MetaChat - Fourteen songs you should never play in a bar

"...This song, much like Jenna Jameson’s vagina, once was great, but years of non-stop commercialized rocking have made it unsuitable for use...."

LOL

posted by essexjan 21 June | 12:55

he's wrong about "Don't Stop believin'"

he's semi-on-target about Piano Man, since it will one day incite a mass bar suicide, i think.

posted by jonmc 21 June | 12:56

I did play it at mt beloved remote Sports bar and i was bracing for moroseness, but then Leo, this dreadlocked black retired NYFD guy raised his palm for a hi-five and said 'You played my song, motherfucker!"

It's a weird world.

posted by jonmc 21 June | 12:58

Didn't like the tone, or the fact that putting Sheryl Crow on the jukebox makes me a cougar with a fupa.

posted by muddgirl 21 June | 12:59

Yeah, I'm with muddgirl about the tone. I think the guy who wrote this is probably pretty uptight and not so fun to be around. But parts of it were cute...

posted by Sil 21 June | 13:33

Hey, I'll play whatever the fuck I want. My money's as green as anybody's, and if the bar owner didn't want people to play the sixteen-minute version of 'I Heard It Through the Grapevine' on CCR's Greatest Hits, then they wouldn't've put it on the jukebox. And if you don't want to hear it, you can either put your money where your mouth is or find a new goddamn bar.

posted by box 21 June | 13:45

I walked into a bar last night and Freebird was playing. I almost turned around and walked right back out.

(so this list is just a starting point ya ask me)

posted by kodama 21 June | 13:46

*favorites box's comment*

posted by bmarkey 21 June | 13:48

This is pretty much the list I would have come up with. Not because of any particular social stereotypes though.

No, wait, there's one--I was out one night during college at the local chain "bar", and this one group of drunken asshole Southern fratboy business or whatever majors monopolized the jukebox and played nothing but "Sweet Home Alabama" for two hours.

posted by casarkos 21 June | 13:55

Didn't like the tone

Me either, it's mean-spirited. Could have been done better without setting up stereotypes and then slamming them.

posted by Miko 21 June | 14:00

What if these are the only ten songs on the jukebox?

Well, the only ten non-shitty songs?

posted by stilicho 21 June | 14:04

I LOVE jukeboxes - sadly there is only one bar here that has one. Of course, it is now my regular hangout.

Can't stand bars where the tenders pay whatever CD they have over and over and over and over......ANd it's something they got at starbucks with "world musak"

posted by dabitch 21 June | 14:10

There was a trucker dive in Beloit, WI, that my friend Dave and I used to frequent at 3am to get the greasiest fried cheese balls in the Midwest.

On the jukebox they had Faith No More's cover of "Easy" by the Commodores.

On the flipside of which was a polka called "Das Schutzenfest." A polka.

After finishing our cheese balls and observing the local color, we would get $3 worth of quarters and select "Das Schutzenfest". Twelve times over.

Then we'd leave.

posted by mykescipark 21 June | 14:11

Can I just say how much I detest the label cougar? It's demeaning. So nice to know that any woman over 35 (or 40 or whatever it is) out anywhere in public without a man has now been lumped into the category of desperate horndog on the prowl.

posted by iconomy 21 June | 14:16

Yeah, there's pretty much a derogatory label for women of any age right now. Cougar, MILF, ad nauseum. (I guess "cougars" differ from "MILFs" in their level of desperation?)

Not all that surprising really. But I still wish it would die. I didn't really get past "cougar" in the first entry of that list.

posted by mudpuppie 21 June | 14:28

Yeah, I'm pretty down on 'cougar'--the word's rapid ascension seems like more of the same misogynistic, ageist anti-sex double standard in yet another new guise.

