Hilarious in Hindsight/Music

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• In 2007, Lily Allen came out with the hit song "Alfie", about a girl whose little brother is an underachieving stoner. A few years later, her actual little brother, Alfie Allen, got famous for playing Alan Strang on Broadway and Theon Greyjoy in Game of Thrones. Ironically, as of Lily's hiatus in 2010, Alfie has a busier career than his big sister.
• The Who Sell Out by The Who was a mock radio program promoting products from the typical (cars, soft drinks) to the ridiculous (deodorant, baked beans, acne cream). Today, companies use rock songs for commercials, even if they have nothing to do with the products they're promoting.
• In a 1970 interview, The Rolling Stones' Mick Jagger was quoted as saying, "I'd rather be dead than singing 'Satisfaction' when I'm forty-five." Sir Mick, now pushing 70, continues to perform the song at every concert the Stones give.
  • John Lennon said similar things about not wanting to sing "I Want To Hold Your Hand" when he was 40. Which makes it also Harsher in Hindsight. Doubly ironic in that Lennon claimed in interviews in 1980 he was going to go on tour in 1981 and he was hoping to perform a rearranged version of the song.
• Still The Twelfth Man mentions "Wasee Acrim" ("Was he a crim?"), a pun on Pakistani cricketer Wasim Akram - several years before Akram was the subject of match-fixing allegations.
• Bob Dylan's fan community had lots of fun with the 1978 song "No Time To Think" during the Clinton impeachment because it includes the line "In the Federal City you've been blown and shown pity."
  • On Before The Flood, his 1974 live album with The Band, when he sings the line "Even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked" in "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleedng)", the crowd absolutely roars, presumably because they're associating it with the ongoing Watergate scandal. The studio version came out in 1965.
  • In 1975 the New Musical Express ran a hoax article claiming that Bob Dylan recorded a Christmas album but never released it. In 2009, Dylan recorded a Christmas album for real. In fact, early rumors even claimed that it included one of the songs mentioned in the NME piece, "Frosty The Snowman", though it ultimately did not.
• The music video for Rage Against the Machine's song "Testify" prominently displays gas prices, intended to be shocking presumably...at $1.79. Oh, Mr. De La Rocha...
  • In 2000, the band recorded footage of them playing outside Wall Street to a roaring crowd. Eleven years later during the Occupy Wall Street protests, many fans wondered if Rage would come back to Wall Street for another performance. (They didn't.)
• In the musical The Music Man, the song "Gary, Indiana" was originally a demonstration of how much of a liar Harold Hill was, as he was singing about living in Gary several years before it was actually founded in real life. It's much more ironic now when you juxtapose Harold's joyful "memories" of Gary with how much of a craphole the city is today.
• During a mid-nineties fad of Uber-nationalism in Venezuela, singer Carlos Baute rose to fame by singing several pseudo-folkloric songs, one of them was dedicated to claim how much he loved the country no matter how bleak the future looked and included the lyric "I stay in Venezuela, because I'm optimistic". Suddenly, in 2000, he moved his career to Spain, and has trying to distance from his past and the political situation of his mother country since then.
  • It gets better: it was eventually revealed that the composer of that song was a Venezuelan too... and wasn't even living in the country at the time he wrote it, either.
• In the "time makes it funnier" vein, Tom Smith has a folk song called "Tech Support For Dad," wherein he laments doing over-the-phone tech help for his father, a fairly clueless computer user. It includes the line "Turns out he'd bought his Compaq before Clinton was impeached," which Smith says "gets funnier every year."
• One of the last songs recorded by The Smiths, "Paint A Vulgar Picture," bemoaned the music industry's habit of continually rehashing of old material ("Best Of/Most Of/Satiate the Need!/Slip Them into Different Sleeves!/Buy Both, and Feel Deceived!"). After The Smiths broke up, the band's record label faced criticism for continually releasing compilations of Smiths recordings, each sharing most of the same songs repeatedly, including one poorly received Greatest Hits collection that was split onto two separately sold albums -- Fans bought both and felt deceived.
