Isn't It Ironic?: Difference between revisions
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* The use of [[Janis Joplin]]'s "Mercedes Benz" by the makers of Mercedes-Benzes. One of the better misuses.
** [[Earth (The Book)]] names this as "the precise moment when culture and commercialism stopped fighting and started making sweet, sweet love."
** Even though it was written and performed by a woman whose drinking habit was so ingrained that had she ever been ''given'' that Mercedes-Benz, she'd only have totalled it on its first outing. And in this context, Verse Three is strangely absent from the adverts: ''Oh Lord/Won't you buy me/ A night on the town/ I'm counting on you, Lord/Please don't let me down!/ Prove that you love me/ And buy the next round/Oh Lord/Won't you buy me/ A night on the town!'' The use of a song by the poster-girl for over-consumption of Jack Daniels is especially ironic in the light of frequent government campaigns against drinking and driving....Presumably she'd have left the Mercedes-Benz in the garage and taken a cab home, eh, Janis?
** The use of the Pogues "Sunnyside of the Street" by Mercedes-Benz. Cheery sounding song until it cuts out right before Shane McGowan starts singing about his heart full of hate and a lust for vomit.
* Parachute Club's GLBT anthem "Rise Up!" used for frozen dough. Probably done because of the reasonable assumption that few users of frozen dough are the kind of people who would know that the GLBT movement had anthems, let alone what they were.
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* The "Zoom Zoom" jingle that appears in commercials for Mazda is actually an old Capoeira song which goes "Zum Zum Zum, capoeira mata um" which roughly means "Zoom Zoom Zoom, Capoeira (can) kill you, or (Capoeira kills someone)". Mazda carefully excises all this nonsense about Capoeira, natch - all they care about is the zooming.
* David Bowie has suffered from this '''a lot''' -- ever since his work first got mass media attention. In 2008, all the trailers for ''Milk'' (a movie about an openly gay politician) used his song "Queen Bitch", which raises unfortunate questions about how the marketing team felt about the film's subject. Then there was the jeans commercial that put videos of masculine men to the song "The Jean Genie". The only appropriate response is "You're all aware the song is about gay sex, right?"
** "Space Oddity". It's about an astronaut lost in the empty space
** Another in the same series of commercials uses the cover of "Major Tom (Coming Home)" by Shiny Toy Guns (originally recorded by Peter Schilling), and it cuts off right after "Earth below us / Drifting, falling..." While it's a very cool commercial, you just have to say, "Uh, you know that song ''doesn't end well'', right? {{spoiler|''"Across the stratosphere / a final message / 'give my wife my love' / then nothing more..."'' it's only even more of a [[Tear Jerker]] after that, and that 'drifting, falling' part becomes an [[Ironic Echo]] - the same words meant something totally different on the way ''up'', didn't they?}}
* "Happy Happy Joy Joy" from ''[[Ren and Stimpy]]'', a parody of [[Sickeningly Sweet|saccharine]] kids' cartoon songs, being used sincerely to sell Sara Lee products.
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how far we've come". }}
** They're oddly apropos for the History Channel, especially considering their newfound love of both the end of the world and the pretend.
* A few years back, there was an advert for Pizza Hut's "Twisted Crust" which used [[They Might Be Giants (band)|They Might Be Giants]]' jolly, upbeat "Twisting". It was pulled really quickly. When you listen properly, the lyric actually goes "She wants to see you again / Twisting, slowly twisting / In the wind..." Possibly hanging from a skyhook, even.
* "Bohemian Like You" by the Dandy Warhols has been used more than once in car adverts by virtue of the first line, which goes "you've got a great car". The ''second'' line, [[The Alleged Car|"what's wrong with it today?"]], is rarely played.
* Stylized commercials for American mega-store Target featured Devo's "Beautiful World"
* Mack the Knife, a song from a incredibly anti-capitalist musical, detailing a businessman who murders people to further his own gains, was once used in a marketing campaign for McDonald's.
