Is it legal to change the lyrics to a copyrighted song and to perform it publically?

My school puts on a concert every year called "Expressions" where we perform pop and rock songs in front of lots of people. The show is for all ages, and when the lyrics to a song are questionable we often change a word or two. For example in Elton John's "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting" we might want to change the line "my old man's drunker than a barrel full of monkeys" to "my old man's funky like a barrel full of monkeys". Is making and performing such a change legal under U.S. Copyright law?

Is it legal to change the lyrics to a copyrighted song and to perform it publically?
dont worry dude your not trying to sell copies of anything and your not trying to profit from performing, id say no worries
Reply:Performances at educational institutions fall into a gray area of copyright law. The doctrines of "fair use" allow schools to make copies for the purposes of education and criticism, but these doctrines don't always apply in every school setting (such as performing a song during a school fundraiser.)





The rights to perform songs are generally administered by performance rights groups like ASCAP and BMI; however, those organizations fully admit that they tend to be lax with enforcing those rights with school groups (however, they do encourage schools to sign up with them to pay blanket licenses where for a low annual fee, the school gets the right to perform any songs by licensed artists.)





Finally, groups that administer theatrical performance licenses (such as amateur licensing groups like MTI and Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization) tend to include in their contracts clauses that prohibit schools from making lyrics changes; however, ASCAP and BMI usually do not include such clauses in their contracts.





So the answer to you question is "it's not entirely clear, but schools do this anyway and tend to get away with it."
Reply:Your adaptation to 'clean up' the lyrics would likely be looked over because of the intent.


Are you making / distributing / selling copies of it? If so, get professional advise before committing the school to responsibility to account for in the future.
Reply:completely LEGAL look at weird al yankovick... hes made a career of EXACTLY that
Reply:the difference between this and weird al is:





1 - weird al's aim is parody, which is a protected fair use.


2 - we don't really know what if any licensing fees weird al pays.





ask your school to consult their attorneys to decide if they feel this falls under fair use - it may fall under educational exceptions.