• The Public Enemy song Caught, Can I Get a Witness?, which features Flavor Flav remarking "Y'all can't copyright no beat," is a first-person narrative about someone getting "caught, now in court cuz I stole a beat." The song was already written three years before Grand Upright v. Warner established a precedent in the United States clarifying that "beats" are protected under copyright law and not to be used without permission.
  • That same song contains a second example, where Chuck D asks all of the members of Public Enemy if they think PE will sell out. When he gets to Flavor Flav: "Yo Flav, you think we're gonna sell out?" "I know if we do, we'll get the hell out!"
• For Mickey Mouse's 75th Anniversary, Disney commissioned an exhibit around Disney World called Insp-EAR-ations which featured Mickey Mouse statues of various garb designed by various celebrities before being auctioned off. One of the statues was "Mickey Nation 1928," commissioned by Janet Jackson, featuring Mickey wearing clothing based on that worn by Janet during her Rhythm Nation era. However, her notorious Super Bowl "Nipplegate" halftime appearance occurred and as a result, Disney had to pull the statue from the exhibit.
  • Speaking of the "Nipplegate" fiasco, this was posted on Newgrounds in 2001 - three years before Super Bowl XXXVIII.
• Paul McCartney once wrote, "Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm 64?" On his 64th birthday, he was embroiled in a messy divorce with his second wife.
  • In an interview from 1964, 21-year-old Paul says that he'd like to retire someday. The host quips that it will probably be in the far-off year of 2010. He's still touring, songwriting, recording, and keeping an obsessively productive work schedule in general 46 years later.
  • The song's opening line is "When I get older losing my hair." Paul still had his hair by age 64.
• The New Musical Express spoofed Oasis's thrall to the Beatles and their tendency to plagarize with a fictitious interview in which Noel Gallagher claimed to be 'Bigger Than God'. Just one year later, in real life, Noel Gallagher made exactly the same claim.
• From a promo for Lou Reed's Transformer: "In the midst of all the make believe madness, the mock depravity, and the pseudo-sexual anarchists, Lou Reed is the real thing." That's right, Transformer - the one produced by David Bowie.
• In 1976 the retro/disco group Dr. Buzzard's Original "Savannah" Band had a hit with the song "Cherchez La Femme." The opening verse contained a Shout-Out to their manager, Tommy Mottola. Later Mottola became famous as the president of CBS Records and the mentor and husband of Mariah Carey. But after his bitter 1997 divorce from Carey, the song's lyrics about Mottola suddenly rang true: "He lost his lady two months ago/Maybe he'll find her, maybe he won't...I guess you could say the man has learned his lesson/Now he's alone, he's got no woman and no home."
• The band Garbage, led by Shirley Manson, recorded the title track for the James Bond film The World Is Not Enough; the music video featured a robotic duplicate of Manson killing her, taking her place at the front of the band, then blowing herself up at a concert for the rich and famous. Now that Manson's playing the T-1000, the music video takes on a slightly different meaning.
  • Also, this interview has Manson replying to the rumor that her name was "made up as a mixture of Shirley Temple and Charles Manson".
• Deep Forest's song "Desert Walk", from their self-titled album, features a rather unusual-sounding sample at about 3:30 into the song. Playing it backwards reveals a snarky message in French, claiming that the group made their own samples to avoid paying royalties to rights agencies. But the apparent reason the album has not been re-released is that Deep Forest failed to get full permission from the anthropologist whose work they did, in fact, sample. Oops.
• Tom Lehrer has pointed out that "I Got it From Agnes," which is about a group of friends who share everything and happen to pass whatever it is from male to female and female to male, takes a different light now, after AIDS and other STDs have come into public consciousness.
  • Another example is the opening lines of "George Murphy": "Hollywood's often tried to mix/show business with politics/from Helen Gahagan/to ...Ronald Reagan?"
  • Talking of "Smut", the song suddenly got even funnier given the appearance of Lost Girls.
  • His take on Wernher von Braun's future career plans has also gotten a lot funnier in later years: ""In German und Englisch I know how to count down ... und I'm learning Chinese", says Wernher von Braun".
• In I Would Never, Riki Lindhome sings "I would never have sex with you/ Believe me, you'd know it if I wanted to/ I already would have shown my boobs to you/ But that will never happen." Cue the 2008 version of The Last House On The Left...
