Well, I’ve got TWO, for one traumatic, hellish breakup. “Sarah” by Fleetwood Mac for part one. “Still” by the Commodores for the second part of the breakup (it took a while). I couldn’t hear either song for YEARS without breaking down sobbing. In the car, at work, at my mother’s, if I heard either, it was crycrycry. Even today, I’m over it, but I still feel a little funny when I hear those songs…Unless you mean songs used in commercials? No commercial has ever ruined a song, or vice versa, IMO. A great artiste’s major work of art is hardly spoiled as background to a laxative commercial, or whatever - the great artiste is dancing all the way to the bank and ordering a bigger pool to be put in his back yard.
Ever since I heard that Preparation H wanted to use Johnny Cash’s ‘Ring of Fire’ in their commercials, I never hear R of F without smiling.
Ten and Ravel’s “Bolero.”
[quote=“Lucky_13, post:32, topic:542200”]
I can’t listen to “Angel” by Sarah McLachlan without thinking of those SPCA public-service announcements with the poor little dogs in the shelters. 
QUOTE]
Yessssss!
I’ve heard that the TV show "Out of This World, " from the late 1980s heyday of first-run syndication, ruined “Swing on a Star” for a good number of people (or at least a good percentage of those who actually watched the show).
Ditto Goodbye Horses.
A couple songs that were “our song” with exes who turned out to be Not Good People. I liked the songs before, loved them when they were “ours”, now I can’t hear them without mourning the good parts of a bad relationship.
In light of the Arrested Development thread, I nominate The Final Countdown. It’s a cheesetastic song in its own right, but I’ll never be able to not associate it with Gob and magic tricks, er illusions gone wrong.
[quote=“hellpaso, post:44, topic:542200”]
Same here
and Cartman singing " In the ghetto."
Oddly enough most songs I eventually manage to divorce from their unpleasant associations, or maybe just the ones that I like, including these. Helter Skelter is a raving rocker that was misinterpreted by a crazy killer who thought the Beatles were speaking to him through it, personally. Same with Piggies, in which I like the harpsichord bits particularly.
Perhaps because I never did particularly like Pachelbel’s Canon I’ve never been able to dissociate it from the movie Testament, where it is played while the last three surviving characters in the town, after a nuclear war, celebrate somebody’s last birthday with a candle on a graham cracker.
Post of the day!
Surfin’ bird - The Trashmen. If you don’t know why, I can’t encourage you to find out.