Incongruous songs

Every breath you take as a wedding song. (Get out, get out now!)
Of course Born in the USA is a great sing along and sounded really good with audience participation here in Melbourne Australia. I guess that happens in other countries as well.

the fact that”This Land is Your Land” is an entirely kosher song for American public schoolkids.

I have no idea about whether this is common or not, but my grade school music teacher had us singing lots of “hippy” songs- “One Tin Soldier”, “Seasons in the Sun”, and many more than I’m forgetting now. In retrospect, I think at least some of us did get that these were songs that were for peace, kindness, etc., but it’s not hard for little kids to think those are good ideas, even growing up in Idaho in the early 80’s. (What I’m not sure of is whether the music teacher was doing this on purpose, or these were just songs she knew and liked from her own teenager/college days. Other than the songs, my only real memory of her was her persistent disappointment with our intense lack of musical ability.)

As for incongruous songs, one that always stands out for me is people using the Pixies “hear comes your man” as a song about waiting hopefully for a boyfriend or a husband, or people using The Police’s song about obsessive stalking, “Every Breath you Take” as a slow dance song at weddings.

Similar to the “Born in the USA” case, here in NJ there was a brief (i.e. until someone did indeed read the lyrics, which are about getting the hell out of NJ (“a death trap”, etc) at the first possible opportunity, preferably on a motorcycle) movement in the legislature to make “Born to Run” into the NJ state song.

I also find the Japanese use of the Beethoven/Schiller “Ode to Joy” as a Christmas song a bit odd. Not sure what Al Stewart would think of that one.

“We’ve come a long, long way together/Through the bad times and the good/I have to celebrate you, baby/I have to praise you like I should” – the (complete)* lyrics of Fat Boy Slim’s “Praise You”, which soundtracked the Labour Party Conference one year when Tony Blair was feeling particularly praiseworthy.

The Conservative Party’s appropriation of “Bohemian Like You” was fairly baffling (did they listen to any of it?), but it was worth it for Courtney Taylor’s response: “Why don’t these assholes have right-wing bands make them some right-wing music for their right-wing jerkoff politics? Oh, because right wing people aren’t creative, visionary or any fun to be around.”

*It’s a sample from a song called (I think) “Take yo’ praise”, which has a lot more lyrics – but that’s the only bit used by FBS and hence by Labour.

Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus – a piece about the Resurrection, with lyrics borrowed from the Book of Revelation – used as a Christmas piece.

“I have a very clear memory of a ‘Suicide is Painless’ sing-along in an elementary school music class, age eight. Chances that teacher would keep her job nowadays?”

maybe she was a big MASH fan?

I imagine she was, MPA, but a gaggle of bright-eyed children singing those lyrics was deliciously incongruous and macabre.

I have seen people sing the song “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt ” when they were not actually named “John” or “Schmidt”. Don’t know about the middle names.

And of course there is always this: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/07/11/226509/-50-most-conservative-rock-songs#

Does Haydn’s Streichquartett Op. 76/3 count?

I’m pretty sure I’ve heard Dominic Muldowney’s splendid “Oceania, ‘Tis For Thee” used unironically as inspirational mood music.

10,000 Maniacs (with Natalie Merchant) and Michael Stipe gave a spectacular performance of Candy Everybody Wants at the 1993 Clinton inauguration party. What the hell was that all about?

O Mio Babbino Caro, from Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, is the most famous soprano aria in all opera – any competent singer can bring an audience to tears with it. It was on the soundtrack of A Room with a View. And it’s always sung straight – a heartbroken young woman begging her father to consent to her marriage to her beloved. But in context it’s completely cynical – the daughter is asking her father for help in breaking her lover’s uncle’s will, so that he will inherit and they can be rich.

The Who licensed I Can See For Miles to Honda for a commercial. That was peculiar.

Also, this. But “incongruous” is surely not the right word, here.

@22 All the guys in busbies need is to be marching around in circles like in The Wizard of Oz.

Okay, so

a) It says something bad about your readers if they haven’t seen the Lego Movie, which was amazing. Go see it!

b) I think the point of Everything is Awesome was that it sort of transitioned from mindless pop idiocy designed to keep people working at the start of the movie, to something different by the end. Remember, the message wasn’t that Lord Business / The Man Upstairs was pure evil and had no value, it’s that his order and conformity had gone too far, and had to be combined with Finn / the master builders’ creativity and wackiness to make something even better.

