Songs That Have Been Exhaled or Ruined By Brilliance or Stupidity

It’s happened to all of us at one time or another, we have a favorite song that we tied to either a moment or a person in our past.  A song that lived deep in our minds that when we heard it the positive or negative deluge of memories would come back to sucker punch us in the feels.  Songs that we heard as kids, adolescents or adults that meant something to us.  Songs that we abhorred, for instance Gangam Style, Lord if I hear that song one more time I’m going to………..ahem, anyway on to today’s post.

As a bonafide Gen-Xer for me songs are a marker of time, a brand on something so special or hated that we carry them with us for the rest of our life’s whether we want to or not.   It doesn’t matter who you are it is inevitable that you too are carrying around a lyrical reminder of your past.  Somehow being the only female growing up in a family of older male cousins, I was exposed to singer/song writers from the late 70’s and a lot of the rock from that era too.  There are some songs that are branded forever to one person, and those songs are hard to listen to without remembering his presence in my life such as Crazy Love by Poco, Ventura Highway by America, Love Will Keep Us Alive by the Eagles, If You Could Read My Mind by Gordon Lightfoot and Roberta Flacks The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.  Listening to those songs are emotional torture and I try to avoid listening to them at all costs.

So when I began to really pay attention to movie soundtracks I realized that a lot of the songs I either loved or hated from my youth were being used and sometimes corrupted to the point of detestable rage.   Let’s take the song Careless Whispers by Wham, which was one of the very first love songs I associated with my pre-teen adolescence. Yes okay it was a song about cheating and the remorse one felt and all that jazz, but I was thirteen at the time what did I know?  It was an emotional marker if you will for the very first “older” crush I had as a freshman in high school.  His name was Carlos Garcia, and he had already graduated, my mom and his mom were coworkers so I saw him at my mom’s office all the time, he was a dream.

For a long while I hadn’t heard the song, and I do mean a long time and if I had, it didn’t pay too much attention to it.  And then……the movie Deadpool staring Ryan Reynolds came out in 2016 and it changed how I associated with the song completely.  I thought to myself, well this is an interesting development, as I sat through the film wondering if it was either going to fuck up my memories or erase them altogether.  Interestingly enough, I loved Deadpool, not just as a film, but the comic book character entirely.  He’s the epitome of the anti-hero, full of dark optimism and a hint of sarcasm, okay more than a hint, he’s full of that ball busting, in your face attitude that I admire so much.  From then on I associated Careless Whispers with Deadpool and not Carlos Garcia, which wasn’t a bad turn of emotional association in my mind.  It became one of my all-time favorite songs and I have no problem with hearing it and imagining Deadpool playing it on his phone while he attempts to woo his girlfriend in spite of his insecurity at being physically deformed.  Deadpool is my hero, and also my alter ego according to a team-building exercise at work, but that’s a post for another time.

Careless Whispers by Wham used in the soundtrack to Deadpool, totally brilliant!

Continuing on, many songs from my youth and early adulthood were many but I had always had favorites as some of you will know, all of us do.  It’s like an emotional recording in our psyche that we will never be able to get rid of no matter how good or bad.  So, on to the bad.

Hall & Oats were a staple while I was growing up, and I loved their songs.  A duo of lyrical masterminds, they wrote songs that could resonate with your inner most feelings with songs like She’s Gone, Sarah Smile and Rich Girl.  When they rose to even more recognition in the 1980’s their songs became peppy and more pop than singer songwriter, a far cry from their songs of the 1970’s.  I was okay with that, I love their songs but then, Will Farrell managed to fuck up one of my favorite songs, he mutilated every single memory and every soft dreamy feeling I had associated with the Hall & Oats song You Make My Dreams, a far cry from the film The Wedding Singer that used that very same song, only in a more Huntress appropriate scene.  Will Farrell seems to fuck up a lot of things, the film Holmes and Watson for instance, but I’ll leave that one alone for now.

One day as I was going about my normal Saturday night routine of taking care of my tootsies and giving myself a pedicure, my son was watching the movie Step Brothers with Will Farrell and John C. Riley, I wasn’t paying attention to the film too much.  Then my son began to laugh wildly at a scene with the “step-brothers” are becoming best friends as the song You Make My Dreams plays in the background.  Now every time I hear that song I can’t seem to shake the image of two full grown men traipsing about in their underwear, as they dance and act like complete imbeciles, all the while Hall & Oats are the soundtrack to their stupidity and ineptness.  Shredded, those assholes shredded every good memory I had of Hall & Oats and the song You Make My Dreams!

These two idiots have ruined You Make My Dreams by Hall & Oats forever.

Now every time I hear it I shudder, change the station or skip it on my iTunes that’s how bad they decimated what was once a great 80’s song full of memories and wonderful inner sunshine!

So we will talk about advertising, and how the world of adverts has also obliterated songs from my youth that once held deep personal emotional memories for me.  So here we go…..

Bounce Sheets, this tiny little dryer sheet has paid some big time advertising agency to ruin the song Your Love by the Outfield, which featured prominently in my adolescence.  Now, when I listen to it while driving in the car, I imagine some dude giving a presentation with a wrinkled shirt, embarrassed that he didn’t iron before going to work…..thanks Proctor & Gamble, thanks a lot you bastards!

Speaking of bastards, how about the pharmaceutical company that manufactures the medication Anoro?  They took a great Fleetwood Mac song, Go Your Own Way and although they didn’t change any of the lyrics, now it’s a cheesy “lighter” version that tells you if you have asthma you can go your own way with Anoro.  What does that even mean!?! I also know that the artist who wrote and sang these songs allowed them to be used in the commercials and movies I’m talking about.  They sold them to the advertising companies for big bucks, like they didn’t already have big bucks, right?

Oh and let’s not forget a brand new commercial for Dos Equis, goddamned you freaking Mexican beer assholes, for taking a much beloved song that I held near and dear to my heart all through the 80’s and 90’s and ruined it with a classless, mimicking 1980’s redo of Total Eclipse of the Heart!!! I can never hear that song without having that stupid commercial in my mind playing over and over!!

“Once upon a time there was a light in your life.  But now there’s only a line at the bar” is a horrible, twisted lyric used by Dos Equis

With that said, much respect to the late great Jim Morrison from the Doors, he refused $75k back in 1969 for the use of Light My Fire to be used in a cigarette commercial, which apparently now would be worth $500k, he didn’t sell out but because he was the sole writer of the the song and was the only one that had a say in what or where the song could be used.

So those are a few of the songs that have been ruined by movies or commercials or given me a different perspective.  I have nothing against great songs being used for movie soundtracks because they enhance a film, they speak about the characters and their emotions, but I do have a problem with them being used for commercials where the original song is diluted, monsterized, turned into lyrical cheese to sell products.  Oh dear gawd the songmanity!

Until next time y’all, remember chin up, soldier on and watch your back!

The Huntress915