• The folk song "Lizzie Lindsay" is a wistful romantic tune, but it loses something to modern audiences for the male character being named "Sir Ronald McDonald".
• In Starflyer 59's music video "A Housewife Love Song", Julie Marsuli starred--opposite the band frontsman Jason Martin--as the wife who, at the end, flips out against her distant husband and drives off into the night. As a result of meeting on-set, Jason and Julie started dating and soon married. However, they've so far avoided reenacting the end of the video, as they're still together.
• In a Christian youth magazine a music reviewer goes a question about the debut album of Clay Aiken. The reviewer was glowing in his report of some comments from the 2003 American Idol runner-up, particularly a statement where after complimented on how he could get any girl in the room, Aiken added, "But I'm not interested in getting any girl in the room--I want to find one I'm serious about". Fast-forward to September 2008, and the "not interested in getting any girl" part takes on a very different meaning.
• R.E.M.'s It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) is an interesting example that occurs right after the potential Funny Aneurysm Moment.

That's great, it starts with an earthquake Birds and snakes, an aeroplane....

• A few lines from David Bowie's early days seemed funny after he denied his bisexuality (which he has since reverted back to):
  • "We were gone / Real cool traitors / We were so turned on / You thought we were fakers." - "The Bewlay Brothers"
  • "Don't fake it baby / Lay the real thing on me / The church of man, love / Is such a holy place to be." - "Moonage Daydream"
  • Also, unrelated from "The Width of a Circle": "...and a rumor spread that I was aging fast." Yeah. How'd that pan out, exactly?
• A minor one compared to some of the examples on this list, but on Korn's sixth studio album, the booklet features a sort of scrapbook of the band's career, featuring all manner of gig photos, ticket stubs, flyers etc., one of which depicts the band playing an early gig. The band added captions, and pointed out that rhythm guitarist Munky "only had 3 pedals" (effect pedals which change the sound of the guitar). Evidently the band's commercial success left him with a few spare dollars...
• In Alvin and The Chipmunks' 1982 album, "Chipmunk Rock", Alvin balks at the idea of having to do a girl's song (the song in question is "Leader of the Pack", originally by the Shangri-Las -- Twisted Sister's Perspective Flip cover had yet to be made). Theodore's response: "So? You've never heard of the Chipettes?" Two years later, a Distaff Counterpart group by that name came to existance.
• During the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift after she won best Female Artist just to tell Beyoncé that she had one of the best videos of all time. Later that night, she would win Best Video of the Year.
  • Also, combining this and the "You Lie!" fiasco Barack Obama had, we get this.
  • Alternatively, Kanye humiliating Taylor Swift just to tell everyone that Beyonce had a better video and then Beyonce giving Taylor her acceptance speech time. Kanye must've been like "Oh shit. Even Beyonce thinks I screwed up."
• In "Getting Jiggy Wit It", Will Smith declares Met Ali, he told me I'm the Greatest, a few years before he would portray Muhammad Ali on film.
• In "Weird Al" Yankovic's first, self-titled, album, he included the song "I'll Be Mellow When I'm Dead." This includes a bridge that states multiple times about not wanting to be vegetarian and wanting to eat hamburgers. He's now a vegan, which makes listening to this song funny in a way he probably didn't intend in the early 80's.
  • In an "Ask Al" article originally printed in April 1994 and available for reading on his website, Al admits that his pet peeves are "war, plague, famine & pestilence." Judging by the cover of his 2011 album "Alpocalypse", he's mended some broken bridges since then.
  • Writing a rap song about the Milton Bradley board game Twister? Weird Al did it in 1988. Then Hasbro did it for real in 2011, complete with a website where you can download the single.
• In an analysis of Journey's music video "Separate Ways", Brazilian comedian Marcos Mion compared Steve Perry to singer Andre Matos. Then Matos covered that same song...
• In 1973, folk/novelty singer Loudon Wainwright III observed his wife, Kate McGarrigle, breastfeeding their newborn son Rufus. It inspired him to write a tongue-in-cheek ditty called "Rufus Is A Tit Man". He came to regret it when it became more and more apparent with time that Rufus was probably not going to stay a tit man.
