Misused songs: No, nay, never!

Poor Bruce Springsteen. It must be bewildering for The Boss to hear his dystopian anthem, “Born in the USA,” so widely used by right-wing chuckleheads—most recently by the protesters at yesterday’s not-Ground Zero not-mosque hate-triot fest.

Or maybe Mr. Springsteen just laughs at the irony of it all. My guess is that’s Freddie Mercury’s reaction when he looks down from Rock-n-Roll Heaven and sees gangs of über-macho football hooligans belting out “We Are the Champions.”

Another musical malaprop is the use of Pearl Jam’s “Better Man,” which, like “Born in the USA,” is used by people who either don’t know the song’s lyrics or can’t comprehend their meaning. I heard it used at a campaign rally for a local wingnut who apparently did not know the song is about a woman settling for a loser. Or maybe the candidate was just uncommonly honest.

My favorite misappropriated song of all time is embedded above: “The Wild Rover,” a temperance ditty that is drunkenly sung at least once nightly in every Irish pub with live music in the US (and possibly in Ireland as well—I don’t know). Unlike the wingnuts, “The Wild Rover” singers know exactly what they’re doing.

Have you heard any other hideously inappropriate song placements?

Posted by Betty Cracker on 08/23/10 at 04:41 PM • Permalink

Categories: Music • Politics • YouTubidity •

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I have sung “Wild Rover” maybe .... 12 trillion gazillion times, and only once can I recall that I was sober when doing so. I still sing it to myself while guzzling cheap beer and bemoaning the fact that Sarah Palin still won’t go on a date with me.

Comment by HumboldtBlue on 08/23/10 at 05:08 PM

I’d say the say that “YMCA” - a song about how swell those establishments are for finding gay hookups - becoming beloved across the heartland for firing up crowds at sporting events and dancing along to at weddings should count.

Pearl Jam’s “Alive” is lot less inspirational once you decipher the lyrics.

Comment by FMguru on 08/23/10 at 05:12 PM

I made this song my Stepson’s ringtone. He thought it was pretty inappropriate.

Comment by justlen on 08/23/10 at 05:50 PM

A friend of mine got to attend the Liza Minnelli/David Gest nuptials through an odd set of circumstances. If they’d known he was a journalist, they never would have let him in. But thank god he went, because he did write it up. At one point, he accidentally bumped into somebody’s chair, looked down, and realized it was Michael Jackson. He wrote “So after I got over my shock that he didn’t dissolve into a pile of dust….” (Sorry, too soon?)

Anyway, the best part was him writing “I’ve been to weddings where they played ‘I Will Survive’—but never one where it was sung live by Gloria Gaynor.”

Think about it—“Just turn around now, you’re not welcome anymore.” OTOH—given the end result of that marriage, that was probably more “prescient” than “inappropriate.”

Almost as good as the wedding reception of a friend’s sister to a Missouri redneck where the sister/ex-girlfriend/some combination thereof of the groom got up and sang “D-I-V-O-R-C-E.”

Fortunately, it was only a couple of years before my friend’s sister wised up and D-I-V-O-R-C-E-D the loser.

Comment by Oblomova on 08/23/10 at 05:58 PM

And Len, you are a bad, bad man. Never change!

Comment by Oblomova on 08/23/10 at 05:58 PM

McCain’s use of Little Pink Houses and Our Country. However, his use of Running on Empty was highly apposite.

Comment by Hunger Tallest Palin on 08/23/10 at 07:26 PM

I don’t think Bill Danoff, who wrote “Country Roads,” would be too thrilled at his song’s inclusion in the weekend’s festivities. He was a big ol’ hippie.

He was also 1/4 of Starland Vocal Band, who, despite the dreaded “Afternoon Delight,” did a lovely a cappella version of Paul Simon’s “American Tune.”

And Lord help us if the Teabaggers glom onto that one. They probably wouldn’t though, because it’s all about sadness and disappointment about the direction Our Beloved Country is taking, and wait, what?