@19: Columbia

With both the name and the pedigree to support their claim, Columbia should have taken the anthem we dropped on the floor for their own, and left “German Overalls” where they found it.

Some years ago I went to the funeral of an old friend, a cynical athiest, whose only request, no church service, was overriden by his wife. The program listed the last hymn, at the deceased’s request, as “Stick to the Sunny Side of Life.” I assumed it was a hymn I didn’t know, but in fact the congregation sang the Python song from Life of Brian. Afterwards several people told me how much they liked the message of the song, and especially the “Do di do di do di do” chorus. But the minister made them eliminate “Life’s a piece of shit” — at which point my friend’s ten year old grandson shouted out, “What happened to shit!”

Great moment.
JG

Watson Ladd 07.21.14 at 2:45 pm

” The Ride of the Valkyries in Apocalypse Now.”

Why?

John Lennon’s “Imagine” was sung at one of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party Conferences in 1987. Wembley, UK. The extreme right-wing Tory delegates sang and/or dozed along to his uncontroversial lyrics, with no cognitive dissonance:

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace…

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man…

The Merkel campaign used “Angie” as a campaign song in 2005

“Oh Lord, Won’t You Buy Me” in an actual Mercedes-Benz commercial. Hard to believe that really happened, but it did.

I’m waiting for a Republican national event to pick up one of Roy Zimmerman’s anthems and use it straight. There are several good candidates: Everyman for Himself, especially, but also My Conservative Girlfriend, Privateers, Send ‘Em Back, or especially Ain’t No Liberal.

George W. Bush, famously, used the Liberty Bell March at his inauguration instead of one of Sousa’s less pythonic works.

Yeah, nobody listens to lyrics. The American Legion, I believe, tried to ban the Beatles’ anti-revolutionary, or at least quietist, “Revolution.” And I don’t know how many times I’ve heard “I Will Always Love You,” a breakup song, at wedding receptions. (Also, the Boston Pops plays the 1812 Overture on the Fourth of July, but no lyrics there.)

When I was three or four, I distinctly recall attending gymnastics lessons at a YMCA in Charlotte, North Carolina. At least once, a session began with the instructor leading us in a dance to the Village People song.

I’m not sure whether the Manics were more bemused or angry about the BNP attempting to appropriate “If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next”. Even if you miss the allusions to the Spanish Civil War “if I can shoot rabbits then I can shoot fascists” is pretty unambiguous right?

That said nothing’s going to top GE using Sixteen Tons in an advert.

Not being that up on Al Stewart, (and lacking time for a deep dive into all things Stewart) did he say that in a song, or in an interview somewhere?

“All Along the Watchtower” was the Cylon theme song in BattleStar Galactica (which was still an inadvertent high point!)

Some years ago I went to the funeral of an old friend, a cynical athiest, whose only request, no church service, was overriden by his wife. The program listed the last hymn, at the deceased’s request, as “Stick to the Sunny Side of Life.” I assumed it was a hymn I didn’t know, but in fact the congregation sang the Python song from Life of Brian. Afterwards several people told me how much they liked the message of the song, and especially the “Do di do di do di do” chorus. But the minister made them eliminate “Life’s a piece of shit” — at which point my friend’s ten year old grandson shouted out, “What happened to shit!”

There are two Python songs on my funeral CD (yes, I have a funeral CD: wouldn’t want anyone sneaking a hymn into my funeral!): ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’ from The Life of Brian and ‘The Galaxy Song’ from The Meaning of Life

@18 Joshua – Ah yes, you beat me to it ! :) “Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser” Kaiser of the Austro-Hungarian empire that is: written by a man in the employ of the Magyar Esterhazys.

Barry @32: “Why?”

I wondered the same thing. It is a very martial piece, after all.

Only thing I can figure is: the dead heroes are being carried away to Valhalla and, presumably, the “heroes” in AN aren’t planning on dying. But that seems a little subtle for a piece whose style is certainly appropriate.

But then, Watson can be a subtle fellow when he tries hard.

Corny example of incongruity: “Oh, For the Love of Sunshine” in the tank attack in “Kelly’s Heroes”*.

Completely congruous: “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad”, in the same film.

