Lyrical Dissonance/Rock

Funk Rock

• And in this same vein, the Red Hot Chili Pipers play The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, ACDC, and other classic rock on bagpipes.
• "Terminus El Dorado", a funk-ish (for Ted Nugent) song about a girl taking Daddy's car out for a spin. Car takes her for a spin. The vocal delivery is downright celebratory, gloating over lines such as "Crows be picking at your flesh!".

Gothic Rock

• Simple law about The Cure: if it sounds cheery, it will almost definitively have some depressive lyrics.
• In an example of inversion, Rasputina makes Creedence Clearwater Revival's peppy song about impending doom "Bad Moon Rising" appropriately dark and foreboding.
• Danielle Dax made a living off this trope. "Jehovah's Precious Stone", a bouncy dance number, had a chorus which included: "Cast aspersions, terrorize the weak/Race relations on a losing streak/Ply the bloated ego of a white supreme".
• While none of Evanescence's music could be called happy, their song "Anywhere" from their Origin album has a distinctly hopeful (if melancholy) sound. At first blush, it's a sweet song about starting a new life with a loved one. And then... That One Line kind of ruins it.

Unlock your heart Drop your guard No one's left to stop you

• • The song itself isn't happy, but that Ominous Latin Chanting at the end of "Whisper" sounds really, really, um...ominous. Especially the one word most likely to be recognized, "maleficum". But the actual translation? "Deliver us from danger, deliver us from evil."
    • Amy Lee is the queen of this trope. "Imaginary" is about a dreamworld filled with "paper flowers" and not wanting to be part of the scary real world. Not that you would know that from the minor key and 'epic' guitar riffs on the Fallen album version of the song
  • They've recently topped themselves again with "The Other Side", which is your classic Grief Song / Obsession Song where the narrator is left devastated and possibly suicidal by the loss a loved one... except she's gone psycho and determinedly waiting for their loved one to come back/to bring them back/join them in death. To reflect the narrator's morbid point of view, the music is, save for a brief piano interlude, catchy, almost upbeat, if not downright seductive. "Awaken and release my loooooove...."
  • "The Change" a music as weapon contrast with it's rather I'm not as strong as you think/I'm disappointed in myself tone of the lyrics..
  • "Never Go Back" is one of their hardest songs ever, also one of their most desperate and grief filled.
  • Pretty much every song off their latest selft-titled albumn. All the songs are despressing. A lot of them have very fast paced beats.
• Jack Off Jill's "Horrible". Keeps this catchy, upbeat tune while singing about a cannibal.
  • Pretty much anything by Jack Off Jill qualifies.
• Just about everything by Rufus Rex, a side project of Creature Feature. "Rise Lazarus Rise" is an electronic waltz about death and reanimation. "Personal Demons" is an upbeat number about descending into madness. "Dead Air" could easily be a radio hit - if it weren't about the end of the world. "Ingenious Forms of Torture" is probably the biggest offender. Although the music is an almost bouncy, catchy rock melody, just guess what the lyrics are about.
  • And it doesn't even let up. "You'll Never Guess," the last song on the first Rufus Rex album, sounds like a cheery, acoustic road song. A cheery, acoustic road song about finding bodies hidden in various places. The opening lines are "You'll never guess / What I found beneath the floorboards in the basement."

Hard Rock

• "Shooting Star" by Bad Company is an up-tempo rock song that tells a story about a rock star's fame, loneliness, and, eventually, suicide. The song may be a tribute to all the real rock musicians who died too young--which doesn't make the tune any less cheerful and does make the lyrics even more tragic.
  • Paul Kossoff, guitarist of Paul Rodgers' last band, Free, died in 1976 of drug addiction. "Shooting Star" might be a heartfelt tribute to him.
• The song "Godzilla" by the Blue Oyster Cult certainly counts. It's got a rather upbeat tune, but the lyrics are about the titular giant monster destroying Tokyo as people flee in terror.
  • "Oh, no! They say he's got to go! Go, go, Godzilla! Oh, no! There goes Tokyo! Go, go, Godzilla!"
• Bon Jovi's "Someday I'll Be Saturday Night": all the characters mentioned within are either desperate, suicidal, abused, or all three, but eventually they will be like a Saturday Night. This could either mean they they will be jubilant and free of oppression (indicated by the bouncy and joyous tune and vocals), or it could mean that they'll be like Saturday Night in terms of it being at the end of the week, all the bad stuff having happened and no more is going to come. These people are essentially looking forward to the sweet release of death!
  • "Always" is a love song with the singer declaring his ever lasting dedication to his one true love. The release video, along with the correct interpretation of the lyrics, makes it perfectly clear that he has been abandoned and is pining for someone he can never have again.
  • "One Wild Night" seems like a description of a great night out partying. Listen carefully, and it turns out that the singer is actually some kind of lecherous predator slipping into a crowd with the express intent of fleecing rubes for their money ("Take 'im for a coupla weeks pay") suggesting sexual favours from their victims' girlfriend in lieu of an unaffordable monetary debt ("If ya lose this roll/ I'll take ya girlfriend home/ Well, alright!"). One could even go so far as to make a link between the lines "Blinded by the moonlight/ Twenty-four hours of midnight/ I stepped into the Twilight Zone" and being rendered blind and mindless by a drug or alcohol induced fugue...
• The Def Leppard album-only song "Gravity" is a great example of this, with rather sinister-sounding lyrics ("I can't sleep at night / The darkness enslaves me")...and it's an upbeat song in a spritely major key. This may be more understandable with the knowledge that the song was originally incarnated as a rather formulaic and forgettable pop-rock piece called "Perfect Girl," as revealed by bootleg recordings of the demo.
• "Get Rid Of That Girl" by The Donnas. It's a fast paced and catchy song about a girl beating up and killing the girlfriend of a boy she likes. The song even ends with the background singers chanting, "Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!"
• "She Hates Me" from Puddle Of Mudd, a pretty upbeat song about disillusionment in a relationship.
• Stone Sour's "Through Glass" provides the listener with a light acoustic rock song with a good vocal melody and little aggression. Of course, the song is actually a scathing lashout on the plastic nature of the world of pop music.
  • Actually, the song's about alcoholism; he's looking at people through the bottom of a drinking glass, hence the title.
• Serj Tankian uses this trope a bit, notably in the song "Lie Lie Lie," which sounds like something you'd hear from a busker at a carnival, but portrays a broken suicide pact between lovers.
• "Castles Made of Sand" by Jimi Hendrix has a lively rock backing for lyrics that are a collection of separate stories about failures — an abusive boyfriend, a promising young man who dies in a war and a crippled girl who commits suicide by drowning.
  • Similarly, his cover of "Hey Joe", a nice psychedelic song about a guy who kills his cheating girlfriend and flees to Mexico.
• "Used to Love Her" by Guns N' Roses. A cheerful, upbeat song about how the singer murdered his girlfriend and buried her in his backyard.
  • Wasn't it about his naggy mother and how he killed her, only to hear her continue to complain?
  • Other songs in the same vein by Guns N' Roses are "Street of Dreams" and "Catcher in the Rye". The former is a up-tempo piano and guitar melody talking about how much he now hates the person he once loved, and the latter is about his insanity in the eyes of others. Shit, a lot of Chinese Democracy can be seen as being way too cheerful and bright for the lyrics they spew.
• "Love Is Only A Feeling" by The Darkness. It sounds like an upbeat song, but it's really the cynical inverse of "I Believe In A Thing Called Love".
  • Except for the fact it sounds like a power ballad, and not upbeat at all.
  • "Growing On Me" is a very upbeat song about love, right? Nope...actually about having an STD.
  • "Holding My Own" is a downbeat song about a break up, right? Nope. Masturbation.
• Andrew WK's song "Get Ready To Die" is an upbeat song about how somebody's going to get murdered. Granted, it's upbeat in a pretty rockin' way, but it's still not what you'd expect given the lyrics.
  • A lot of Andrew W.K. songs use this trope. He often sings like he's annoyed about something, but the lyrics are about fairly mundane things - partying, hot girls, enjoying yourself in various ways.
  • His cover of "Soldiers of Sorrow" is, essentially, a cheery upbeat-sounding rock anthem about a soldier horrified at the fact that he's surrounded by death and only survived his battle by killing people just like him.
• "The Hill" by the Legendary Pink Dots is a wonderfully cheerful little murder ballad.
• "Detroit Rock City" by KISS is an upbeat rock anthem about a fan who was killed in an auto wreck while driving to a concert.
• "Blockbuster" by The Sweet is an extremely cheery song about a young criminal who is proving difficult or impossible to catch. The Lyrical Dissonance is underlined further by the fact that the title is a pun - the thug's name is Buster, so the people are striving to "block Buster".
• The Norwegian hard rock group TNT's song "Desperate Night" is a heavily epic sounding song that's pretty upbeat...about a soldier who basically is suffering from shell shock and is waiting to die "He'll wait for the light". It's considered one of the group's greatest songs ever.
  • A 2000s example "Satellite", one of TNT's more mainstream songs, with a power pop feel to it. The lyrics talk about how material and shallow some people seem to be when rich and famous. Here's the song performed in playback in 2003 Enjoy.
• Alter Bridge's Watch Over You, a softer tune that is frequently played acoustically, has a love ballad feel to most of it while the lyrics essentially boil down to "I'm sick of your crap and leaving you out in the cold".
• There's still no mention of Alice Cooper? Really? His first solo album alone, Welcome to My Nightmare, is built on this trope. A lot of the songs are either rocking ("Devil's Food", "Department of Youth", "Cold Ethyl", "Escape"), swinging ("Welcome to My Nightmare", "Some Folks"), there's a soulful ballad in the form of "Only Women Bleed", and the rest are the dark and creepy songs you expect from Cooper ("Black Widow", "Years Ago", "Steven", "The Awakening"). Other than those last four songs? Yeah, they're rather upbeat. The entire album is about nightmares. Once you realize how the songs are interwoven together, not even "Only Women Bleed" is safe from becoming really creepy. Here's a hint: "Only Women Bleed" and "The Awakening" are related. Yeah.