• In 1986, Elton John released the song "Nikita", whose music video featured Mr. John romancing a Russian woman, presumably Nikita. Several years later, Pop Up Video revealed that Nikita is a male name, made doubly hilarious by the fact that Elton John is openly gay.
  • Years earlier in 1977 he was singing "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" on The Muppet Show with Miss Piggy and got to kiss her. It's even funnier when you remember that Miss Piggy is voiced by Frank Oz, her male puppeteer.
  • When fellow singer Rod Stewart asked him if he should take the part of the Local Lad in The Who's Rock Opera version of their Concept Album, Tommy, Elton told him "Don't touch it with a barge pole." (He had already declined taking the role at the time.) One year later...
• John Mayer has made several headlines in 2010 due to the controversial things he's said during interviews, including "I am the new generation of masturbator," "Yeah, that girl (Jessica Simpson) is like crack cocaine to me," and "My dick is sort of like a white supremacist." This is the same guy who once wrote a song about when to just shut up, called "My Stupid Mouth." (My stupid mouth/Has got me in trouble/I said too much again...)
• The back of Big Black's Songs About Fucking included the infamous quote on the back: "The future belongs to the analog loyalists. Fuck digital." Steve Albini installed a Pro Tools rig in his recording studio which, while he never uses and is only there for the artists use, makes this quote amusing looking back.
• The song "On the Atchison Topeka and the Santa Fe" mentions an engine numbered #49, but there is no such thing as a Santa Fe railway locomotive in that number. Then in 2006, a diesel locomotive is repainted to Santa Fe's famous passenger paint and is numbered #49.
• Around 2007, LeAnn Rimes was a presenter at an awards show. She decides to poke a little fun at the various celebrity train wrecks of the time, and says something to the extent of "Just for the record, [I'm] twenty-five, no divorces, just the one marriage." She's being accused of being a home-wrecker and is involved in the collapse of two marriages, thinking about her saying that becomes even funnier.
• Before Billie Piper became an actress she was a successful pop singer. Her first and possibly most famous song, "Because We Want To" begins with her getting beamed down from a spaceship before she begins singing. Fast forward to 2005, and... well, she's spending a lot of time in spaceships. Even a lot of the special effects look similar enough to make it really funny.
• In 2006, Kimberley, Cheryl, and Sarah of Girls Aloud appeared on a sketch spoofing the popular talent show The X Factor with each girl impersonating one of the judges (Cheryl as Sharon Osbourne, Sarah as Louis Walsh and Kimberley as Simon Cowell). Two years later, Cheryl replaced Sharon Osbourne as one of the show's judges.
• In 1977, Misfits bassist Jerry Caiafa was annoyed to see his surname misspelled in the credits of the band's first single and insisted on being listed on future releases as "Jerry, only Jerry", which became the pseudonym Jerry Only. Decades later, that stage name would take on different connotations when he became the only original member left in the band.
• The name of one of the first and most influential emo bands in the mid-80s was The Hated.
• Lionel Richie once wrote a touching and sentimental hit song, "Ballerina Girl," dedicated to his six-year-old daughter. It's a bit difficult to listen to this song now if you know that his daughter grew up to be professional celebu-skank Nicole Richie.
• In Queen's "Radio Ga Ga," Freddie Mercury's love song to radio is amusingly accurate in a round about way with his lament of music videos, "So stick around cos we might miss you/ When we grow tired of all this visual." Considering the rise of the Mp3 player with it's primarily audio function, often including an FM tuner, and the near disappearance of the music video from broadcast television, it would appear that Mercury was surprisingly right about us getting tired of all the visual in music.
• The "WHAM!" song "Wake Me Up Before You Go-GO" contained the line "I'm not plannin' on going solo". Guess what George Michael did?
  • In the MTV special 25 Lame, which featured the 25 worst videos as voted by viewers, Denis Leary pointed out how hilarious it was that George Michael could do this video and still remain in the closet another decade-plus.
• Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention's legendary anti-hippie album We're Only In It For The Money mentions a wannabe hippie going to San Francisco to, among other things, get crabs (i.e. a specie of louse). Years later, the family restaurant Joe's Crab Shack had a psychedelic advertisement promoting "Peace, Love and Crabs", unaware of the double entendre related to the album.
• The Moody Blues tribute to LSD guru Timothy Leary, "Legend of a Mind", opens with the line Timothy Leary's dead / no, no, he's outside looking in. After Leary's death, some of his ashes were launched into space, where they remained in orbit around the earth for a couple of years.
• The Catholic hymn "Sweet Child of Mary", after Guns N' Roses burst onto the scene with "Sweet Child O' Mine".
• One of the songs Nick Carter used to sing before getting his big break was Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl". This is the first three lines: "Uptown girl/She's been living in her uptown world/I bet she's never had a backstreet guy"
• "Spontaneous Apple Creation" by The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown depicts a bunch of surreal events, culminating with everybody in the world with an apple in his hand, with new creations of apples being an common event. Years later, the Apple computer company had iPods and various spin-off products like the iPhone and iPad being released with much media fanfare.
• In Depeche Mode's "Behind The Wheel": thanks to MST3K, it's hard to hear the line "Tonight I'm in the hands of fate" without chuckling.
• A Pink Floyd bootleg was named Who Was Trained Not To Spit On The Fan?, after a line of the song "Dogs", since Roger Waters spat in the face of a disgruntled fan during a song (though it wasn't "Dogs" itself, but either "Pigs (Three Different Ones)" or the encore). This incident later inspired him to write The Wall.
• 1985. Whitney Houston's "Saving All My Love For You," a song sung from the perspective of the "other woman," becomes a big hit. Fast forward ten years, to her film Waiting to Exhale. Guess what Whitney's role in the film is....
• Way back when, Black Sabbath made the titular character of the hit song "Iron man" a villain, so as to avoid a lawsuit from Marvel Comics over their Iron Man. Skip ahead to 2008. This song was used to promote the film adaption.
• Primus' video for "Wynona's Big Brown Beaver" drew controversy for perceived reference to Winona Ryder, despite the names being spelled and pronounced differently, and was frequently compared to a disastrous ad campaign for batteries featuring the Puttermans. Primus quickly passed off on both, saying they meant no reference to Ryder, and that the cowboys in the video were meant to resemble classic plastic toys. Even fifteen years later, however, the lead guitarist's mask bears an uncanny resemblance to George W. Bush, frequently accused of playing cowboy.
• Guns N' Roses bass guitarist Duff McKagan moved to Los Angeles, because you could "get to the top in Seattle and still be nowhere".
• Seth Putnam believes this regarding Anal Cunt's "You're In A Coma", based on his own experience. Ditto with "Your Wife Left You". Posthumously fans consider "Don't Give Me Weak Drugs or I'll Kick Your Ass" this as well, since Putnam's years of superhuman drug abuse helped contribute to his fatal heart attack.
  • When Seth and drummer Tim Morse came up with the band, they picked the title to be "really dumb and offensive". Years later, GG Allin would write a song parodying how people saw him as dumb and offensive, and, buy pure coincidence, named it... "Anal Cunt."
• Stan Freberg recorded a parody of Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel" in 1957. Among other gags, Elvis rips his jeans during the fourth verse, lamenting that it was his "third pair today". Amusing enough when he was known for his pelvic thrusts, but considering how much weight he gained later in his career...
• "Complete Control" by The Clash has the line, "You're my Guitar Hero!" Funny enough as it is, but the song is also included in Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, and is also downloadable for Rock Band, whose creators created the original Guitar Hero.
• In the Eminem music video "Without me," he dresses up as Robin. Robin's inclusion in Batman: Arkham City has him looking like Eminem in that video.
• On Eminem's song "The Way I Am," he raps, "I'm so sick and tired of bein admired/that I wish that I would just die or get fired/and dropped from my label and stop with the fables/I'm not gonna be able to top on "My Name is.."". The album "The Slim Shady LP," which includes "My Name Is..." sold some 4 million copies in the U.S. "The Marshall Mathers LP," which includes "The Way I Am," has sold some 10 million copies in the U.S.