*Goofy old “comfort” movie I used to watch about once every ten years or so. Notable for a young Donald Sutherland playing an anachronistic beatnik tank officer.

Alongside Reagan misusing of Springsteen one must also mention George H. W. Bush’s misappropriation of Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”.

Vincent Price warbling ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ in Dr Phibes Rises Again

I don’t know if this fits with the theme but I do have a fond memory of school teachers singing along to Another Brick in the Wall.

I was in a Pub in the town I grew up in, on a short visit. Standing at the bar, ordering myself a pint of Guinness, I noticed that a bunch of teachers from my old school (years 7-9) where sitting at a table across the room. The music changes (Swedish so called pubs in small towns usually have music on really loud so you can’t do anything but drink really, as you can’t hear anyone speak) an the Pink Floyd -song comes on. All of a sudden all the teachers (the youngest one in her mid 40s) rushes from the table, on to the dancefloor and starts jumping around like crazy, screaming “Hey, teachers, leave those kids alone!”.

Wrye — he says it once in a while when introducing On the Border, which got a lot of radio play despite being about gun running in what was then Southern Rhodesia, and the Basque country… I’m sure I’ve seen it in an interview too. (I’m… a fan).

Apocalypse Now and some of the other movie-sound track references aren’t quite the same thing – these are examples of intentional alienation by juxtaposition – I’m sure there’s a technical rhetorical name for that sort of thing. It’s become almost the background sound of our ironical age – the signature sound of This American Life is this sort of ironical use of inappropriate music.

A TV series (and then movie) whose whole reason for existing is this sort of irony is Pennies from Heaven. The Steve Martin/Bernadette Peters film version does a pretty good job of it, but the original Dennis Potter BBC series (with Bob Hoskins) is just devastating.

@Gabriel #7 —

You didn’t grow up in the California east bay area, did you? My music class, when I was in elementary school, rehearsed that song for the christmas show but didn’t perform it because one of the parents complained when he or she heard what we were going to be singing. (I don’t remember what it was replaced with, but I hope it was ‘I gave my love a cherry’ or something like.)

It would be difficult to be more incongruous than Lili Marleen which became so popular with Allied troops in WWII that it was described as “The Theme Song of the Eighth Army and the 6th Armoured Division”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lili_Marleen

Presumably everybody remembers this, but what the hell.

When I saw Richard Thompson a few weeks ago I thought it was a bit odd that a couple got up and started slow-dancing to Wall of Death.

Sixteen Tons. used in an ad for GE coal. With sexy lady coalminers and all.

Two that I see all too often are people in pubs dancing to Chumbawamba’s “Tubthumping”, a song about the stupidity of going out and getting drunk. That and homophobes getting into Right Said Fred’s “I’m too sexy”. Yes, boys, get right into those sexy, sexy, men.

I see that Bronski Beat “Smalltown Boy” was apparently used by Boots in a Christmas advertisement. I can’t imagine any context in which that would be appropriate Christmas music except as a fundraiser for a GLTB youth shelter.

I don’t see enough TV to spot incongruous use of music, but Peter Garrett (ex Midnight Oil and Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament Party) being part of an Australian Labor government was something to see. And yes, people did play his own music back at him.

“Don’t Worry, Be Happy” was used by Bush campaign, to Bobby McFerrin’s chagrin. (Bush I).

I’d say “Everything is Awesome” is in a different category from “Born in the USA.” Born in the USA is explicitly about a Vietnam veteran dealing with some shit, it’s just that you have to be able to understand the lyrics to pick up on that. Everything is Awesome is very simply about how everything is awesome, it’s only in the broader context of the movie where the song has that implication. Of course, the part of the song rapped by The Lonely Island is more directly sarcastic, but even then it’s not necessarily to be interpreted as above, it’s just sort of like “well, I suppose it’s a bit silly to actually say that everything is awesome.”

And even in the context of the movie I think you could argue there’s more to it than it just being propaganda. The good guys in the movie very enthusiastically embrace the idea of things being “awesome.” Their enthusiasm too is taken with an attitude of “okay but now you’re just being silly about it,” but precisely because of that I think it makes the song more about a sort of dialectic of awesomeness rather than just being propaganda to be ignored. Plus they end the movie with the song.

you have to be able to understand the lyrics to pick up on that

You have to be able to willfully ignore the music…

Excellent post – I’ve thought it so many times about so many situations (“They can’t play THAT for THIS!”) and to see it in print ensures I know I’m not the only one it bothered ;)

Sara @ simpleNewz

If not incongruous, certainly creepy: Viagra used “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl,” in a tv ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2w10luaTO8o.