Indie Rock

• The Killers have the Murder Trilogy, a group of three songs. The first song, called "Leave the Bourbon on the Shelf", sounds fairly cheerful at the beginning, but as you get closer and closer to the end, the lyrics become a bit more eerie. The next song, Midnight Show, sounds like a basic club song, until you listen to the lyrics. They describe how he kills his girlfriend and dumps her body into a lake. Whether the third song, Jenny Was a Friend of Mine, is an aversion or is played straight, depends on the listener.
• The Hush Sound is in love with this concept.
  • "Crawling Towards the Sun" is one of the cutest, most upbeat music songs you'll ever hear before reading the surprisingly pessimistic lyrics.
  • "Like Vines" similarly starts out sounding like a cute and upbeat song about lovers, but the chorus proves otherwise.

I wake up, and I feel alone I was just asleep Right where I belong Inside this sad, sad song

• • "Molasses" is another love song that sounds slightly vague in its subject matter, but the lyrics are certainly darker than the music behind it. And then the bridge of the song gets eerie.
• Think it fits here. Ed Sheeran's The A-team, is light, easy, relaxing sort of music, until you realise the lyrics are about a broke druggie turning to prostituion to get her fix.
• Rilo Kiley's "Silver Lining" is an upbeat, cheerful song. The lyrics are about the singer leaving her boyfriend because she decided that she'll end up happier that way. And according to the music video, this happens during the wedding and the groom drowns himself.

Irish Rock

• The Pogues are occasionally fond of this. "Rake at the Gates of Hell" is an energetic Irish jig featuring a very nasty narrator, and "Fairytale of New York" is a sweet-sounding Christmas song about a bitter couple whose dreams are all dead.

Progressive Rock

• Marillion rather liked doing this. See, for instance, "Cannibal Surf Babe," a happy, upbeat song about a cannibal woman apparently eating her lover, the protagonist. No, really.
• Emerson Lake and Palmer's "Karn Evil 9: First Impression" has a melancholy beginning, but later becomes a cheerful upbeat song about the "greatest show on Earth" — ie, human evil and cruelty.
• "Legend of a Mind" by The Moody Blues is an upbeat soft-rock track — about the infamous psychologist and LSD guru Timothy Leary.
• Kansas' "Song for America" is about how humans have completely destroyed the beauty of America. You wouldn't know by the quick, jolly sound and peppily sung lyrics:

Cross the sea there came a multitude, sailing ships upon the wave Filled with visions of Utopia, and the freedom that they crave Ravage, plunder, see no wonder, rape and kill and tear asunder Chop the forest, plow it under..... Highways scar the mountainsides, buildings to the sky, people all around Houses stand in endless rows, sea to shining sea, people all around So we rule this land, and here we stand upon our paradise, Dreaming of a place, our weary race is ready to arise.

• Jethro Tull's famous song "Aqualung" from the eponymous album has a catchy, upbeat tune, after a catchy, though less-upbeat, introduction. It's about a pedophilic hobo with creepy, raspy breath that sounds like scuba gear. It also happens to be probably their most famous song of all time. Everyone is horrified when they first hear what the lyrics actually are.

Sitting on a park bench Eying little girls with bad intent [lecherous sn****ring]

• • The song directly after it on the same album, "Cross-Eyed Mary", is about a little girl who actively seeks out pedophiles like Aqualung. After a minute-long flute introduction, slides rockily into a growling, proto-metal tune that is possibly the most rock-out-inducing tune in the band's repertoire.