** The lyrics were completely rewritten, at least. More on the Mac Tonight campaign can be found at [[The Other Wiki]] [[wikipedia:Mac Tonight|here]].
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** There was also a recent Honda Hybrid commercial featuring the music of the Postal Service's "We Will Become Silhouettes", another song about nuclear holocaust. Apparently, green energy and atomic super weapons go hand in hand.
** Ditto for "The Future's So Bright (I Gotta Wear Shades)" by Timbuk3, but at least this one is not quite direct, even though both lyrics and music video create a [[Black Comedy]] picture in a style rather close to the original ''[[Fallout]]''.
** A Telus commercial from a few years ago used 99 Red Balloons as well, though in German so that people not familiar with it can enjoy the song and the pretty balloons and ignore the whole annihilation bit.
* A car commercial used the titular lines from "Move Along" by All-American Rejects. I mean, cars move you, so "Move Along" is the perfect line, if you ignore the fact that in the song, the singer is trying to convince his friend not to commit suicide.
** "Move Along" also turned up in one of [[LEGO]]'s ''[[Bionicle]]'' ads, when Lego had a deal with the band. At least ''there'' it was SLIGHTLY less out of place...but only just: on the one hand, the heroes of the story are trying to prevent a death. On the other, the song's still being used with kid's toys.
** Speaking of suicide in car commercials, one for Hyundai prominently features "Today" by [[The Smashing Pumpkins]], which incidentally features irony in a prominent manner: the song talks about the greatest day of the narrator's life... because he's going to kill himself tomorrow. Presumably using his Hyundai in a closed garage.
* Another car company used "Turn It On Again" by [[Genesis (band)|Genesis]] in one of their
** How about the same band's "Tonight Tonight Tonight", a song about a paranoid junkie making a drug deal late at night, being used for a famous Michelob beer commercial?! (Did Michelob sponsor their ''Invisible Touch'' tour?!)
** After "Jesus He Knows Me" was released, the Christian TV station, the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), figured the band had discovered religion and picked up the song's video to air, but they decided not to after learning what the song is really about. It's about a televangelist who [[Sinister Minister|lives a decadent, corrupt lifestyle]] off the donations from his viewers.
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** Speaking of instant gratification, "Rockstar" got used to promote Ameristar Casinos.
* Iggy Pop's "Lust For Life" for a cruise line.
** Or anything else that it has ever been used in an advertisement for.
* Celebrity Cruises also used the highly inappropriate "Fame" by [[David Bowie]] in [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFT219kNGro one of their commercials], because a bitter rant about the perils of fame really makes you want to cruise to a tropical island.
* The Whitlams' "You Gotta Love This City" for a Sydney Olympics-related tourism campaign.
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* A commercial for the Ford Transit used an extract of Soul Coughing's "Disseminated"; while the segment used is from later in the song, the opening verse of the full song describes a goat that ate a tin can and "shat out a Ford Sedan".
* The apocalyptic anthem "London Calling" by [[The Clash]] being used to hawk Jaguars.
** It was also used in tourist adverts for visiting London.
*** And then for [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14324385 promoting the 2012 London summer Olympics].
* Here's [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3SzI92FDFo this song.] It's called "Diamonds and Guns," by Transplants. If you'll listen to the intro, you'll know what commercial it's from: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQ0kZYz9ntw Garnier Fructis Shampoo.] If you listen to the rest of it, you'll know why the guys who make those commercials ''haven't yet''.
* Another supposed heroin anthem, The La's "There She Goes" (''racing through my brain, pulsing through my vein, no one else could heal my pain'') being used to sell chicken.
* Kohl's department stores have recently adopted Barenaked Ladies' "Shopping" as an ad jingle, either not knowing or not caring about the song's satiric anti-consumerist thrust.