Nemo, that’s gold. You gotta love those far right wing anarcho-syndicalist congress-members. With Chumbawamba you just know that they’re going to come right and and teabag you at the worst possible moment[1]. At least Right Said Fred are blatantly all about the money.

[1] speaking of inconguous things, down here teabagging is something crude involving scrotums which makes the US “teabagger movement” kind of inappropriate and funny.

They don’t actually call themselves teabaggers…

Anyways, Queen and Gary Glitter songs at sporting events.

“They don’t actually call themselves teabaggers…”

Actually I think they did at first…

Meanwhile no-one has objected my equating Queen with Gary Glitter, and thus, by implication, bisexuality with pedophilia, or to the idea that the former is incongruous with professional sports, which is good because I really don’t want to deal with it.

I think that Quite Likely at 28 has it correct. The interpretation of “Everything is Awesome” has changed by the ending of the moving. Without giving the ending away, the lyrics show the answer to what the problem was, and singing it as a celebration isn’t an incongruous use of it.

My nomination is Cohen’s deliberately blasphemous “Hallelujah” sung as a hymn.

I’m keen on “Everything is Awesome” being a positive song to go with a positive message. I’m even sympathetic to the idea that it starts as propaganda and gets repurposed/ subverted into a genuine anthem. Either way, I like the first 30 seconds of it (typical of my response to Tegan and Sara songs, FWIW).

godoggo: I thought you were equating them separately with professional sports, which each work in their own way. Queen + sports is incongruous regardless, unless we’re talking about bicycle racing.

I’m not sure the haka counts as music, but the “lyrics” to the Haka of Te Rauparaha is just a bizarre choice for any sporting team, especially one that expects to win. Seeing the All Blacks chant about running away and hiding from their enemies before a match is incongruous to say the least. (story here: http://www.haka.co.nz/haka.php)

My nomination is Cohen’s deliberately blasphemous “Hallelujah” sung as a hymn.

Oh, please. Leonard Cohen’s song isn’t blasphemous, it’s midrashic. Deliberately allusive/transgressive use of Biblical tropes may be treif in other traditions, perhaps, but that’s not where Cohen is coming from. Everyone from Jewish summer camps to Yeshiva University’s a cappella group incorporates Hallelujah into the Kabbalat Shabbat now and then; the erotic tension echoes back and forth between the psalmist’s audible Hebrew and the songwriter’s implied English. Psalm 147 in Psukei D’zimra fits, too.

Just to underline the point . . . . verses 5 & 6, which are missing from the Buckley cover.

You say I took the name in vain
I don’t even know the name
But if I did, well, really, what’s it to you?
There’s a blaze of light in every word
It doesn’t matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you
And even though it all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

Blasphemous? Seriously?

Back in 2004 at the Republican convention Dick Cheney came out on stage to Nick Lowe’s “I love the sound of breaking glass”. Knowing the sort of eager beaver Young Republicans around him I think it was completely intentional.

“Va, pensierio” or “Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves” from Verdi’s Nabucco has been put to use by both the French Front National and the Lega Nord in Italy.

Roy – that’s an Advent carol, and it’s about the coming (advent) of the Messiah. I suppose there’s a kind of irony there inasmuch as (from a Xtian perspective) the one who came didn’t (just) set the Jews free, but it’s not “the Mercedes Benz song in an advert” ironic.

Nothing incongruous with this Queen song used at sport events:

We are the champions, my friends,
And we’ll keep on fighting ’til the end.
We are the champions.
We are the champions.
No time for losers
‘Cause we are the champions.

It’s surprising that no one else has mentioned this one, but my wife and I were really irritated when the DJ at our wedding played “Hey Ya.” Of course, Andre 3000 knew what he was doing with that one: “Y’all don’t want to hear me, you just want to dance.”

godoggo 07.22.14 at 3:00 am

” I’m pretty sure it was never anything but a joke.”

Google ‘tea bag them before they tea bag you’. It was a serious statement which was scrubbed from the approved Tea Party histories.

