Pop songs with melodies from classical music

I wandered into a demo room at Axpona a couple of years ago and the source version of this was playing. I swear, it was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever heard. And as I’m sitting there I keep saying to myself, where do I know this from? Took me several hours to tie it together with the Renaissance version.

 

Based on music by Ludwig van Beethoven.


Korni Grupa Etida (from posthumuos double LP Mrtvo more, 1975)

 

The Mindbenders - "Groovy Kind Of Love" based on Clementi's "Sonatina Op. 36 #5 Rondo:

 

Quigley - The Truth's Out Darling / Mahler's Fifth

 

Lou Christie's "Rhapsody In The Rain" based on Tchaikovsky's "Romeo & Juliet":

 

Love Sculpture also covered Bizet's "Farandole":

 

Dan Fogelberg - Same Old Lang Syne.

Based on Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture.

 

"I Believe in Father Christmas" by Greg Lake uses a different part of the same work.

 

The Fifth Estate's version of "Ding! Dong! The Witch Is Dead" incorporates "La Bouree" from Michael Praetorius's Dances from Terpsichore.



A performance of the original:

Michael Praetorius: Dances from Terpsichore, La Bourée; Voices of Music 4K UHD

 

Deodato

Also Sprach Zarathustra

 

Beggars Opera used a bunch of classical pieces on their first album Act One. These include Poet and Peasant and Light Cavalry by Franz von Suppe, Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt and George Frideric Handel's Passacaglia Suite in G-minor. Great band, BTW.

 

didnt Lady Lynda from The Beach Boys lift a classical riff?

 

Margo Guryan "Someone I Know" which incorporates Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man Desiring"

 

The intro is the intro from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite. After that, I don't know ...

 

Miguel Ríos "A Song of Joy" based on Beethoven's ninth symphony. (#14 Billboard 100 in 1970).

 

Thanks John!

 

Vitamin C - "Graduation (Friends Forever)"

Another Pachelbel's Canon.

 

Rufus Wainwright -- Oh What A World (borrows from Ravel's Bolero)

 

“Night On Disco Mountain” From Saturday Night Fever

 

More Beethoven, and I think this is where I first heard that famous tune!

 

Manfred Mann's Earth Band - Joybringer based on "Jupiter" from Holst The Planets

 

And one I didn't know until I read it somewhere (probably a thread similar to this one).

First Class - Beach Baby



About 3 minutes in there's a section in the long version based on the last movement of Sibelius' Fifth Symphony.

 

Ravel

 

Brahms

 

Part of absolutely free by the mothers of invention has one of Holts planet suite pieces on it.