* Steely Dan's song "Do It Again" has been used in a PBS commercial encouraging contribution to public broadcasting. They had the good sense to only use the instrumental opening, but it's no less a puzzling choice for
* A number of tobyMac songs (mostly "The Slam") have been used in previews for violent movies and shows, despite said songs being about God.
** Although, "The Slam" was written by tobyMac after he saw ''[[The Passion of the Christ]]'', which is pretty violent.
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* A TV commercial for the upcoming Brendan Fraser ''Furry Vengeance'', a kids movie, is using Tone Loc's song "Wild Thing". The film is about a bunch of animals trying to stop a housing development, while the song is nothing but pure [[Intercourse with You]].
** Even more bizarre is it's use in a trailer for the ''[[The Smurfs (film)|Smurfs]]'' movie.
* [[Disney]] hired [[Bowling for Soup]] to redo "I Melt With You" by [[Modern English]]; it has worked its way back into advertising culminating in Hershey's Chocolate using it for a Kiss commercial with a mother and child. All of this ignoring the fact the first two lines are "Moving forward using all my breath/Making love to you was never second best." Yeah, sweet sentiment there Hershey's.
** Not to mention that said song is also about dying in a nuclear holocaust ("melt" being used literally, but it could also be a pun). It's about a couple that have sex as the bombs fall because it's their last moment.
** To be fair, Disney had them change the line in the remake to "Bein' friends with you was never second best." It was for a children's movie, after all.
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* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36gW-IPV0aA "Beautiful Day"] by English folk-punk band The Levellers has occasionally turned up in adverts based on the chorus "What a beautiful day/I'm the king of all time/And nothing is impossible/In my all powerful mind." Whoever chose the song apparently missed the part after this when it proceeds to talk about instigating a political revolution, the titular "beautiful day".
* Many-a commercial for a hardware store, office supply store, or heck, even cars has made use of Bachman Turner Overdrive's "Takin' Care Of Business: "Takin' care of business/and workin' overtime!" However, in the rest of the song, the singer is singing about how he's a lazy guy who's happy with how he's ''not'' working like every other workaholic out there: "And if you ever get annoyed,/look at me, I'm self-employed/I love to work at nothin' all day!"
* The O'Jays' (For the Love of) Money is a prime example. Commercials ''love'' to use the chorus when talking about their (supposed) big savings, but the lyrics themselves talk about the evils that people will do to each other over money.
* A recent Jeep car commercial uses an instrumental with an intense, pounding beat to sell its pickup trucks. Fine. Said instrumental is the background music to Johnny Cash's "God's Gonna Cut You Down". Which is about how there's no such thing as a [[Karma Houdini]]. Not so fine.
* "Kids In America" by the Muffs, used by Kraft to shill American cheese singles. The Muffs' "Everywhere I Go" (which was about stalking) was also used in a Fruitopia commercial.
* Pretty much ''any'' usage of "[[Lynyrd Skynyrd|Sweet Home Alabama]]" for ANYTHING, but one just has to wonder what the hell KFC was thinking when they started using it to shill fried chicken. Especially since the K stands for ''Kentucky''.
* Apparently nobody at the Boston Globe's advertising department bothered to listen to [[Dropkick Murphys]] ''The State of Massachusetts''. The song is about drugs destroying a family and the children being taken away. The title of the song comes from who now has custody of the children.
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* ''[[Call of Duty: Black Ops|Call of Duty Black Ops]]'' ran adverts featuring The Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter". Apparently a song depicting the horrors of war, which will eventually end all life on the planet, is supposed to encourage people to play as Black Op soldiers.
** Though, Call of Duty has had a history of being anti-war, yet [[Do Not Do This Cool Thing|simultaneously being pro-war, due to being a fun video game about the subject.]] So, while still contradictory, the advertisers were probably well aware of the song' meaning
** The game is also set during [[The Sixties]] and [[The Vietnam War]]
* There's an advert for some car or other which is set to "This Is The Life" by Amy MacDonald. It would be bad enough if they'd used one of the verses (which describe apparent good times) and conveniently ignored the chorus (which is a "reveal" of the misery that the person the song is addressed to is trying to run away from) but no... they've gone straight for the most miserable part of the song, purely for the [[Title Drop]]. The music behind it isn't even particularly peppy.
