Cut and Paste Translation/Music

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Examples of Cut and Paste Translations in Music include:

  • When released in America, the albums of The Beatles would experience two different approaches: (a) either the album would be released with the same (or a similar) name as the British release (such as With The Beatles becoming Meet The Beatles—kind of justified in this case, as the album was the first to be released in America), only with a few songs chopped off and / or rearranged, or (b) the songs would be grouped together to form a whole new album (such as Yesterday and Today, the one which originally generated controversy over the infamous "butcher cover" involving the group wearing white butcher's coats and surrounded by slabs of meat and chopped-up dolls parts). British releases tend to be considered 'canon', although the American release of Magical Mystery Tour has replaced the original British EP in both popularity and official-ness due to it also including some of their most popular singles of the time, including 'Strawberry Fields Forever', 'Penny Lane' and 'Hello Goodbye'.
    • This also extends to almost every British rock group from the start of the British invasion to around 1967 or so. It stemmed from two factors. First, records released in Europe usually had around fourteen songs on them, while American records usually had only twelve. Second, songs that were released as singles in England were usually not put on albums, meaning that many of any given band's most popular songs were not available on their regular studio albums. This caused America companies to mix and match songs and albums so they could exhaust their catalog and make more money.
  • The Clash's first album from 1977 was released in the US in 1979. This happened after their second, Give Em Enough Rope had been released in the US in 1978, which was the first album of theirs to be released there. Probably as a result, their newer singles from 1979 were included on the new version of their first album, replacing some songs that were deemed controversial by the record company at the time. Although a lot of people like this version of the album, the Clash's change in production techniques makes the inclusion of a later track like "I Fought The Law" pretty noticeable.
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