Laughing in the playground Gets no kicks from little boys Would rather make it with a leching grey Or maybe her attention Is drawn by Aqualung Who watches through the railings as they play

• A lot of Pink Floyd's early songs, especially those penned by Syd Barrett, exhibit this trope. Some examples include "Arnold Layne", pretty much all of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, "Corporal Clegg", "Scream Thy Last Scream", "Jugband Blues", "Point Me At The Sky", "Crying Song", "If", "Burning Bridges", "Free Four"...
  • * "Free Four" is musically one of the most upbeat (post-Barrett) songs Pink Floyd has ever written, with lyrics about the horrors of dying in war.
  • The cover album Rebuild the Wall by Luther Wright and the Wrongs. All the content of the original album, but twice as fast and with country accents.
• The song "Friday 13th" by Atomic Rooster is surprisingly catchy to contain lyrics like

No one in the world will love you No one in the world will miss you No one in the world will need you

• A One-Hit Wonder song, "Timothy," is about miners trapped in a cave-in, two of whom eat the third guy (or a mule, if you believe the record company).
  • Songwriter Rupert Holmes has stated that the Timothy of the lyrics — the one who gets eaten — is indeed a human being, not a mule.
• Porcupine Tree's catalog consists almost entirely of dark depressing-sounding songs with dark lyrics, and happy or at least pleasant-sounding songs with dark lyrics (such that when one of the occasional songs with actual happy lyrics comes around, like "Rest Will Flow" it's hard not to look for some dark subtext). There are too many examples of happy or pretty sounding music with depressing lyrics to name them all, but "Mellotron Scratch", "Trains," "Lips of Ashes", "Stranger by the Minute", "Piano Lessons" are all good examples.
  • Bonus points are definitely included for Lips of Ashes. A gentle acoustic song featuring an amazing guitar solo... which is about necrophilia, judging by the lyrics.
  • And also Blackest Eyes, which is a bouncy rock song, about serial killers.
  • A particularly Egregious example is "Meantime", a folksy upbeat song which rather predictably has depressive (albeit stoic) lyrics. However, it contains the line "a poison spreads through * key change to major* fresh air". Lyrical Dissonance at its most subtle?
• "South Side of the Sky" by Yes sounds fairly upbeat at first, until you listen to the lyrics - it's about a group of explorers who freeze to death in Antarctica.
• "Illuminati" by Malice Mizer is a catchy industrial/pop/rock/electronica/hybrid thing that sounds perfectly radio friendly- but if you look at the lyrics (or even watch the video) you will see that the song is about sex, orgasms and possibly cults. It's a great song, but Jesus, it's strange.
• "Breakdown" by The Alan Parsons Project. One of the most upbeat tunes on that album, but the lyric is Exactly What It Says on the Tin - the protagonist is suffering a mental breakdown.
  • "Sooner or Later" is nice and upbeat too, but the lyrics are about breaking off and getting over a dishonest relationship with the person the singer is singing it to.
• Dream Theater's "Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence" does this in multiple movements, particularly the two parts of "About to Crash" and "Solitary Shell" (written about bipolar disorder and autism, respectively).

Psychedelic Rock

• Country Joe and the Fish have the "Feel-like-I'm-fixing-to-die rag" which is an upbeat carnival-style pitch... about the Vietnam War with satirical lyrics to boot. It's considered one of the greatest satirical songs of the '60's.

And it's one, two, three, What are we fighting for? Don't ask me, I don't give a damn, Next stop is Vietnam; And it's five, six, seven, Open up the pearly gates, Well there ain't no time to wonder why Whoopee! we're all gonna die.

• "Tracy Took A Trip" by The Executive is a joyous sounding 60's psychedelic pop song about a failed actress committing suicide by drowning herself. The Beatles inspired horn section and harmony vocals add a lot to the dissonance.
• "Bad Kids" by the Black Lips is an upbeat, catchy song about exactly what it sounds like. Did we mention the lyrics casually mention parental abandonment, dropping out of school, underage drinking, and is set to clips of riot footage?
• The MGMT song "Time to Pretend". If you visit the YouTube page, the comments tend to fall along the lines of "yay drugs!" because the song has lyrics like "I'll move to Paris, shoot some heroin, and fuck with the stars", all while using a harmonic, upbeat melody. However, if you read the rest of the lyrics, you'll notice that the entire song is really a sarcastic, tragic tribute to people who live their lives as if there was nothing more important than feeling good, for example: "There's really nothing, nothing we can do / Love must be forgotten, life can always start up anew" and "We'll choke on our vomit and that will be the end / We were fated to pretend".
  • Also the MGMT song "Kids". It's quite an upbeat sounding melody, but the lyrics are about the sorrow of childhood fading and how depressingly natural it is.

Memories fade like looking through a fogged mirror. Decisions to decisions are made and not bought. But I thought this wouldn't hurt a lot. I guess not.

• • • And don't forget how the chorus points out how pointless childhood is in the end:

Enjoy yourself. Take only what you need from it. A family of trees wanted To be haunted.

• • There's also "Congratulations", a breezy, vaguely tropical-sounding ballad that seems to be about how alienated the band's sudden success has made them feel.
• Also, see the 60s-70s psychedelic band THE MOPS, whose melodies sound groovy, if you don't know what "Goiken muyou" or "Orewo koroshitekure" really mean.

Pub Rock

• Virtually any song written or sung by Elvis Costello, either solo or with The Attractions, qualifies here. Certainly, all of his big hits include some form of lyrical dissonance, from "Alison" and "Radio, Radio" to "Veronica", "Everyday I Write the Book", "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood", and his cover of the Burt Bacharach single, "I'll Never Fall in Love Again." Elvis is the master of lyrical dissonance!
  • Some would argue that both the melody and lyrics of "Alison" are melancholy, though other examples would include "Goon Squad", "Two Little Hitlers", Oliver's Army", "I'm Not Angry" (one of the more obvious examples), and about 75% of the other songs not mentioned thus far on his first five albums.
• "Khe Sahn" is regarded by many Australians as one of our many unofficial anthems. Many blast it at nightclubs and have generally happy connotations associated with it. The lyrics themselves are about a soldier suffering from PTSD. 'How there were no V-Day hero's, in 1973.' All in all it's really not a happy song. ... Though you are unaustralian if you don't know and love it.
  • Another example is "Cheap Wine", which sounds like a badass heavy rock song, but the main character has essentially given up on everything except booze. Admittedly that's a fairly common ideal in Australia and it's kinda hard to tell what the lyrics are at any given moment.

Rock

• Bad Moon Rising by Creedence Clearwater Revival juxtaposes an incredibly upbeat and even comforting melody with lyrics warning of Judgment Day.
• Nina Gordon covering "Straight Outta Compton" as if it were a torch song.
• Tom Waits took "Heigh Ho" (from Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs) and turned it into what one YouTube poster called "the theme tune for midget slave labor."
  • "Table Top Joe" starts out with a relaxed, jazzy piano line. Once the words start, you learn that the eponymous Joe is a circus freak with no body below the waist. Even stranger is the fact that he was a real guy. Although, with a voice like Tom Waits', it may be difficult to trick people into thinking you're just being happy.
• David Bowie loves this trope. Examples include:
  • "Janine" is a poppy little love song, outwardly no different from other early songs of his like "Letter to Hermione" or "An Occasional Dream" — except it's from an Ax Crazy man to a Love Martyr.

Janine, Janine, you'd like to know me well, But I've got things inside my head that even I can't face. Janine, Janine, you'd like to crash my walls, But if you take an axe to me, you'll kill another man, Not me at all.

• • "Young Americans" is a poppy, R&B type tune, with very cynical lyrics about American youth and events.
  • "Bombers" is an incredibly catchy and peppy sounding song about bombs destroying the world. Sample lyrics:

A-bombs, H-bombs, even very small ones Ripped apart the sand Till the stench was just revolting And the sky a greenish tan.

• • And from "Oh! You Pretty Things", a catchy, mellow song about humanity's obsolescence and replacement by a superior species:

Look out my window and what do I see? A hand in the sky reaching down to me All the nightmares came today And it looks as thought they're here to stay... The earth is a bitch We've finished our news Homo sapiens have outgrown their use.

• • "Cygnet Committee" sounds just like any 1960 hippie song...but here's some lyrics.

