Mrs. L.A., RN, was on the phone with a doctor’s office. Their ‘hold music’ (or at least the music playing while she was on hold) was Be Still. Excerpt:
And when you go through the valley
And the shadow comes down from the hill
If morning never comes to be
Be still, be still, be still
It seems inappropriate for a doctor’s office to have a song about dying.
I would find another doctor, quickly! That’s just bizarre and a little too morbid for my tastes and I’ve got a pretty quirky sense of humor.
A local radio station promised an “I Don’t Like Mondays” contest, using the song by The Boomtown Rats as a theme.
Then they listened to the lyrics.
Come the Monday it was supposed to begin, there was no mention of the contest.
Just to be clear, it’s not Mrs. L.A.'s doctor. It was a nursing call about one of her patients, and it was the patient’s doctor.
(NB: I don’t listen to her calls. I tune them out entirely. Except this time, I couldn’t help hearing the dreary music.)
Unless the doctor micromanages every aspect of the office, s/he may be unaware of the hold music selection. I’m guessing that the selection was inadvertent.
I got put on hold. First song up started. “I…can’t wait…forever. Even though…you want…me to…”
Yeah, rub it in!
I once saw a TV spot for homes in Anchorage that used “California Dreamin’” as the background music. Since the company’s best salesman was my cousin, I let him know. The ad was immediately canned and the agency fired. 
I would expect that the music is from a subscription service and the doctor’s office likely has no idea what’s on the playlist. They may have chosen a broad genre like Smooth Jazz, Favorite Oldies, Soft Rock or somesuch, but I suspect 98+% of the music service’s customers never ask what the individual songs are. And it wouldn’t surprise me if 88+% of the clients/patients don’t notice things like this – lots of people don’t actually know and/or think about the lyrics to songs they hear repeatedly.
The trucking company I used to drive for had a local radio station as the hold music but no one in the building could hear it. Somehow it got off station and all you heard on hold was static. Now every driver (132 of them) was required to call in at least once a day and you WERE going to spend at least a few seconds or more on hold. The third day I asked the dispatcher why it was still not back on the station and was told I was the first to mention the problem.
It was a terrible radio station and I think most drivers thought the static was better, but it probably didn’t instill much confidence in the customers.
I came here to pretty much say the same thing.
Now, if this song was played on a loop, that would be another story.
Yes, I got that Mrs. LA was calling on behalf of a patient, sorry, I was just inserting myself into the situation. I really need to stop doing that 
.
I just saw this ad for Bud Light, featuring the song “Nobody Speak” by DJ Shadow and Run the Jewels. Catchy tune, but the lyrics start with
Picture this, I’m a bag of dicks
Put me to your lips
I am sick, I will punch a baby bear in his shit…
…and go downhill from there. Maybe not quite inappropriate since the ad omits the lyrics, but it still threw me when I heard the opening riff in a beer ad.
Full song here spoilered as potentially NSFW (the video is safe, the audio not so much).
That reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Homer had to call the mental institution (I think it was the one with the fat, white Michael Jackson) and the hold music was “Crazy” by Patsy Cline.
Clear Channel needs to hear from you: Clear Channel memorandum - Wikipedia
I was in Canton, Ohio on the day that the space shuttle *Challenger *blew up. A local radio DJ started playing Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m Goin’ Down” later that day, then took it off after about 20 seconds and apologized to listeners.
This also would have been inappropriate:
Heartbeat
This song is by Riggs and appears on the movie soundtrack Heavy Metal: Music from the Motion Picture (1981).
Back in November, when I was with my oncologist, a man in his late 60s, for my quarterly exam, his cell phone rang. The ringtone was “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Rolling Stones. Freaked me out a bit, for some reason.
[Moderating]
Channing Idaho Banks, we take copyright seriously here. Quoting a short excerpt is allowed under Fair Use, but quoting an entire work is not. As such, I’ve shortened the quote in your post.
There was also one where Maggie was missing and Homer called the missing child hotline and “Baby Come Back” was playing.
There’s a recent Bounce fabric softener commercial to the tune of the Outfield’s “Your Love”. The words were obviously changed, because the song is about a guy whose SO is out of town and he wants to cheat on her with an underage girl. :smack:
Jethro Tull’s “Thick as a Brick” was used in a Hyundai commercial. It was an instrumental version, but I’d still sing along: “Your sperm’s in the gutter/your love’s in the sink!”
“Fortunate Son” has been used many times in a non-ironic patriotic sense, using only the words: “Some folks are born made to wave the flag, ooh the red white and blue…”
Remember when Ronald Reagan tried to use “Born in the U.S.A.” as his presidential campaign song?