Qfyilyi

is there a word to identify a song where the music is happy but the lyrics are sad?

What about the opposite a song where the music is sad but the lyrics are happy?

Thanks

To a large extent, it depends on what you mean by happy and sad.

Both grunge music and punk (e.g. Pearl Jam and the Clash, respectively) have rhythms that are energetic, peppy, and excellent to dance to; however, the content of the lyrics tend to deal with death, love lost, promises broken, and of course (the cover of) "I Fought the Law [and the Law Won]." And what about nursery rhymes like "Humpty Dumpty"?

I'd say gospel and opera have the general ability to portray happy themes with sad melodies, "Amazing Grace," for instance. I would call these types of songs uplifting.

Music is generally categorized by genre. But certain bands take on an energy of their own, capable of performing both types of music you mention without ready categorization, such as the Grateful Dead and Depeche Mode (or when I was in high school, Depressed Mood).

I don't like giving answers with social references, but it is a question about music.

It's called lyrical dissonance.

Discordant is good but Bittersweet is more apt. Depends on perspective too. Lyrics can belie the positive melody and the opposite also occurs where 'up' lyrics are sung to a sad melody.

The term prosody could be helpful to describe what you are looking for.

To the degree that the sad or happy feel of the music is due to the meter, pronunciation, and emphasis of how the words are sung, you could say the music lacks good prosody. (OED but use Wikipedia link below if you do not have an OED account)

EDIT ADDRESSING FIRST 2 COMMENTS: (from Wikipedia)

In linguistics, prosody (from Ancient Greek: προσῳδίᾱ prosōidíā "song sung to music; tone or accent of a syllable", Attic Greek pronunciation: [prosɔː(i)díaː]) is concerned with those elements of speech that are not individual phonetic segments (vowels and consonants) but are properties of syllables and larger units of speech. These contribute to linguistic functions such as intonation, tone, stress, and rhythm. Prosody may reflect various features of the speaker or the utterance: the emotional state of the speaker; the form of the utterance (statement, question, or command); the presence of irony or sarcasm; emphasis, contrast, and focus; or other elements of language that may not be encoded by grammar or by choice of vocabulary.

Also, you might consider describing the music as being discordant or even dissonant with the lyrics. Although used generally to refer to the clash of any two elements (e.g. "dissonance between campaign rhetoric and personal behavior"), discord and dissonance in the first instance are used to refer to musical notes that are not in harmony. So, this might cause confusion since you are in the context of music -- people may assume you are talking about dissonant musical notes rather than dissonance between the feel of the tune and the lyrics.