And I open my eyes to look around And I see a child laid slain on the ground As a love machine lumbers through desolation rows Ploughing down man, woman, listening to its command But not hearing anymore Not hearing anymore Just the shrieks from the old rich

• • A rather nightmarish one is "Running Gun Blues", an upbeat hard rock tune about a former soldier who likes to alleviate his boredom by committing random acts of violence:

It seems the peacefuls stopped the war Left generals squashed and stifled But I'll slip out again tonight 'Cause they haven't taken back my rifle For I promote oblivion And I'll plug a few civilians

• • Tonight sounds like any other trippy pop song... but only because the opening dialogue from Iggy Pop's 1977 original - spoken to a lover dying of a drug overdose - was deliberately cut out from Bowie's version. Depending on who you ask, Bowie didn't want to upset Tina Turner - who duetted with him on the song - with the dialogue, or it was simply made more radio-friendly.
• Several songs from the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds album are beautifully composed Anti Love Songs, particularly "Here Today" ("Well you know I hate to be a downer / But I'm the guy she left before you found her"). Additionally, "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times" is a rather upbeat tune about not fitting in with the rest of the world. Outside that album, there's the song "Help Me Rhonda" which, in a chirpy, catchy style, tells Rhonda that the singer is really wrapped up with this girl who dumped him, but would she like to be his rebound?
  • To chip in another $.02, since "Wendy" is on the same record, it seems like "Wendy left [him] alone," and thus he turned to help from Rhonda. There were owls pooping in his bed, after all.
  • And don't forget their cover of "Sloop John B" on that album, possibly the most upbeat music on the whole album (and from the Beach Boys, that's saying something), with lyrics about a really bad boat trip ("This is the worst trip I've ever been on.")
  • Also "God Only Knows": a beautiful ballad about a man vowing that he will pretend to love a woman, even though he doesn't, for the rest of her life because he's terrified that she'll leave him. And the reason for that terror? Fear of the unknown.
• The Beatles did this with "Maxwell's Silver Hammer", about a nice young man who, halfway through the first stanza, turns out to be a serial killer who clubs people to death with the titular hammer. It's a fun song.
  • The folks at Newgrounds gave us this nifty disturbing disturbing yet nifty video.
  • "Lady Madonna" is an incredibly cheery song...about a family so poor they don't even know how they're going to pay for the food they need.
    • The singer does know how momma is paying the bills. She's turning tricks. And it definitely fits the trope.
  • "Run For Your Life" is a happy, peppy tune whose lyrics are, in essence, "BITCH IMA CUT YOU IF YOU EVER LEAVE ME!"
    • The opening line of "Run For Your Life" ("I'd rather see you dead little girl than to be with another man") is taken verbatim from Elvis Presley's "Baby Let's Play House" (which like other Elvis songs is a cover song). Not only is that song also a peppy rockabilly number, but the rest of the lyrics just focus on the narrator wanting the girl to get back together with him, with no other implied threats, so that one line kind of comes from out of nowhere.
    • Similar in spirit is "You Can't Do That." Although the singer threatens only to dump the girl, his reasoning makes it creepy--"That's the second time I caught you talking to him." That's a reason to end a relationship?
  • The opening lines of the boisterous, horn-driven "Good Morning, Good Morning" are:

"Nothing to do to save his life Call his wife in"

• • The original "Day Tripper" (try listening to the Type O Negative cover, and you'll see).

"Got a good reason For taking the easy way out Got a good reason For taking the easy way out, yeah..."

• • "Eleanor Rigby" — this song has been done in so many musical moods that some of them must be technically wrong.
    • The original, however, is NOT an example of this trope as it's a depressing song with equally downbeat music to go with it.
  • "Misery" is a cheerful, bouncy song about a guy who's deeply depressed because his girlfriend dumped him.
  • "I'll Follow the Sun" is a break-up song set to a sweet, upbeat melody. "Someday you'll know I was the one..."
  • "I Don't Want to Spoil the Party" is another one about a guy who's just been dumped, but this one has been drinking and is now out looking for his ex to tell her that he still loves her.
  • "Help!" was written by John Lennon as a genuine cry for help, but was performed as a jaunty, up-tempo number for the group's film of the same title. Deep Purple later covered the song in a more somber style, which Lennon described as being exactly how it should have been done.
    • The song "I'm a Loser" (with a similar subject matter but dealing more with lost love) can also fall under this category. ("I'm a loser / And I've lost someone that's near to me / I'm a loser / And I'm not what I appear to be.)
  • The third verse of "Getting Better", a cheery pop-rock tune, is about being "cruel to my woman". Also, in the chorus, the line "I have to admit, it's getting better" is followed by "Can't get no worse".
    • The full line is actually "I used to be cruel to my woman," and the song seems to be about how at one point the narrator was an awful person, but lately he's transitioning into a better person.
      • It was stated in an interview that this was just a classic Lennon cynicism; he was too contrarian to resist inserting that into an otherwise-optimistic lyric. One of 10cc's Beatlesque tendencies was to use this kind of couplet.
      • Cheap Trick as well, with the opening lines of "Surrender" being only one example of many: "Mother told me...I'd meet girls like you" sounds sweet, but is followed by "She also told me stay away, you never know what you'll catch".
  • The Ringo songs "What Goes On" and "Don't Pass Me By" are written in his preferred peppy, almost country style. The former is about a man who goes completely unnoticed by the woman he loves. The latter includes the line "You were in a car crash, and you lost your hair."
    • Since he thought she had stood him up (passed him by) and was worrying about what had happened to her, and that he was happy to discover that she was on her way, virtually unharmed (it says she "would be late, about an hour or two"). Having seen someone who had been through similar circumstances, the tune is very appropriate.
  • "Piggies" seems to imply that the smaller piggies get slaughtered and eaten by the bigger piggies.
    • Made creepier by Charles Manson's misinterpretation.
  • "Norwegian Wood" is set to a trance-inducing 3/4 waltz with a sitar in the background, in a very laid-back manner. The lyrics are about the narrator burning down his lover's wooden house because she left him.
    • It's worse than that. She led him on and then didn't put out. That's it.
    • Word of God has it as an attempt to write about an extramarital affair without his wife figuring it out. Not that authors don't lie, of course, but that's what he said.
  • "I'm Looking Through You," a poppy upbeat little number about basically writing off an ex's existence. "You're thinking of me / The same old way / You were above me / But not today / The only difference is you're down there / I'm looking through you, and you're nowhere"
  • "Helter Skelter". Who'd guess that what is arguably the first proper heavy metal song would be about a CARNIVAL SLIDE?
  • "Ticket to Ride": According to Lennon, Rhyde is the location of a home for unwed mothers.
• Blacktop Manhattan's "Hollywise". The first verse is about a heroin addict whose "kids have all turned their backs", the second is about an alcoholic man Driven to Suicide after losing his money in a market crash and his wife walking out on him.
• The Fine Print has one of these, "1995 Penny", which is, in the lead singer's words: "a bouncy, poppy song with lyrics that concern blind acceptance of abuse, sexual harassment, and complicity in one's own annihilation."
• George Harrison's "All Those Years Ago" is happy and poppy, but its lyrics are bittersweet, nostalgic lyrics about how much the world will miss the recently-murdered John Lennon.
  • Another song of his, the slightly-less-well-known "When We Was Fab," done several years later, is very similar in nature.
• Most Billy Joel songs are happy, with the words being horrible. A good example would be "Moving Out (Anthony's Song)", about wasting life working hard to obtain things they cannot enjoy. "You can pay Uncle Sam with the overtime/ Is that all you get for your money?"
  • "Miami 2017" is an upbeat, exciting rock song about, apparently, some kind of apocalyptic event destroying New York City.
  • "All for Leyna" is another upbeat, exuberant track about a teenager pining away for a girl he hooked up with who never wants to see him again.
  • And then there's "Allentown", a rather peppy little number in which the narrator talks about how the place is full of crushed dreams and dying factories. Depending on your interpretation of the lyrics, the last verse possibly ends with the narrator either dying or killing himself.

