On the “things that creeped you out when you were a kid” thread, someone mentioned being freaked by the Phil Collins song, “In the Air Tonight”.
I got to thinking about it, and you know… that was my senior prom theme song. Imagine spending a fortune on a dress, corsage, garter, tickets, etc., spending a couple of hours doing your hair and making sure dad’s car was washed because the only thing lamer than showing up at the prom in your dad’s car would be showing up in your boyfriend’s ancient Chevy Chevette. The big night finally arrives. You and your date are on the dance floor, gazing wistfully into each other’s eyes, and swaying romantically to these lyrics:
“I remember, don’t worry. How could I ever forget?
It’s the first time, the last time, we ever met.
Oh, I know the reason why you keep this silence up…”
“The hurt doesn’t show, but the pain still grows…”
“If you were drowning, I would not lend a hand…”
What the hell is that? It should have won an award for Least Appropriate Prom Theme. (Another one would be Madonna’s “Papa Don’t Preach”.) I realize that the 80’s weren’t exactly a goldmine of great music, but surely they could have thought of something better than that.
Even worse, at that time we all believed the urban legend that Phil Collins wrote the song about a guy who drowned his childhood friend, sent the guy front row tickets to the concert, and after the show the guy committed suicide. (We didn’t have access to Snopes because Al Gore had not yet invented the Internet.)
Does anybody else need to ventilate about stupid school memories?
My sister’s prom used Bob Seger’s “Turn the Page”.
About an long-haired, overworked roadie complaining about his life (IIRC).
Great choice on the committee’s part.
I don’t even remember my prom themes, except for the fact that my best (guy) friend’s date ignored him the whole night, and I was bored in general (I don’t dance and couldn’t stand most of the people I went to high school with - it was mom’s-idea-to-go-to-the-prom-thing).
For the price of the dress alone, I could have bought several shares of stock.
OMG! I thought my high school was the only one lame enough to come up with ‘In the Air Tonight’ as a prom theme. Not only does it conjure up images of Miami Vice (remember Phil Collins as a drug dealer?), but I don’t think whoever selected the song knew what it was about! Stories vary, but the generally-accepted theme I heard had something to do with watching someone drown and not doing a thing about it. Not exactly a wholesome theme now, is it?
Just as cheesy, the next year the theme was ‘I Remember You’ by Skid Row. Sad.
(On a somewhat related note, what are prom themes today going to be? ‘Oops I Did It Again’? O’course, with all the apres-prom macking that goes on, maybe that’s more appropriate than I think…)
I know at our school, the juniors throw the prom, in honor of the seniors. Somehow, I ended up on planning prom this year, and we don’t have a “song”. Our theme is something along the lines of “Diamonds are Forever”, and our colors are black and silver. Is it just me or does that seem horribly overused? If we had a song though, It would probably be “Material Girl” or “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend”.
well, there was this one about some sort of female private eye who managed somehow to have sex with everyone she was investgating… then there was this reeeeal cheesy one about a brothel run out of a car wash place… and then…
uh, what? oh! PROM? ohhhh… sorry! I thought this was PORN themes… sheesh… don’t I look the fool…
uh, by the way, I never saw any of those movies… I just heard about em on the internet… honest…
PROM THEME: that stupid Bon Jovi song… forget the title thankfully, but the chorus is “I’m a cowboy, on a steel horse I ride” OH NO!! the title just came back to me… Wanted Dead Or Alive… I had blocked it out. Now I do not know if I will be able to sleep this week.
Back in my high school years, R.E.M.'s “The One I Love” was terribly popular for proms and such. Turns out the song is about a bitter betrayal (Michael Stipe’s mumbly singing made it unclear).