And me, well, let's just say that I'm strongly in favor of sexed-up women, thirtysomething or otherwise. Strongly.

posted by box 21 June | 14:38

It's kind of cute in a way. He's just so certain that he'll never get old, and he'll always wear the coolest clothes, and he'll never get put on weight, and there'll never be another generation that thinks his old-fart music sucks.

Boy's got some shocks coming...

posted by TheophileEscargot 21 June | 14:47

Good, I'm glad I'm not the only one who came in here to say what everyone else is already saying better. Fuck this asshole and his nasty attitude. I take my forty something self and my forty something girlfriends out to bars and play whatever the hell I want on the jukebox (mostly The Band because they have all of Northern Lights, Southern Cross on the Broadways jukebox and I could listen to Acadian Driftwood pretty much every day for the rest of my life and be okay with it) and nobody has ever given me flack except for the time I went on that Modest Mouse binge and, okay, they were somewhat justified. There are ways to make fun of Sweet Home Alabama and Journey without being an ageist, misogynistic asshole.

posted by mygothlaundry 21 June | 15:02

There are ways to make fun of Sweet Home Alabama and Journey without being an ageist, misogynistic asshole

And it's also possible to simply enjoy them as good songs to drink beer to.

posted by jonmc 21 June | 15:06

Also, these days, even a lot of dives have those internet jukeboxes where you can pretty much play anything, which can make for weird moments.

posted by jonmc 21 June | 15:08

Yeah, I'm pretty down on 'cougar'

I'll admit that when all those 40+ women would flirt with me at work, I called them 'Jon's Cougar's" but come on, that's too good a pun to resist, right?

posted by jonmc 21 June | 15:10

Yeah, I actually like Lynyrd Skynyrd quite a lot but I'll grant the satirists of the world that Sweet Home Alabama and Freebird are low hanging fruit if you want to start mocking music. I'm all for mocking pretty much anything, but only if it's funny and not just nastiness/entitlement (bars should only be full of people I think are cool! Which is a really small subset of people who look just exactly right and are all 21 to 24 years old with college degrees and tans! Amirite?!?) masquerading as humor.

And on preview - the internet jukeboxes are pretty strange. I haven't decided whether I like them yet or not. On the one hand they have got a bigger selection but on the other you used to be able to tell a lot about a bar and its clientele by what was on the jukebox and I miss that.

posted by mygothlaundry 21 June | 15:12

I once played some Richard Marx song 5 times back to back in a Pizza Hut as I was leaving. Pretty assholey thing to do, still I wish I stayed for the ensuing chaos. I wonder if anyone even noticed.
Smash the corporate system from the inside out!

posted by Hellbient 21 June | 15:14

I've done the same thing with Chris DeBurgh's 'Lady in Red' at a high-school cafeteria, and with Fishbone's 'Skankin' to the Beat' (a 7-inch from the Say Anything soundtrack w/Peter Gabriel's 'In Your Eyes' on the A-side, if memory serves--wait, can that possibly be right?) at, yup, a Pizza Hut. Do Pizza Huts still have jukeboxes?

posted by box 21 June | 15:15

I once got in trouble for playing the Allman Bros 'Pony Boy' three time in a row in a pizza joint. Idaho wasn't very progressive.

posted by RussHy 21 June | 15:22

I haven't decided whether I like them yet or not.

I like them. I've managed to introduce the old farts at my bar to the Bottlerockets, Dictators and Bellrays via those jukes and (surprise surprise) they dug them.

posted by jonmc 21 June | 15:22

I'd prefer all of those songs over any Guns and Roses.

posted by spork 21 June | 15:23

Oh, I dunno--I might make an exception for that Manson cover.

The internet jukeboxes are pretty neat, I think. At least at some of the places I've visited, everything that somebody downloads is stored on a hard drive inside the jukebox, and could then be played later at the cheap local-media price instead of the pricier download price. And so you still get some of that clientele/management thing going on.

posted by box 21 June | 15:26

I didn't like the tone either. I don't like anybody that insults pop culture in a nasty, I'm-cool-and-obscure-and-you're-not way. There is a reason why these songs make a ton of cash. They're halfway decent and a ton of people love them. I love when Carlos Santana gets together with pop stars. I can do without Rob Thomas but I love the Michelle Branch/Carlos Santana songs.