Well, I'm living here in Allentown And it's hard to keep a good man down But I won't be getting up today.

• • • This, for the record, is not that accurate.
  • "The Entertainer", about the frustrations of being an artist and having to sell out in order to have any sort of success.
  • "She's Always A Woman" has a pleasant, lilting melody. It seems to be about a type-A Tsundere.
• "Moonlight Drive" by The Doors sounds like a nice, upbeat love song - and most of the lines are indeed in the Intercourse with You category - until you get to the very end, where it turns out the song is about drowning your lover.
• Elton John has written a few of these by putting dissonant music with the lyrics given him. "Saturday Night's All Right for Fighting," for instance, has an upbeat melody that dares you to sing along, but is about someone who is in a dead-end life and knows it.
  • And "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" has lyrics of defiance, of choosing to walk out on a Svengali. But musically, it's one of the saddest songs on record. And the video includes a clip of the song being performed in The Muppet Show... Word of God says it has to do with Bernie being tired of the rock star lifestyle, the rich people he and Elton encountered who made their lives miserable (including the rich publishers who wanted bubblegum hits from them in their early years, and pickle heiress portrayed in "Someone Saved My Life Tonight") and the big city, and preferring the simpler life in the country, where he grew up. "Mongrels who ain't got a penny, sniffing for tidbits like you on the ground" refers to the droppings the heiress' dogs left behind constantly.
  • Bernie Taupin wrote the lyrics to "Since God Invented Girls" expecting it to be an upbeat rock song full of macho swagger; instead the song ended up being an ethereal ballad.
  • "I Think I'm Going to Kill Myself" has a tap-dance solo in it. The title alone is enough to count as Lyrical Dissonance, but as the song goes on you realize that, more than just suicide, it's about teenage suicide.
  • "Crocodile Rock", set to an organ-driven upbeat bubblegum rock tune with "la la la la la" refrain, is about a man reminiscing about his happy teenage life, dancing to rock 'n' roll with his beautiful girlfriend, driving an "old gold Chevy" and "having a place of (his) own". Suddenly, the girl dumps him for "some foreign guy", "rock just died" on him, he gets older and all he has to cling to are his memories.
• "Who Can It Be Now" by Men at Work. A rather bouncy, jazzy number with surprisingly dark lyrics about a person so paranoid he views any attempt at social contact as stalking:

Who can it be knocking at my door? Make no sound, tip-toe across the floor If he hears, he'll knock all day. I'll be trapped, and here I'll have to stay I've done no harm, I keep to myself There's nothing wrong with my state of mental health

• • Word of God says it's just inspired by being hounded by debt collectors, but even then it's a pretty upbeat-sounding song for such subject matter.
• "Married with Children" by Oasis sounds like a carefree acoustic number, which is actually about how much the singer despises the person he is now stuck with for the rest of his life.
  • Of course, that title should be an indicator.
• Ok Go's song "Don't Ask Me" is another up-beat pop rock song about a break-up. "Don't be so damn begine/and don't waste my fucking time."
• "Every Breath You Take" written by Sting, performed by The Police, is often taken as a love song, but the lyrics are about a scorned man's stalker-like obsession with his ex. It's truly disturbing how many couples dance to this song at their wedding receptions.
  • Which has not gone unnoticed by its author. "People tell me 'Oh, we got married to "Every Breath You Take"'. Good luck."
  • Heck, it ended up in Wii Music.
  • P-Diddy's "I'll Be Missing You" is a lyrically dissonant tribute to the late Notorious BIG that samples EBYT's bassline. Sunny upbeat melody, dark lyrics.
  • Likewise, "Don't Stand So Close to Me" is about an affair between a teacher and his student. Most people get that one, however, due to a Lolita Shout-Out in one verse. ("Just like the/Old man in/That book by Nabokov".) This one's even more disturbing when you recall that songwriter Sting was a kindergarten teacher before hitting it big with the Police.
    • • Glee caught this and did a fairy up-beat mash-up of that song with "Young Girl". The lyrcal dissonance went un-noticed by both Rachel and Emma who missed the entire point of the mash-up.
    • The music video, however, shows a girl who appears to be fully grown and was probably meant to be a teenager.
    • Also if its a kindergartner then the teacher is 10 as it is stated that the girl is half his age.
  • "La Belle Dame Sans Regret" (The Beautiful Woman with No Regrets, a reference to "La belle dame sans merci," a poem by John Keats) sounds like Caribbean-flavored bossa nova, the kind of stuff you'd hear at a poolside bar in Key West. Translate the lyrics, though, and it's about a woman who basically gets off on abusing the men who are entranced by her beauty, as sung by her current victim.
    • The origin of that song is explained here. (Ctrl+ F is your friend.) It's based in mythology.
    • Coincidentally, La Belle Dame Sans Merci is a well-known trope of dark romantic (mostly french, thus the name) literature. Strong sadomasochistic and mystical overtones included.
  • "Can't Stand Losing You" is catchy and cheerful-- and about a guy who's planning to commit spiteful suicide after a breakup. The Subdued Section near the middle drops the dissonance for a bit, and makes the verse that much more powerful.
  • Gee, the fun little ditty "De Do Do Do De Da Da Da" contains the lyrics "Their logic ties you up and rapes you." Crikey.
  • "Message in a Bottle" is another song that sounds catchy, but is about a castaway who fears the prospect of being alone.
• Queen's song "I Want To Break Free." Good beat, upbeat melody ... then we get to the lyrics, which describe coming out of the closet and leaving your heterosexual lover, even though "I can't get over the way you [the dumpee] love me like you do." Supposedly this was written by John Deacon when he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
  • "'39" : The music is filk (a modern piece in folk style) — a genre closely related to and occasionally overlapping with jug band music — where the lyrics are, upon closer inspection, about astronauts going on what is to them a year-long trip only to return home to discover that thanks to the Time Dilation effect one hundred years have passed on Earth. The use of such an intentionally low tech genre of music with space travel is probably part of why many people miss the clues in the lyrics.
  • Speaking of Queen, there's "Somebody to Love". The music is an upbeat, sweeping rock opera...about a man so lonely that he can barely get through his day without suffering and is begging for someone to love him.
  • There's more... like "Tie Your Mother Down": frustrated lyrics advocating extreme measures to avoid family interference with a date, sung in big massed choruses to an incredibly upbeat guitar riff.
  • Then there's "Who Needs You" which is about breaking up with someone who is a 'spoilt thing", with a catchy, upbeat tune.
  • And yet even more from Queen: "Don't Try Suicide". It's a swinging jazz tune with a cheery refrain all about the pointlessness of suicide.
  • "Keep Yourself Alive". Same theme in hard rock guise.
  • "Put Out The Fire", a cheery pop-rock tune... and the lyrics are told from the perspective of a man who used his gun against everyone he had a problem with, including his unfaithful lover and his neighbor she was having an affair with.
  • "Bohemian Rhapsody". Mama, I have killed a man... ...with an incredibly beautiful melody.
  • "One Vision" has to count, because it's performed like it's about something completely epic... right until the last line, when you find out it's about someone deciding what to eat, and that they'll have the fried chicken, if you don't mind.
  • "Under Pressure" is an incredibly upbeat and cheery song with lyrics such as "It's the terror of knowing what this world is about/Watching some good friends scream 'let me out'".
  • "Another One Bites the Dust". At first it appears like a lovers' quarrel, but it is about a homosexual lovers' quarrel.
• The structure of Skunk Anansie's "Glorious Pop Song" sounds like just what the title suggets — Complete with clapping parts and "nanana"'s... And the chorus goes "You're still a fucker/ You're still a fucker/ You're still a fucker/ To me". And that's not even indicating half the anger and bitterness of the rest of the lyrics.* Several songs by Sparks fall into this category, notably "Here in Heaven", which is sung from the point of view of the successful half of a broken suicide pact.
  • Also of note is their 1974 single "Something For The Girl With Everything", a deceptively frothy and upbeat glam rock song which is actually about being blackmailed.
• Bruce Springsteen often employs this.
  • "Born in the USA" sounds like it should be about how great being a U.S. citizen is... but it's about a man who's been beat down all his life, gets sent off to Vietnam, loses his brother (whose death also crushes a Vietnamese woman he was seeing), and ends up unemployable when he gets back. Some people who should have known better (George Will and Ronald Reagan among them) apparently didn't bother to listen to the rest of the song before talking about it.
  • Similarly, "Born to Run" is all about how horrible New Jersey is and how badly Springsteen wanted to get out of there as a kid. Naturally, it's been nominated as New Jersey's official state song by politicians who haven't listened too closely to it.
  • Then there's "Glory Days", an energetic, high-tempo rocker about.. getting older and realizing the best part of life has passed you by, leaving you nothing to do but reminisce while you wait to die.
  • There's also "Lonesome Day," which sounds anthemic and badass, but the lyrics are more a Survival Mantra for 9/11 widows and widowers.
  • Don't forget "Hungry Heart". It sounds like a nice, upbeat 50s-style tune, but the lyrics are about a guy who got married, had kids, and then ran away from his family because he stopped being in love with his wife.
  • "Youngstown". Sweet Jenny, of which the protagonist sings, is not his wife or girlfriend. It is the Youngstown Steel and Tube Co blast furnace named Jeannette, which was taken out of blast in 1979.
  • "Working On a Highway". It is not about a dream summer job outdoors, but of forced labour as a prisoner.
  • "Livin' In The Future." Quite up-tempo and the saxophone solo has a lot of swing to it, but the song is about the government's abuse of Americans' civil liberties.
  • "Death To My Hometown" sounds like an upbeat folk song but, as the title suggests, the lyrics describe the destruction of a small town by rapacious corporate activity.
  • "We Take Care of Our Own" appears to be a raucously upbeat song about how much Americans care for one another, but is actually about how, despite our good intentions and chest-pounding about how great it is to be American, we really don't take care of our own.
• "Photograph," as sung by Ringo Starr, has lyrics about losing a loved one forever, but is performed almost cheerfully and in such a way as to encourage singing along, complete with dramatic string crescendo at the end.
• Stereophonics do this a lot — most effectively in "Local Boy In The Photograph" — an uptempo rock song... about the anniversary of a friend's death, who committed suicide by standing in the path of a train. Ouch.
  • Also with "Innocent", an upbeat, happy sounding song about how a girl called Jenny gets drunk and high one night and possibly accidentally kills herself.
• Sting's "Brand New Day" is a bright, shiny, upbeat song about getting caught up in memories of an ex from years ago, bumping into them in the street that same day, and trying (possibly succeeding) to rekindle that romance. Naturally, it's the current title song of The Early Show and is constantly used in commercials for The Next Big Thing.
  • It was also used in a promotional video for Compaq not long before the HP merger. "I'll sell the stock, we'll spend all the money" indeed.