At our school we didn’t use a song as the theme for prom. We used, I don’t know, I guess…themes? Anyway, since the juniors throw the prom for the seniors (and get to go) the first (and better) one I went to had the theme of the Silver Screen. I was the Prom Committee chairperson so I had to come up with all these goofy ideas. We did the whole color scheme in red, black and silver. The picture prop was a director’s chair and the backdrop was an giant oversized film section-looking thing. We had little cardboard clapboards for all the tables and we had a huge styrofoam marquee out front. It was cheesy as hell.
The theme of my senior prom was something having to do with Aladdin. It was really stupid. I don’t remember much of it.
Well, it doesn’t really count as my prom I guess cuz it was my sophomore year in high school, but this was during the gulf war, and our formal dance for our class that year had a theme of “Protect our Troops.” Swear to GOD. We had yellow ribbons everywhere. It was hideous. They played that song “Get Here If You Can” and there were flags all over. My table almost got tossed for pretending to burn the little flag favors on the table.
I guess that at my school, the committee wasn’t creative enough to do an actual “theme”. The prom was always held at the same restaurant (the Chevy Chase); we always had DJ’s for every dance. I suppose we had prom theme colors, but the decorations consisted of a balloon or two at each table.
The “regular” dances were a lot more fun, I think partly because it’s easier to get down when you’re not wearing formal clothes. Those dances sometimes had real themes, like the Luau Dance. One time we had a marathon dance; we danced and danced and danced from like 8pm until 7am. (All I won was a crappy school sweatshirt.)
Even better than the official school dances were the dances at the American Legion every Friday night. Now, that was fun. I’ll freely admit my age here and say that when I was a high school freshman, breakdancing was really cool, and my friend Todd won all the contests. He was awesome. Looking back, I can’t understand how we managed to have such a good time without ingesting any alcohol.
I had a great pair of parachute pants, too: I could zip off the legs to make them shorts.
Hiro: Welcome. Cool name. The Valentine’s Day dance my junior year also had a Bon Jovi song for its theme: “Shot through the heart/And you’re to blame/You give love a bad name”. :rolleyes:
Our prom theme was “Stairway to Heaven.” That might have been cool in the '70’s, but my senior year was 1989. The other kids claimed there hadn’t been any good music made since Led Zep, a view I had some sympathy with.
Still, try dancing to “Stairway”–do you dance slow, or fast to it?
The last song at my prom (Unannounced, btw. My friend spent his last dance dancing with a chair) was “Midnight Train to Georgia.”
I thought this would win for worst song ever.
But I wasn’t nearly that lucky. The last song at the “Up all night” after graduation party that the class threw was “Hit the Road, Jack”…played as we were walking out of the building for the last time, at the last gathering of all the friends we’d made over the last 12 years. Talk about inappropriate.
At my high school, the keynote speech at graduation was not given by the valedictorian, but rather is selected in a competition of interested seniors.
This is supposed to help assure a higher quality speech.
It failed.
The speech for my graduation was the most pedantic and cliche ridden piece of tripe. I tried to count the cliches and ran out of fingers in a minute and a half.
I have (thankfully) blocked out memories of our prom themes. I have heard of schools choosing “Every Breath You Take” which is about STALKING, obsessive love. Nice.
One of the best first dates I ever had was when the guy broke a lull in the conversation by asking (out of nowhere) “Did you actually have FUN at your senior prom?” The resulting conversation–and his storytelling of his senior prom from hell–had me halfway in love with him before the evening was over. The answer, of course, was NO.
Well for my senior prom my high school chose the song “unchained melodies” Dont know if that was a good or bad choice because I didnt get to stay long enough to hear it or at even that point experience prom in general. I spent $200 on a dress and $100 in other excessories to stay for about 20-30 min. My Ex (at the time b/f) wasnt into the whole prom thing I guess…or maybe he was in a hurry to get back to oh gees what is her name…oh well sure as hell wasnt me. Anyway that was our prom song and theme “unchained melodies”.
(Anybody wanna donate to the “buy Gun a bus ticket to Albany so he can get laid” fund? Please? :))