Remaking song, royalties/copyright?

[Dreamer]

Hey!
I hope that this is the right forum to post in, and that someone can help me

My and a few friends have began remaking the song "Cell block tango" from the musical Chicago, and we want to use it in a musical we're writing (it's not a remake of Chicago, we're making a completely new script that has nothing to do with Chicago), as the text we've written would be perfect. We use the basic setting of the song (like the "pop, six, squish, uh-uh, Cicero"-bit (but again, completely new words that fit our version) and the courus is similar to the original), but we've rewritten the entire lyrics, and it's also in Swedish. The plan is to preform it acapella (maybe some beatboxing or so, but no actual music). Do we need to pay some royalties or something to be allowed to do this? And in that case; how?

I'm not sure yet if we're gonna make people pay to come and see us (we have put up productions for free before), but does that have anything to do with anything?

I hope that you understood my question (if anything's unclear, just ask), and that someone knows the answer.

Thanks in advance
Dreamer <3

[Snufkin]

As long as you stay faithful to the original version, I'm fairly certain you don't need to pay any royalties. Same goes for any artist, massively popular or unknown, who wishes to cover a song. I think that's how Electric Six got away with covering Radio Gaga.

[Dreamer]

What do you mean with faithful? It's not a cover, since we're remaking the lyrics. But the structure, melody and such is (pretty much) the same.

Thanks!

[Snufkin]

As long as you treat it with respect. It's the same with any public figure - if you bad-mouth someone (here, anyway) they can sue you for damaging their reputation in the eyes of the public. But if you don't bad-mouth them and infact say something nice about them, they're not gonna sue you. So if you remain faithful, sample a melody, sample some lyrics, or even copy the whole thing, you're fine.

I'm not a legal expert but from everything I've seen, that's how it works. I've seen local bands perform cover songs who I've had to pay to go see - these guys would never know how to contact the original artist to pay royalites haha.

[Dreamer]

Haha, okay thanks!