I'm a train and you're the station, I'm the flagpole to your nation.

• • Sting's "Love is Stronger than Justice" sounds like it's about The Power of Love, and the chorus leans that way too - but in the verses you're treated to vigilantism, polygamy, and fratricide. (Specifically, the seven brothers fight some bandits in return for brides, but there's only one girl for them to marry; they all marry her, then the narrator murders the other six)
    • Of course, the fact that the song is firmly in Sarcasm Mode is made clear in the chorus. Sting has some odd lyrics, but "love is a big fat river?" Seriously, Gordon?
• Venerable English songwriter Richard Thompson has done this on occasion. The best example is probably "Read About Love," an innocent-seeming upbeat dance tune with lyrics about a little boy who learns what "making love" is from magazines because his father won't talk to him about it; he ends up raping a girl because he thinks it's "supposed to feel nice" and doesn't know any better.
  • His song "Bad Monkey" on his Sweet Warrior album is a ridiculously catchy song about drug addiction.
  • And there's "Shane and Dixie", a peppy, dancable tune about the (unsuccessful) murder/suicide of the eponymous bank-robbing couple.
  • "Feel So Good". An upbeat song that starts with the line "I feel so good I'm gonna break somebody's heart tonight"....
• "Jenny (867-5309)" by Tommy Tutone is a catchy tune about a guy who gets a (presumed to be loose) girl's phone number off the wall of a public toilet and plans on calling (or stalking) her. Subverted in Zayra Alvarez's cover on Rockstar: Supernova, where she made the creepiness explicit, bringing the performance into the headspace of the lyrics.
• "Band On The Run" by Wings is a perky, cheerful song... about a rock band who were imprisoned for some unstated reason (though one verse implies that the reason might be robbery) and have escaped. It's thus also an example of Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
• Warren Zevon liked to use this. Examples are "Excitable Boy", an upbeat song with electric guitar solos that tells the story of a mad killer who is apparently "just an excitable boy", and "Werewolves of London", a bright little tune about, well, werewolves. Not to mention "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner", which about...Roland...the...you get the idea.
  • And Mr. Bad example, a bouncy almost carnival tune about a man who "opened up an agency somewhere down the line/To hire aboriginals to work the opal mines/But I attached their wages and took a whopping cut/And whisked away their workman's comp and pauperized the lot" This is not the only horrible thing the main character does.
• U2 usually avoids this, but their song "A Day Without Me" is a rather cheery song about someone contemplating suicide.
• The Grateful Dead's "Touch of Grey" is pretty much about how we have to deal with all the depressing crap in our lives, but is set to a cheery, light tune.
• The Genesis song "Snowbound" is a gorgeously orchestrated song about hiding a dismembered body in a snowman.

Here, in a ball that they made, From the snow on the ground See it rolling away, wild eyes to the sky. They'll never, never know...

