Electronic dance music band The Prodigy are the latest act to attract attention for changing the lyrics to a longstanding hit in recent live shows. They now repeat the opening line “change my pitch up” in place of the song’s title “Smack My Bitch Up”. The song’s been a source of controversy since its release in 1997 – BBC Radio One only played an instrumental version of and it received only limited airplay at all.
Changing song lyrics is an increasingly common phenomenon, although not as recent as headlines might suggest.
The roots of much rock n’ roll and modern pop are in the blues where an oral rather than written tradition frequently saw lyrics amended for different situations – or adapted as songs passed from artist to artist.