• Negativland managed to put a real doozy in their "Dispepsi" album, written in 1997. "Why Is This Commercial" closes with a mention of Michael Jackson's partnership with Pepsi (and a snippet from a reworked "Billy Jean."). Right up next is "Happy Heroes," a song about idol worship. This was written well after the debacle he got caught in, but when further allegations surfaced and fell in 2004-5, it became this:

If someone told, no, Accused [me] of fu-*bleep*-cking teenaged boys and beating others cold, You'd side with me And enough of you would doubt it, which would likely set me free You'd say I didn't do it, and that anyone could tell "'Cause he's smooth and smart and pretty, and he reads his lines so well

• • Their "Moribund Music of the Seventies" radio series in the early '80s was mocking the idea of the 70's becoming nostalgic. If you listened to it today not knowing what the joke was, it's almost identical to present radio stations that specialize 70's nostalgia.
• The Plain White T's song "Hey There Delilah" was originally released in 2005. It contained the line "Two more years you'll be done with school and I'll be making history". Two years later it was re-released and went to #1
• Simon and Garfunkel's song "Old Friends", from the 1968 Bookends album, includes the line "How terribly strange to be seventy." Paul Simon, who penned that line, turned 70 in October 2011; Art Garfunkel, who sang it, turned 70 a month later.
• In an interview from 1986, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' guitarist Mike Campbell said that spending more than $500 on a guitar didn't feel right. ^{[dead link]} Circa 2010, he bought a guitar that cost as much as a house.
• The 1967 Willie Nelson song "San Antonio" includes the line "I must admit I'm just a homeboy."
• In 2012, rapper Cory Gunz was arrested for carrying a gun illegally.
• Ke$ha's single We R Who We R, released in October 2010, has a moment in the video featuring two women (actresses/backing dancers) in the video who would get people guessing their identities. Much funnier now that the meme is still going on... and their outfits have become The Red Stapler to Ke$ha fans.
• Just listening to Hilary Duff's "So Yesterday" when the song itself has become it.
• The song Nigger Hatin' Me by Johnny Rebel. As of the election of Barack Obama, it sounds like he's begging rather than rallying:

Hey! Mr. President! What do you say? When are we whites gonna have our day? The nigger's had there's such a long, long time I'm white, and it's time that I had mine!

• There's a song called Disneyland from an obscure 80's musical called Smile that's just chock full of these. First off, the lyrics were written by Howard Ashman from before he teamed up with Alan Menken to become one of Disney's greatest songwriting duos. Not only that, but the woman singing is Jodi Benson, most famous as the voice of Ariel in The Little Mermaid. There's even a reference to a magic carpet!
• Likely a mixed between this and Harsher in Hindsight, demanding how one glances at it, "If That Were Me" by Melanie C discusses homelessness. In one part, she sings "I couldn't live without my phone. But you don't even have a home." In 2000, when the song was released, having your own phone was Serious Business. Today, it's rather common for, even the homeless, to have at least one phone, even a pre-paid one. There's even a name for a fear of being without a mobile home called nomophobia. Even Chisholm herself acknowledged this.
• When Lindsey Stirling appeared on America's Got Talent in 2010, she was eliminated in the quarter-finals, with the judges actively disparaging the very idea of her act: Piers Morgan said "[Y]ou're not good enough, I don't think, to get away with flying through the air and trying to play the violin at the same time" and Sharon Osbourne flatly stated "What you're doing is not enough to fill a theater in Vegas". Fast forward only two years, and her YouTube videos were racking up millions of views, her self-titled first album had been released, and she had begun a North American tour, which later was expanded into a world tour. By 2017 she'd embarked on three world tours as well as several smaller North American tours, released two more albums and an autobiography (The Only Pirate at the Party) and collaborated with numerous artists, including a song for the closing credits of Disney's live-action version of Pete's Dragon. In 2018, she collaborated with Amy Lee and Evanescence and embarked on a joint tour with them. And where is the winner of the 2010 America's Got Talent? Michael Grimm is all but forgotten. He released a few albums which failed to chart, and after 2015 has essentially vanished from the music industry.