• • "Eleventh Earl of Mar" is another example, sad lyrics set to some very upbeat music.
• "Hotel California" is a soothing rock ballad that, depending on how you interpret it, may be either about drug addiction, Hell, or prostitution.
  • Actually, the song is about celebrity and the hell it turns into. So, pretty dark. Joe Walsh seems to have liked this - "Life's Been Good" sounds cheerful and peppy, but is about the same thing as Hotel California, except MORE sardonic and bitter.
• Uncle Kracker's "Follow Me" doesn't seem to have any meaning at first, but it's actually about the singer having an affair with a married woman.
  • "Swim through your veins/like a fish in the sea"? It's about heroin.
    • "I'm not worried 'bout the ring you wear, as long as no one knows, then nobody can care. I'm not the reason that you go astray..." Yeah, it's an affair.
• Iggy Pop's "Lust For Life" — a bouncy, happy tune about Iggy's life as a hard-living heroin addict. And going on the occasional Royal Caribbean Cruise, apparently.
• "Sunny Came Home" by Shawn Colvin tells the story of Sunny, who makes a few "repairs" to her gas stove before lighting a match.
• 10cc's "Rubber Bullets" is a happy, peppy, upbeat tune about a prison riot.
  • 10cc are extremely fond of this trope; "The Things We Do for Love" is a bouncy song about breakups, "You've Got a Cold" is set to what is possibly the happiest music of any of their songs and "Dreadlock Holiday" is a catchy tune about a British tourist attempting to convince a group of Jamaican thugs not to mug him.
  • They also like self-subverting couplets, as in "I'm Not In Love":

"I keep your picture on the wall, It hides a nasty stain that's lying there"

• Bob Dylan uses this from time to time. The most famous instance, however, is "Like a Rolling Stone," in which happy (or at least happy-ish) and bright music contrasts with Dylan's incredibly cynical tirade against a girl who finds herself on the street after living a life of privilege. Please note that this is often considered the best rock song of all time.
  • And there is also "Tangled Up in Blue", which is one of his happiest, catchiest tunes, although the lyrics tell the story of a breakup.
  • Part of the reason for this might be that people often have a difficult time understanding a damn thing Dylan says.
• Meat Loaf's "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" seems at first to be a love story (slightly drawn out and oddly described, but never mind) but changes fairly suddenly from the singer promising to "love you to the end of time" to regretting that promise ("so now I'm praying for the end of time...").
  • Specifically, it's about a teenage boy cajoling his girl to have sex with him, with her only promising to do so if he stays with her forever. The last verse, quite upbeat and high tempo, is the two some time later realizing what a mistake that was.
• Paul McCartney and Wings' "Live and Let Die" (covered by Guns N' Roses) is pretty happy, if aggressive, and to be fair, it's sparse on the lyrics, but what is there is chastising a naive listener for caring about other people.
  • But it fits the person for whom the song was written for...
• The Rolling Stones loved doing this. To cite two notorious examples:
  • "Sympathy For The Devil" is an erudite, brooding meditation of the dark side of human nature, using 2,000 years of human history as a backdrop...set to a fun uptempo samba beat, complete with an infectious "woo woo" chant.
  • "Brown Sugar" is a rousing rocker about, um, sexual exploitation of slaves in the pre-Civil War South.
  • "Jumping Jack Flash" is about how the singer's life was terrible, such as losing his parents and instead being raised by "a toothless bearded hag", but that it's "all right now". Now listen to it in Elite Beat Agents.
    • Although given that the song is played in a moment where all hope seems lost before everything gets better.....
• Pearl Jam's done this a couple times:
  • "Even Flow" is a very intense-sounding song...about life through the eyes of a homeless person, who sleeps on the streets ("Freezing / Rests his head on a pillow made of concrete"), is illiterate (Even / Looking through the paper though he doesn't know how to read) and possibly mentally ill, as he "looks insane" when he smiles and struggles to keep coherent thoughts (Even Flow / Thoughts arrive like butterflies / He don't know / So he chases them away)
  • "Alive" sounds like a rousing anthem about life but is about a mother falling in love with her son, who looks just like his dead father, and sexually abusing him.
    • Subverted: Word of God states that the positive fan response has changed the meaning of the song into a rousing anthem about life.
  • "Jeremy" comes off as a fairly upbeat song but is about a kid who killed himself in front of his high school English class (made even more disturbing by the video for it).
  • "Better Man", another song grievously misinterpreted by its listeners (as a love song), is actually a song about abusive relationships from the woman's point of view, and Eddie Vedder himself said it's "dedicated to the bastard that married my Momma".
  • And, in an inversion, "Spin the Black Circle" sounds very dark and the vocals in it border on screaming at parts, but it's actually about vinyl records.
    • The first few lines of that song also seem specifically written to mislead the listener into thinking it's going to be about heroin ("See this needle, see my hand, drop-drop-droppin' it down, oh so gently")
  • "Glorified G", one of their peppiest sounding songs, sung from the point of view of a gun nut.
• "Crash Into Me" by Dave Matthews Band. It sounds like a beautiful, southern-style acoustic love song, but according to Dave Matthews the narrator is either a peeping Tom, a fifteen-year old boy having a sexual fantasy, or both.
  • There's also "So Damn Lucky", an upbeat song about a car crash after getting drunk at the bar.
• Many of Jack White's songs use this, but of special note is the song off of the Raconteur's second album, "Carolina Drama". A relatively upbeat bluegrassy tune about parental abandonment, murder (specifically patricide). Of course this is in keeping with the majority of bluegrass and old timey tunes, with upbeat fiddles and bangos about horrible, horrible things.
  • The White Stripes song "Apple Blossom" is a subtle example. The narrator figure sounds like a Dogged Nice Guy assuring his beloved that while other guys don't really care for her, he's different and will always take care of her. Uh-huh.
• Electric Light Orchestra, especially in the eighties, has several of songs with upbeat music and depressing lyrics. Some examples include:
  • "Calling America", about a guy whose girlfriend has gone to America and gave him a fake number, but he calls it anyway, hoping that she'll pick up.
  • "Four Little Diamonds", which is about a man hunting down his ex because she scammed him out of money and jewelry.
• "White Punks On Dope" by The Tubes. Probably the most upbeat song to contain the line "I'll hang myself when I get enough rope".
  • There's also "Mr. Hate", which has a neurotic guy kill his family and then go on the run from the cops.
• Frank Zappa's "Bobby Brown Goes Down" is a good example of this. Basically a cheerful song... about a preppy kinda jerk guy's descent into gay sexual activities. "With a spindle up my butt till it makes me scream!"
  • Watch out where the huskies go, and don't you eat that yellow snow!
• "Fake" by The Frames is a typical rock song, but the lyrics are about a guy whose ex repeatedly tries to get him to forget she ever existed, and he continues to point out how bad her new partner is.
  • The video adds a whole new layer of dissonance.
• Canadian musician Matthew Good has a few songs like this: "Moon Over Marin" (a cover of a Dead Kennedy's song) is a slow, somewhat dreamy kind of song about a guy who can't walk on the beach outside his house without a gasmask and hazard suit because it's so polluted. "Silent Army in the Trees" is a driving rock song about a military man holding his friends and watching them bleed, then getting home and still being haunted by the horrors of war. "Vancouver National Anthem" is, contrary to the title and upbeat music, is about how Vancouver is segregated between the rich and the poor, and everyone dies downtown.
• Horror punk (Exactly What It Says on the Tin) incorporates doo-wop and rockabilly influences for this effect. Trope Makers The Misfits, whose lyrics have a tendency to Cross The Line Twice, have smoother melodies than their Hardcore Punk peers.
  • The Misfits' "Skulls" is already a very poppy song considering the subject matter, but The Lemonheads recorded a slowed down, acoustic cover, where Evan Dando delivers lines like "Demon I am and face I peel / To see your skin turned inside out" like he's singing a romantic ballad.
• Avenged Sevenfold's "A Little Piece of Heaven" is a jazzy, upbeat song with a vaguely "cicusy"/ska feel, which is about a man murdering his girlfriend because he's worried about losing her, and having sex with her corpse. Apparently, she's a better lay dead than alive. Then it gets worse.

