Here’s a link to the lyrics. A relevant quote:
I watched you die / I heard you die / Every night in your sleep / I was so young / You should have known / Better than to lean on me.
Reading the whole song, I have decided I was wrong to say that the speaker was (necessarily) abused by her mother’s boyfriends or husbands. But it’s pretty clear that she is addressing her mother.
A few years ago, Radio Shack ran some ads for their Father’s Day sales using What’s Going On by Marvin Gaye.
Innocuous enough, until you recall that
Marvin was murdered by his father!
My one trip to a strip club, the stripper was dancing to the Cantina song from Star Wars (doot-da-doot-da-doot-da-doot). She looked a bit hurt when I laughed, though when I pointed out the music, she nodded and said she had told the DJ not to play it.
A local radio station planned a big promotion built around the Boomtown Rats’s “I Don’t Like Mondays.” They were going to go several weeks with an “I Don’t Like Mondays” contest.
Evidently, they listened to the song (about a shooter), because when the first Monday came along, they made no mention of it or the promotion.
We were married in a theater. We were allowed to put whatever we wanted on the marquee. We put our names starring in Dead Man Walking.
We thought it was hilarious.
I actually find strip clubs boring not titillating, but I’d pay admission to a strip club to see that. The choreography would have to fit though.
Not quite -
Once the artist has recorded their song once (or sold that specific right), anyone can cover their song and owes a set price (that can be negotiated, if PA owner (that’s Performing Arts copyright) is willing).
But “Cover” does not mean “Chop up, reword, or generally mangle”. When you start performing those verbs, you start getting into “derivative works”-land, and that’s where the set prices go out the window. Just ask Vanilla Ice.
With derivative works, the PA owner still can’t “Deny the use of”, but they can take the other party to court and exact what amount to punative damages against them for performing or selling the song. And despite the myth, there is no loop hole in “giving the derivative work away for free”. The damages are not based on what the “derivative artist” makes on the tune, but on what the perceived value of the song is. The only way to get away with creating a derivative work is to not become a successful artist, or to have your work shielded as a parody (ala Weird Al)
It’s sort of counter-intuitive: the closer the performance (live or recorded) is to the original, the less money is involved.
Of course, this is based on US law. Although there are similar laws in much of Europe and agreements to honor each other’s laws, there is no world standard. Spain, in particular, in notorious for not giving a flying fuck about copyright ownership. So if a Spanish artist decided to turn Hallelujah into a song about the joys of bubblegum chewing, there’s fuck-all Cohen can do about it, much less recoup from the other party - Until and unless that version starts circulating someplace where copyrights are honored.
(sorry for the hijack)
And you apparently don’t realize that that story was supposed to be a *bad *thing. In other words, not something a devout Catholic should celebrate. Heck, the Bible implies it was the reason Israel got split up.
Bathsheba gave birth to Solomon, whom David spoiled and set an example of gaining new wives just because of lust, which led Solomon to do the same, even with foreign woman that led him to worship other gods. As a punishment, God breaks up the kingdom of Solomon’s son.
On the other hand, the OP has yet to tell whether the song was in English, as there are other lyrics to the song which are not considered blasphemous.
Ah sorry, I’m used to Spanish law and the Spanish SGAE, which gives fuck-all about the artists but is trying to get “copyright tax” on everything from notepads to nuclear missiles. There’s companies here where people are told to print documents N times rather than print once and photocopy because the photocopy carries a higher SGAE fee…
I’d heard that Cohen wrote over 30 verses to the song, and when he recorded it he only used a handful. When Buckley told Cohen that he wanted to cover it, Cohen faxed through the entire lyric and Buckley chose a largely separate set of verses that gave the song a very different meaning.
I can’t look for a cite at the moment, but if it’s needed I’ll see what I can find tonight.
I’m totally posting out of my arsehole - but maybe they chose the song not for the lyrics but because it was linked to some of their more significant memories / moments?
Not two hours ago they played this at a patriotic fireworks display I was at. In fact I hear it all the time in that context.
Some friends of ours did this - totally tongue in cheek. We all laughed until we cried, especially because they lip-synched it to each other. 
Now THAT would have been funny… Unfortunately, there weren’t any tongues in any cheeks that night.
Wait.
<sticks fingers in ears> la la la la la la
Well, it wouldn’t be blasphemous. The song could just be saying he saw her and thought she was hot, just like David, not necessarily that he got her husband killed to get with her.
Continuing on the theme of bad songs to strip to, an old roommate of mine who occasionally worked as a stripper used Alien Ant Farm’s cover of Smooth Criminal as her song of choice when it first came out.
Sweet girl, but not particularly swift… she never could understand what I found so funny about it.
Neither can I. Is it because of the title? I’ve never been able to make much sense of the lyrics- I mean, I can understand what he’s saying, but the story or any meaning is lost on me.
Are you sure you weren’t misunderstanding the lyrics? I recall a number of counter-protests in which people sang, “All we are saying / Is kick Saddam’s ass.”
I guess it depends if you’re the sort of person who listens to the lyrics, or the sort to whom the voices are just another instrument. I listen to the words, so I find amusement when a song like Goin’ to Jackson at a wedding.
When we were selecting music for our wedding reception my husband removed several selections because of inappropriate sentiment in the lyrics, even though some of them were really good dance tunes.
While the lyrics are rather vague, they’re basically about a woman named Annie who has been “struck down” by a man who came into her apartment through the window and left “bloodstains on the carpet”. Even assuming Annie is just badly hurt and not dead, I’m guessing Mr Smooth Criminal isn’t exactly the kind of guy she’d like to bring to mom and dad’s for Sunday dinner.
Not exactly a song built for romance… know what I mean?
To the OP, good thread. You’ve managed to get a lot of people posting some good stories that make for an interesting read.
Well done.