already know that I contributed a few musical arrangements to the game Bioshock Infinite. The cover of "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" that appears in the game was actually done by James Bonney, the music supervisor that found me online years ago and hired me for the game. So, as my way of saying thank you to Jim, Ken Levine, and the rest of the team at Irrational Games, here's my arrangement of Jim's waltz arrangement of the Cyndi Lauper 80's classic, "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun."

posted by Shmuel510 at 4:38 PM on September 2, 2014 [1 favorite]

Related, Metallica:

"Enter Sandman," Cardigans-ized, with loads of major-7ths. Convincing!

"Nothing Else Matters," in the major key. Less convincing! But still pretty interesting.

And just because I love em Swedes so much, the Cardigans other, superior Black Sabbath cover.
posted by Zerowensboring at 5:01 PM on September 2, 2014 [1 favorite]

And jeez, i almost forgot about this--"Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" in a major key, but with the pathos ratcheted up. Like naju said, major doesn't necessarily equal happy, nor minor sad.
posted by Zerowensboring at 5:11 PM on September 2, 2014

The cover of Cum On Feel the Noize performed by The Imagined Village isn't key-shifted, and I don't know why. I don't know why anymore.
posted by Spatch at 6:02 PM on September 2, 2014

Cyndi Lauper is God.
posted by newdaddy at 6:04 PM on September 2, 2014

I really like Aztec Camera's acoustic cover of Jump. It seems to shrink David Lee Roth's swagger until he's reduced to just that weird older guy at the bar with the ponytail, trying to compensate for something. Even in the original major key, it's a much sadder song.
posted by jenkinsEar at 6:46 PM on September 2, 2014 [2 favorites]

On the subject of songs that people seem to think are happy but aren't: The Go Gos - Vacation
posted by naju at 7:01 PM on September 2, 2014

Count me in the camp of people who are sick and tired of the "happy/major, sad/minor" baloney. And why is he yodeling so much?
posted by ReeMonster at 7:42 PM on September 2, 2014 [2 favorites]

These versions seem more... natural to me. Like menace is built in, but hiding.

Actually that whole album felt like it was hiding a lot of menace -- or at least something dark behind the poppy sunshine. "Money Changes Everything" -- what a great song (especially for the time) and a great choice for a cover.
posted by blucevalo at 7:52 PM on September 2, 2014

Let me know when the musical mutilations go beyond the trivial. I suggest performing these ballads in 13/8 time signature.

And why is he yodeling so much?

It's a Country & Western version.
posted by charlie don't surf at 9:00 PM on September 2, 2014

I really like Aztec Camera's acoustic cover of Jump

Let me show you an acoustic cover with the same sort of feeling, but with a massive tone of irony that clearly puts this band into the higher realms of postmodernism, when The Donnas perform their own song Take It Off. I wish you could hear the other two songs in that acoustic set but they were taken down, they were really dramatic.

This video has a tragic feel to it. But that may be because the drummer Torry has her wrist in a cast, after having surgery for tendonitis. They did this light acoustic project because she couldn't drum while healing. But there were more surgeries and she basically blew out her arms and shoulders, and is permanently incapacitated, no more drumming ever. Her bandmates feared the worst, but they didn't know how soon she would have to leave the band forever. Now Torry is a Chayes Fellow at Harvard Law School. Holy shit this is like the final scene in SLC Punk.
posted by charlie don't surf at 9:58 PM on September 2, 2014 [1 favorite]