I for one love the song, Freebird. I have to agree about Sweet Home Alabama. My husband is under 37 (by one year) and loves Piano Man. He loved that song at 21 or younger. With a passion he loves that song. Different strokes for different folks.

posted by LoriFLA 21 June | 15:35

This list makes me cringe because it's as something I'd have written when I was a stuck-up 16 year old who knew that anyone listening to anything pop-ier than industrial or punk rock was a fucking poseur. Fuck that noise!

posted by small_ruminant 21 June | 15:36

I Will Survive & Dancing Queen go down well in gay bars.

But you shouldn't play them on the jukebox becoz you'll hear them seventy-nine times each in the one night, so it's a waste of $2.

posted by UbuRoivas 21 June | 15:36

the guy who wrote this is an asshole holding a grudge over that night everyone in the bar cornered him in the short dark corridor leading to the restrooms and hawked loogies on him.

posted by quonsar 21 June | 15:49

OK, I didn't want to say too much at first. I'm glad I'm not the only person who was creeped out by that guy. I generally go to pretty divey bars, and there's a certain level of tolerance we've all got to have for each other - they've got to put up with my 80's new wave obsession, and I'll drink to their love of country pop ballads.

posted by muddgirl 21 June | 16:07

*80's new wave obsession*

woo - puts *all we ever wanted was everything* on the jukebox!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMPCJHgoBDw

posted by UbuRoivas 21 June | 16:34

*your taste in jukebox music sucks*

posted by iconomy 21 June | 16:43

good. because you're gonna hear it twelve more times!

posted by UbuRoivas 21 June | 16:46

I will happily sing along to any of the songs that he mentioned.

posted by gaspode 21 June | 16:47

I think this list works better as the 14 Best Karaoke Songs.

posted by occhiblu 21 June | 17:08

(except for It's the End of the World as we Know It: blahdeblahdeblahdeblahde - oh! Leonard Bernstein! - blahdeblah It's the end of the world as we know it...)

posted by UbuRoivas 21 June | 17:12

They forgot that "Closing Time" song, that actually rarely gets jukebox play, but some douchebag always belts out when it's last call. I always want to punch that guy.

posted by middleclasstool 21 June | 17:13

A lot of those songs might not be great karaoke choices because they demand too much technical skill from the singer.

You know what makes a surprisingly-good karaoke song? The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme. I can only presume that some kind of tv-theme technicality kept it off the list of rap songs white people love.

posted by box 21 June | 17:15

(except for It's the End of the World as we Know It: blahdeblahdeblahdeblahde - oh! Leonard Bernstein! - blahdeblah It's the end of the world as we know it...)

See, I'd find that charming...

posted by occhiblu 21 June | 17:18

nth-ing the ixnay on the onetay. not funny or cool.

other than that, I agree with the list itself except for smooth. and mgl's right about the indicator of clientele. and box is right too.

LOL @ the polka. I always wanted to see Judy Garland's flipside of It's a Great Day for the Irish in a jukebox: A Pretty Girl Milking Her Cow. Only reason I know that is because I bought the 45 as a joke in high school. Yes. I am old.

posted by chewatadistance 21 June | 17:57

Who doesn't sing along to "I Will Survive"?

Maybe it's generational; the song was a hit during my childhood, so it got hammered into my head at a young age. But for me, it seems like a perfect, easy song to belt out after a drink or two: it's in a pretty easy range, the lyrics are simple but with a strong narrative, and it's fun. Blowsy, brassy fun.

Jukeboxes aren't usually equipped for the more esoteric tastes. I don't judge a person's musical tastes by jukebox choices any more than I judge their dietary habits by what they eat at the county fair. Because, y'know, I'm not stupid.

