Just walked past a Mos Burger joint that was playing the Divinyls classic* I Touch Myself*.
It’s the kind of thing I encounter from time to time living in Japan. They played Green Day’s Minority at my kids’ kindergarten sports meet! (Going back a few years.)
I actually like both songs. They just seemed somewhat . . . out of place.
So, what-out-of-place songs have you heard?
In my one visit to a strip club (purely sociological interest, of course 
) one of the strippers was dancing to the Cantina song from Star Wars – Doot da doot da doot da doot.
I apologized to her for laughing.
A few years back, we attended our kids’ school Christmas (or “Winter” or “Holiday” or some damn thing… although it was a private school, so might have defiantly been “Christmas”) concert. They were 4th grade at the time.
The junior choir teacher, who was about 20, had decided it would be nice to have the 1st graders sing… “Let Me Entertain You.”
The most totally out of place music I ever heard was “Dance Around the Sun” from Riverdance played at a Chinese buffet. That was weird enough, but it was a version performed on Chinese instruments, with Chinese tonalities.
Took me forever to recognize the tune. Then I had to apologize to the staff for my very loud laughter.
With the aid of my iPhone (Shazam and Notepad), I actually started keeping track of awesome songs that I hear, that are rarely played and I’ve forgotten about. Here’s a list from the last year:
Bad Religion - 21st Century Digital Boy
Beck - Sexx Laws
Belly - Gepetto
Catherine Wheel - Black Metallic
Lush - Ladykillers
Primus - Winona’s Big Brown Beaver
The Refreshments - Banditos
Space - Female of the Species
World Party - Is it Like Today
Utah Saints - Something Good
A cardiac rehab class had a Karen Carpenter song on the intercom music.
So a bunch of people who had bad hearts mainly due to their rich diets were listening to a song sung by a woman whose heart gave out because she starved herself to death.
Well, from time to time, I’ll hear a Buddy Holly or Jim Croce or Lynyrd Skynyrd song playing on an airline’s in-flight music channel, and wonder if the program director thought twice about including them.
That’s nothing. A few years ago my wife and I were visiting a small United Methodist church, and the special music was a girl who appeared to be about first grade singing … “Let Me Entertain You.”
With choreography!
We’re talking a small congregation, maybe 20-25 people mostly elderly.
One example that was remarkably in-place was when I walked into a Walgreen’s and they were paying"I Want a New Drug" by Huey Lewis.
Another example that somebody told me about (I wasn’t actually there): at a charity event for the Make a Wish Foundation (a charity for terminally ill children), the DJ played "Die Young"by Ke$ha. Granted, I’m of the opinion that all Ke$ha songs are appropriate for all situations, but this is really pushing it.
When we were in Newfoundland the province rented a high-speed catamaran ferry called Max Mols from Denmark. We toured it when it was in port in St. John’s. One of the songs playing was “Let Her Go Down.”
Totally misunderstood the OP. :smack:
While waiting in line at Chipotle a couple of years ago, I heard Blue Oyster Cult’s “Godzilla” play over the restaurant’s sound system, which struck me as just a little out of character. 
OTOH, given that chain’s environmental / animal welfare approaches, maybe it’s not an entirely inappropriate song:
I’ve been trying for 10 years to convince MOS Burger to let me open a franchise in the US. No luck so far 
I laughed out loud* just reading that.
*(I was tempted to abbreviate that, but resisted.)
How would that look!? Not particularly sexy, I imagine.
I’m picturing the singing blob with stick legs who leads the band in Jabba’s fortress.
'sO.K. 
Actually . . .
Sidetrack:
Just a few days ago I was listening to Kate Bush’s Cloudbuster for the first time, and when I heard her sing “I just know that something good is gonna happen,” I thought I wonder if Utah Saints sampled this for their song?
Never realized the whole thing (video clip and all) was a re-mix of a Kate Bush song.
Sidetrack #2:
I’ve only eaten there a couple of times, but definitely much better than Mac.
Sidetrack tangent to thread: when I heard Placebo’s cover of “Running Up That Hill” in Starbucks I was 
. I mentioned to the server it was weird hearing a guy sing that. “Why? It’s a cool song.” “…about a girl explaining to her lover that her screaming during sex doesn’t mean it hurts…”
There’s no reason a bisexual guy wouldn’t want to explain the same thing… Not weird at all.
The only song I know with that title is by Queen and includes the line “We’ll have a sonofabitch of a time!” I’m assuming this is a different tune?
It’s from Gypsy, a musical about Gypsy Rose Lee. http://youtu.be/Hw0Cm3iY-MU
For several months the McDonald’s here in town had the Frank Sinatra channel on Sirius playing. Hearing Sinatra and Bing Crosby while eating a Big Mac seemed somehow very surreal and lovely to me. Unfortunately the 18-year-olds who work there have gotten it changed to whatever-18-year-olds-like now.
ETA Just to clarify; I don’t hate current music. I just enjoyed something a little different happening at McD’s.
**Voulez-vous coucher avec moi (ce soir)? (French pronunciation: [vule vu kuʃe avɛk mwa (sə swaʁ)], “Do you want to go to bed with me (tonight)?”) ** at a nice, staid Mormon dance. I wonder how many of them knew what it meant. (This was ages before the Lady Marmalade music video, so all they knew was that it was a catchy French song)
Unrelated to this (years later), I dated an LDS woman, who told me that, even though the books at the ZCMI store* were supposed to be “correlated” **, she could show me lots of steamy passages in near-pornographic romances on their shelves.
*Zion’s Cooperative Mercantile Institution – Utah’s big Department store, like Jordan Marsh in Boston or Marshall Fields in Chicago. Now swallowed up, like them, I believe, by the Department store conglomerates.
**Gone through by officials to be certain that nothing in them is doctrinally incorrect or corrupting to morals. I doubt if anything in them was doctrinally incorrect.