It’s just called “Hallelujah”. Good luck avoiding that one, it seems like for a few years there it was in everything!
“Lean on me,” I absolutely cannot stand that song now because of when it was playing.
Come Away With Me, Norah Jones
Lovin Touchin Squeezin, Journey
Deep Inside of You, Third Eye Blind
various others I fortunately can’t remember.
All found on a CD from my wife’s boyfriend, among other sex-related parapharnalia. I hated Third Eye Blind anyway but Norah Jones?! Come one, I love her.
Oof.
That was about my reaction, yes. Serious gut punch.
Sarah McLachlan’s haunting song *Angel *- ruined by that fucking SPCA commercial. All I think about are beat up puppies & kittens when I hear it.
That one, for me, too. Right at the time the song was popular, my girlfriend dumped me for a friend of mine. I could so easily picture the two of them finding that the lyrics perfectly fit them (I have no idea if they actually did or not), and so, every time I heard the song, it brought everything back up again.
Now, 25 years later, I’m over it :)…and, I, too, recognize it’s a crummy song, as well.
I had Alabama’s Dixie Land Delight stuck in my head when I had a skiing accident, twisted my knee up in deep powder.
It’s pathetic but when I hear that song, I get sick to my stomach and my knee hurts a little.
Believe it or not, but *Amazing Grace *played on bagpipes. It seems that everytime there is a cop or firefighter funeral, they have to play this, and it’s almost even become cliche.
Once upon a time (1972), this hymn, as performed by the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards reached number one in the charts in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, Canada and South Africa, and even then, it was a novelty number, if nothing else.
And then you never heard it again…until 9/11 and its aftermath.
or a Starfleet Captain …
Bowie’s “Young Americans”, but I’m going to skip the embarrassing details ;).
Same here, but because it was my Mom’s favorite song to listen to on her mp3 player after she had her stroke. She was 62, I used to have to play it for her over and over. After about 4 months, she gave up the fight and passed away. So now I can’t hear the song without… well, you know.
And I hate the fact that they use it for that commercial.
“These Dreams” by Heart and “Kyrie” by Mr. Mister. Yeah, …a breakup.
Rarely hear either but once in a while I will and it flashes me right back.
“The Glory of Love” (the theme from Karate Kid 2, I believe) and also “Once Upon a Time” by the Moody Blues. Both of these songs were popular the summer after I started going out with my current spouse, in college. I stayed in town over the summer, he went home, and something weird went on in my head…I just couldn’t decide whether I loved him or not. It was like some kind of really strange depression that I’d never had before and never had since. I associate both of those songs with that feeling.
He came back to school that fall and after a little awkward period where I sorted out my feelings, I decided that I had made the right decision. We just had our 21st anniversary last month, so I guess I was right. 
There’s a better version (NSFW) of it now.
Tease!
Total Eclipse of the Heart - Bonnie Tyler
I can’t hear this one without thinking of the first guy that broke my heart.
A lot of songs from when I was a kid make me feel sad even though they’re songs that I love - because I know that I can never go back to that time, and that makes me sad. Songs in this category are a lot of the earlier Beatles songs, plus Abbey Road (when I was 5 or 6 my dad always used to play early Beatles like Thank You Girl and Abbey Road - no Sgt. Pepper’s, no Revolver, nothing else) and I’ll always associate those songs with my very happy childhood in a beautiful house in a gorgeous neighborhood and the endlessly-interesting social life I had in school with my friends. It just makes me sad, because I wish I could go back there. Similarly a lot of songs that came out in the late 1990s like Lovefool by The Cardigans, Barely Breathing by Duncan Shiek, Summertime by The Sundays, Semi-Charmed Life by Third Eye Blind, make me sad (even though I think they’re all great songs) because they take me back to another great time in my childhood, when I was 11 or 12, and it makes me depressed that I’ve gotten older.
A roommate’s mom died suddenly; we weren’t girly-close, and I had no idea how to comfort her until her husband got home, so that, and the osmosis of it all put me in the mood to commiserate alone. *yeah, that makes sense…
Anyway, Napster was in full force, and I went looking for some music. I love Peter Gabriel, and found ‘Grieve’, which I hadn’t heard, and listened to it several times during the evening. I love that song a great deal, but I canNOT hear it without bawling now. Which sucks, cause I really like that song! *Yes I know, there’s irony in there somewhere
"Start me Up" by the Rolling Stones, microsoft used it as the ad for Windows 95, and at that time I was a truly hard-core Mac fanatic, the “I spit on the ground bill gates walks on” and “everything microsoft touches is evil” type that wanted nothing more than the total thermonuclear obliteration of microsoft, I was truly an Apple Cultist (I’ve gotten better though…)
Hearing the opening riffs of “Start Me Up” always made me angry, as I associated it with a company that I truly and completely loathed, I still can’t listen to the song without feeling mildly annoyed
On a less-negative note, the movie Wayne’s World has made me associate the ** Queen** song Bohemian Rhapsody with the scene of Wayne and Garth headbanging to BR in the Mirthmobile, I can’t take that song “seriously” ever again