Planning your jukebox playlist as a way to look cool ... well, that's profoundly uncool. Notice that the ~~author~~ typer of this list doesn't point out songs that are acceptable, perhaps for fear of being mocked for poor taste.

posted by Elsa 21 June | 18:05

I just got home from a wedding where a friend and I were predicting what music would be played. We said:

Dancing Queen - Abba

Come On Eileen - Dexy's Midnight Runners

It's Raining Men - Weather Girls

R.E.S.P.E.C.T - Aretha Franklin

Wake Me Up Before You GoGo - Wham

Hi Ho Silver Lining - Jeff Beck (this is the UK equivalent to Livin' on a Prayer in terms of its role at parties - everyone jumping around singing to it, DJ turning the music down at strategic points in the song)

Celebration - Kool and the Gang

Love Shack - B52s

YMCA - Village People

Night to Remember - Shalimar

New York, New York - Frank Sinatra

We were 100% right, and as an added bonus, we got Sweet Home Alabama too.

posted by essexjan 21 June | 18:16

With everyone else on "don't like the tone." Also, I swear this was the exact playlist for every high school dance and half the college events I attended, with the shameless and horrifying addition of "YMCA." (Please note that most of the high school dances I attended were through some debating organization or another. I'll allow you to form your own stereotypes about the diabolical nature of DJs at debate club dances.)

posted by brina 21 June | 20:26

Seems somehow related, and I'm just kinda trying to work it in: On a long drive today, I heard Kid Rock's All Summer Long during radio scanning at least three times. Wonder whether this would be acceptable in lieu of "Sweet Home Alabama?" Maybe it would get bonus points for having no MILFs!

posted by Miko 21 June | 21:17

I see that you all do not like this link.

*shrugs*

Nobody bats 1.0. Not even me.

I hope that y'all like the next one better.

posted by jason's_planet 21 June | 22:56

The link is good, just so we can see the guy's list and ridicule it.

posted by BoringPostcards 21 June | 23:06

That site is part of break.com, which is affiliate ad company and very commercial "niche market" network of sites geared towards young guys. The CEO describes it as "Maxim meets Perez Hilton" so, basically, they are trying to put together the golden ticket of titty pix and mean-spirited satire, and everything is strictly formulaic content from paid writers.

posted by taz 22 June | 01:49

Aaaah, that's why it wasn't funny. See, meanspirited lists can be really funny sometimes - when they're, youknow, real. Bitching can be hilarious, but it seems the only way to "bitch right" is to not get paid to do it.

posted by dabitch 22 June | 04:24

My favorite line in that press release? "According to CEO Keith Richman, these sites fill a void on the Web"

... because there are hardly any sites for 18-34 year-old males on the internet, apparently.

posted by taz 22 June | 04:47

(I guess "cougars" differ from "MILFs" in their level of desperation?)

No, a MILF is someone you'd like to nail. A cougar is someone who wants to nail you.

So nice to know that any woman over 35 (or 40 or whatever it is) out anywhere in public without a man has now been lumped into the category of desperate horndog on the prowl.

Being "on the prowl" is what defines a cougar (hence the term). Simply being out in public without a man doesn't make you a cougar. Anyone who tells you different is doing it wrong and should be ignored. Or better, met with the sort of ridicule and derision they're (incorrectly) heaping on you.

I didn't read the list, but this thread has some great comments. Wouldn't worry too much about anything on a website that claims to be part of Break.com's network, where the second item in the banner (after news, of course) is "babes". Obviously v. serious journalism.

posted by Eideteker 22 June | 09:29

No, a MILF is someone you'd like to nail. A cougar is someone who wants to nail you.