Eyes over easy, eat it, eat it, eat it!

• "Fats" by Thin Lizzy, a jouncy, swing-ish Murder Ballad about a jazz saxophonist. The Renegade album also includes the happy, Latin-tinged "Mexican Blood", which is last seen exiting the song's Spicy Latina protagonist.
• "Till the Day That I Die" by Garbage. Loud, obnoxious dance tracks typically have shallow, feel-good, Intercourse with You lyrics; but this has deep, bitter, sarcastic, pointed lyrics about the breakup of Shirley Manson's marriage.
• Upbeat songs with dark lyrics is one of the hallmarks of Steely Dan's music:
  • "Everyone's Gone to the Movies" is a peppy, upbeat song with marimba-percussion. The lyrics are about a guy who shows porn movies to kids he lures into his house.
  • "Turn That Heartbeat Over Again" is about a botched bank heist.
  • "Hey Nineteen" is about a failing May-December Romance.
    • And the best part? The end makes it look like the singer has decided to drug his younger lover with tequila and cocaine for...uh....nefarious ends.

The Cuervo Gold The fine Colombian Make tonight a wonderful thing

• • "My Old School" is about how much Donald Fagen and Walter Becker hate their alma mater Bard College for being complicit in a drug raid by sheriff's deputies of the college's dorms in 1969, which resulted in 50 students (including Fagen and Becker) being arrested with little to no evidence.
• Don Henley's "Not Enough Love in the World" qualifies. The tune is that of a breezy, jazz- or soul-influenced love song. The lyrical content concerns a relationship fizzling because neither partner knows how to make the other happy (which, by the standards of most other songs on this page, seems relatively mild).
• Modern English's "Melt With You" is about a couple having sex during a nuclear war. When the protagonist says to his girlfriend, "melt with you", he means it LITERALLY.
  • I call Urban Myth on that. It's about the feeling of oneness during sex.
• "The Enemies" by Everything Else is one of their more upbeat sounding songs. It features the line "...And we murder each other..."
• The Cars, "Just What I Needed":

I guess you're just what I needed (just what I needed) I needed someone to feed I guess you're just what I needed (just what I needed) I needed someone to bleed

• • "You're All I've Got Tonight" is about a One Night Stand.

Rock and Roll

• An accidental (and possibly apocryphal) example involving Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog." The scores delivered to the musicians of the Ed Sullivan Show were instrumental, and somehow, the conductor thought the song was a romantic ballad. There wasn't enough time to correct the error, so Elvis performed it as a romantic ballad...sung to a stuffed basset hound.
• Chris Isaak's "I Believe" is about a guy who broke up with his girl, and is now kind of sad about it. (So what else is new.) The tune, however, is only one step removed from "I'm Walkin' on Sunshine".
• "Car Crash/Dead Lover" was practically a genre of its own in the 50s and 60s, many examples of which are set to melodies that are actually quite cheerful. "Last Kiss", "Tell Laura I Love Her", "Dead Man's Curve"...
• "Runaway" by Del Shannon; a bright, upbeat song (featuring an early synthesizer, no less), but the lyrics are about the protagonist's girlfriend dumping him.

Roots Rock

• "Bad Moon Rising", by Creedence Clearwater Revival, is a rather famous example. It's a peppy, upbeat little ditty that purports to prophesy Armageddon from portents in the sky.
  • John Fogerty seems to like the whole thing as "Vanz Kant Danz" off "Centerfield" has an upbeat backing to lyrics that are rather unflattering to Saul Zaentz, owner of Fantasy Records, who sued John Fogerty for plagarising himelf. The title was originally "Zanz Kant Danz," but Zaentz's lawsuit forced Fogerty to recut it.

Soft Rock

• A hallmark of Randy Newman's songs. "Sail Away" for example, is a rousing paean to America, meant to be sung by a slave trader. And then there's "Political Science", which lists the benefits of solving all America's problems with mass nuclear genocide.
• There's also a song from Peter Schilling (famous for his One-Hit Wonder "Major Tom") called "Let's Play USA" that is a peppy, upbeat rock song about Eagle Land Type 2, and lodged firmly in Sarcasm Mode.

How I love the life I lead Cannot think and cannot read Watch our values slip away Play the game of USA!

• • He also came up with a somg called "Lifetime Guarantee," that sounds like a breezy vacation tune...but is about a Crap Saccharine World so synthetic and false, it makes The Truman Show look genuine.

Synthrock

• The Birthday Massacre's "Looking Glass", which is a cheery and upbeat song about being betrayed by someone you love.
  • Similarly, their song "Happy Birthday" is a bright number about - you guessed it - a birthday massacre, containing lyrics like: I think my friend said, "Stick it in the back of her head"/I think my friend said, "Two of them are sisters"/"I'm a murder tramp, birthday boy," I think I said/"I'm gonna bash them in, bash them in," I think he said.
  • "Blue" swings wildly around, music-wise- it begins with heavy bass and some strange high notes, before turning into a bright song with Chibi singing sweetly about how she appears to have been stood up by someone... until the song moves into the chorus and she starts the demonic growling.
  • "Video Kid" sounds sweet, but it appears to be sung by a woman who uses men, breaks their hearts and ditches them.
  • And then there's "Kill The Lights", which is about how people never really live Happily Ever After, but that it's important that they pretend to because the truth would drive them to suicide.
    • It's a breakup song.
  • And "Nevermind", which is a catchy dance song about an intoxicated party girl being raped.
  • "To Die For" is an epic song that is about a relationship that's falling apart.
  • And "Under The Stairs", a sweet song which is about someone who has been abused and is planning to get revenge on their tormentor, possibly by committing suicide.
  • The song "Goodnight" may also fall under this trope. It sounds fairly upbeat while having negative-sounding lyrics.
  • "Play Dead" sounds like the narrator is attempting to convince someone to run away with her. All good and fine, until she gets to the line 'I'll cast you a spell/a magic where everyone plays dead forever/ and after tonight/ they'll never remind you.' Which doesn't sound so good.
  • "Falling Down" appears to be about an abusive ex partner/ ex friend and their various faults.
  • "Red Stars" sounds quite rockish, and is about stealing someone else's work and passing it off as your own (the chorus) while the verses are a lament about how education today is going to hell.
  • "Horror Show" sounds vaguely peppy, but it's about self-absorbed teenagers who "have everything" but still insist on being miserable, stating that "they're sick and all alone," with the singer lamenting that "they will never look the same."
  • Similarly, "Violet" turns out to be about dysfunctional, codependent relationships. Needless to say, the music is a catchy dance tune.
  • "Always" is a bright little tune that also happens to be a breakup song.
  • "Shallow Grave" is a happy, poppy song, which may possibly be about a group of friends killing or attempting to kill a girl who's annoyed them.
  • "Two Hearts" is a catchy rock song about an abusive relationship ("Two hearts beating, one beats the other/while the other just looks away").