Why is 運命 read as さだめ?


The very first lyric of the song ["Fighting
Gold"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OchozLuSHM0) goes like this:

> 夢を縛りつける 重たい運命の石に

And everything makes sense except for the fact that the singer reads 運命 as
さだめ. Why?




In Japanese, especially in creative writing (stories, poetry, lyrics, etc),
people often specify a different reading of kanji than is conventional or
"correct". They do this for various reasons, the most common I believe is to
make one word have double-meaning, although the two meanings referred are
usually quite similar to begin with. For example, in this case, 運命 and さだめ
already have similar meanings but have subtle differences in both their
definition and the nuance. And especially in lyrics, the words can have
different lengths and/or rhymes and/or sounds that may or may not fit the
tune. I am not familiar with this particular song but the changing of the
reading in lyrics is very common so this is no surprise. By doing this, the
song will be sung as さだめ but it conveys to the reader that this word also
carries with it the definition and nuance of 運命. Note that this "trick" only
works when the written lyric is also seen, hence if you only hear this song,
the listener will not get it. I am not aware of a name to this "trick" but we
usually refer to it as 〇〇と書いて〇〇と読む (in this case, うんめいと書いてさだめと読む).

So basically this is the result of the creative work of the person who wrote
this song/lyric and there is no right or wrong. Based on this, I guess a
songwriter could put any combination of kanji and reading, but if is nonsense,
then it's nonsense and so is the song, and that's that. I once came across a
song that wrote 天使 and read it as あくま but that was okay because the song was
describing a person who appeared to act as an angel but had evil intentions.
If done well it's a very smart play on words and also efficient to make one
word mean two. It's all part of the creative process and we read as so, and
enjoy it as so.

By the way, if I saw any of this outside of the context of creative/artistic
writing, then it would simply be wrong and incomprehensible.