As a friend of mine and I noted just the other day, it's a curious age you reach when you stop thinking "Hey, she's quite a MILF" and start thinking "Hey, she's pretty hot."

posted by middleclasstool 22 June | 11:04

The terms MILF and cougar are just depressing to me - the way they immediately convey that women belong in categories related to their sexual desirability among a certain type of men. Even the idea that you could pass from "MILF" to "hot" is rife with assumptions about what women are supposed to be attractive when - the change hasn't occurred in the women, but in the men's estimation of their sexual attractiveness.

posted by Miko 22 June | 11:51

Further clarification:

≡ Click to see image ≡

posted by Eideteker 22 June | 13:17

The sad thing is that the dudes using "MILF" probably think they're doing the ladies a favor by reminding them they're "still sexy."

posted by Eideteker 22 June | 13:19

The terms MILF and cougar are just depressing to me - the way they immediately convey that women belong in categories related to their sexual desirability among a certain type of men.

Well, there are similar terms to 'cougar' for men; 'dirty old man' springs to mind. Hell, I just like slang, politically correct or not.

posted by jonmc 22 June | 13:56

To put it another way: my job, retail, entails dealing with the public and their weirdness on a monotonously regualar basis. My younger male co-workers are the subject of regular craigslist 'missed connection' posts and passed phone numebers from young nubiles. More power to them. My 37-year-old married (as in visible wedding band) self gets hit on by the 45+ year old contingent exclusively. I conclude that this is because they've let they're standards of both appearance and propriety slide. So, there is definitely a difference between the way younger and older women act when it comes to men.

posted by jonmc 22 June | 14:11

Who puts REM on the jukebox to try and display their hipness quotient, anyway? This guy is sadly uninformed.

And nthing the "cougar" and MILF thing. Hate it.

posted by jokeefe 22 June | 16:03

Even the idea that you could pass from "MILF" to "hot" is rife with assumptions about what women are supposed to be attractive when - the change hasn't occurred in the women, but in the men's estimation of their sexual attractiveness.

Sure, I understand and sympathize with the distaste for labels like those. "MILF" is, for instance, never a term I've used unironically, and "cougar" one I've never used in any context.

The observation on our part had nothing to do (or at least was intended to have nothing to do) with what women are "supposed" to be attractive at what times, it was more a comment on landmarks that remind us we're getting older. Most straight adolescents and young men have intense fantasies about older women, particularly those in positions of authority (e.g., teachers). Those fantasies play a powerful role in our sexual development, and I'm sure have some deep roots in the psyche.

But one day you wake up and realize that you're in that age group, that you're as old as those women you used to fantasize about as a boy. As you said, it wasn't that the women themselves had changed at all -- I find women my age and older just as attractive as I did two decades ago, and for the same reasons (though minus the authority fantasy, of course), but the eye-opener was that it's no longer a sort of May-December fantasy.

posted by middleclasstool 22 June | 16:18

To be honest, I've never used 'cougar' or 'milf' in casual coversation, I usually will just say 'hot older woman,' when I feel the need to differentiate.

posted by jonmc 22 June | 16:25

But one day you wake up and realize that you're in that age group, that you're as old as those women you used to fantasize about as a boy.

you can make a similar kind of point about other kinds of erstwhile 'gods' - like rock gods or professional sportsmen. by about 30 you're older than 90% or more them.

it's an almost banal, trivial truth, but it's still funny to watch the olympics, say, and realise that it's basically just a bunch of kids who don't know their asses from their elbows.

posted by UbuRoivas 22 June | 16:55

(i'm quite ageist like that; it's horrible, i know)

posted by UbuRoivas 22 June | 16:57

it's an almost banal, trivial truth, but it's still funny to watch the olympics, say, and realise that it's basically just a bunch of kids who don't know their asses from their elbows.

Ubu, the other day I was in the emergency room and the (very professional, competent, and pleasant) female doctor who gave me a tetanus shot looked like a damned kid to me. You want hitting middle-age thrown into stark relief, there's nothing like that.

posted by jonmc 22 June | 17:02

21 June 2008