Peter Sellars arranged to have Glenn Miller’s “In The Mood” played at his funeral. His best joke in years.

having an open thread seems like an interesting idea, has CT ever done this before? the moderating problem seems tough – especially given the type of topics that open thread lends itself to.

more on point- once in university i heard Neil Young’s ‘Southern Man’ playing from the frat house run by the proto-typical Old Southern Gentility types. Not much of a party song, but then i never understood that Southern pride thing anyways.

also – this thread could use more analysis of the Lego movie. I think Q. Likely is right @28 in noting that there was a kernel of honest truth beneath the satire in “Everything is Awesome”. the song advocates for an ethos of teamwork and harmony, and that ends up being the crucial element that the protagonist teaches the other master builders. they are all brilliant, but unable to cooperate or put their unique creative style aside in the name of the larger group objective. and the notion that mundane and/or traditionally bad things should be seen in a positive light jives well with the movies overarching message of creative optimism.

Possible examples of public speech which seems politically valuable while not necessarily useful or interesting (at least in a sense that would amuse the world-weary Godoggo). (Apologies for prolonging the distraction.)

Unite now urges all like-minded people to join the fight for Palestinian justice by demanding an end to the military aggression and supporting the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign
Palestinians trapped inside the bloodied and besieged Gaza Strip call on conscientious people all over the world to act, protest and intensify the boycotts, divestments and sanctions against Israel .
Name Israel an “apartheid state” and divest, Tutu tells US Presbyterians
‘From the river to the sea’

examples of intentional alienation by juxtaposition

Carl Foreman (1963) :

Collin Street that GE commercial is the craziest thing I have seen in a long time. Just wow.

They have open threads over at Obsidian Wings, but the place is a bit like “Cheers” (CT is more like a biker bar).

novakant @138: CT is more like a biker bar

Excellent! Can I be the animal rights protester who, scorning sexist vandalism of mink coats, comes in to throw red paint on the leather jackets?

The biker bar I’m most familiar with is Walker’s Cafe in Pedro, although the XHeathens who hang there are pretty unthreatening.

I do see a lot of Mongols in Montebello and thereabouts, but no idea where they hang, and don’t particularly care to know.

gianni at 4:29 pm:
Not sure from your comment if you’re working with the condemnatory heart of Neil Young’s song there. Some irony, intended or not, in that Young’s Canadian, so the whole US male pop. is “Southern Man” to him, technically.
–
Phil:
Yes Advent, I know. But the song was sung throughout my childhood at Christmas “time”.
Layers of irony in the lyrics, and in the straightforward singing of them, by people, lots of them children, who had no idea what the larger implications were. Are.
–
Harry of CT:

“Trouble is, we have hundreds, possibly thousands, of readers who are better informed than I am about each topic”
Just guessing of course, but isn’t it likely that many of those better informed readers actively disagree with each other?
Which would make for, it seems to a non-academic reader, at least some of those better informed readers being essentially wrong? And vulnerable to the exposure of their being wrong?
Aren’t we side-stepping rather forcefully there?
What I’m seeing from Gaza doesn’t require a PhD in anything to fix squarely as obscene, an immoral outrage. Couple that with a Congress on its knees to the aggressor, an executive on its knees to that same aggressor, and a media with the majority of US opinion in its pocket itself in the pocket of that same aggressor.

So under those circumstances it could be seriously helpful, to the truth, to the victims of dishonest power, and to your readership, to open a discussion up.
Tighten the rules of moderation if you feel you have to.
Hard to say from here, but you may have the chance to do a great service by that, to more than the already convinced and partisan, to the world really.
Which is shifting around in its slumber, and may actually be waking up.

I went to see The Diamondbacks-Tigers game today (not quite cricket, but there was a 3-run Miggy blast to cheer) and just before the teams took the field they played part of Karn Evil 9 – not sure how I feel about “There behind the glass is a single blade of grass” being plade inside a dome, but maybe I’m being overly picky.

At least when Chris Hadfield sang Space Oddity he changed the lyrics.

In “Little Big Man” the cavalry massacre an Indian village to the sprightly Irish tune “Garryowen.” Apparently that actually happened(the massacre and the music).

The British redcoats marching to Lexington and Concord played “Yankee Doodle.” But not on the way back.

Bouncy and optimistic chorus, grim verses.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7avJBkLGWg

Lyrics.