* Finnish hardware store Rautia uses song "Vasara ja nauloja" (Hammer and nails) in it's commercials to promote how successfull you are with their tools. What's the song about? A man failing to build a house...
* Early ads for the [[Xbox]] Kinect used Gang Of Four's "Natural Is Not In It" (albeit in an edit that did away with lyrics altogether). The song is partially about the futility of trying to find fulfillment through new purchases, so it's presence in an ad for nearly ''anything'' would fit this trope to some extent.
* [[Fan Yay]] aside, "YMCA", a song about [[All Gays Are Promiscuous|having sex at the YMCA]], in ads for...the YMCA.
* What better way is there to revamp [[Monopoly]] to be more consumerist than to add pseudo-functioning credit cards to the game design? And then advertise it using Jessie J's "Price Tag", a song about how people ''shouldn't'' be driven by greed?
* Visa commercials for the Olympics using Sia's ''Breathe Me''. A song about depression, self-harm or attempted suicide is just perfect for the Olympics. Granted they only uses the instrumental part after the lyrics end.
* "Just What I Needed" by The Cars is about someone who ''definitely'' doesn't feel like they need the other person. This was used in Circuit City commercials for items that supposedly ''were'' needed.
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpFdWCfm_4k A 2011 Lexus ad] uses the song "Odessa" by Canadian Indietronica artist Caribou, and understandably, the sexy, fashion-show worthy beat and tune would fit to a sexy couple driving in their car to a masquerade party. Yet the song is about [[Lyrical Dissonance|a woman who constantly gets physically and sexually abused and cheated on by her boyfriend]], with lyrics like this:
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The day that she stands up
for everything that she chose }}
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duSGxOwuqNI This] camera commercial from HP features [https://web.archive.org/web/20131208162524/http://www.metrolyrics.com/pictures-of-you-lyrics-the-cure.html ''Pictures of You''] by The Cure, a song about missed opportunities and the sadness of having nothing at all left except the pictures.
* Target attempted to license Adam Freeland's anti-consumerist song ''We Want Your Soul''. Apparently, Target only must have listened to the lines "here's popcorn, here's magazines, here's milkshakes, here's blue jeans," while conveniently ignoring the rest of the song, the [[Bill Hicks]] sample comparing modern culture to bread and circuses, and ''the title itself''. Luckily, Freeland turned down the offer.
* A certain commercial for he show [[Toddlers and Tiaras]] used [[Lady Gaga]]'s "Born This way", a song about accepting who you are and not having to change... while showing shots of ''children around the age of five '''wearing makeup and false eyelashes.'''''
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* The [[Theme Song]] for the anime [[Mushishi]] sounds, on the TV size version, like the singer was going on a journey to find his beloved ("I walked ten thousand miles, ten thousand miles to see you / and every gasp of breath I grabbed at just to find you..."). This is all well and good until you hear the full version, where the lyrics stray into [[Yandere]] territory ("I stole ten thousand pounds, ten thousand pounds to see you / I robbed convenience stores 'cause I thought they'd make it easier / I lived off rats and toads, I starved for you / I fought off giant bears and I killed them too...").
== Film ==
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*** Playing the song during the terrorist fight is somewhat fitting. He went on a journey, saw destruction, and tried to stop it. When people didn't listen, he started killing. Admittedly, he does it with a lot more purpose and direction than the rage-filled slaughter the song's Iron Man indulged in.
* Parodied in ''[[Anchorman]]''. When Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell) tries to explain how his feelings for Veronica go beyond the desire for sex, he decides to sing "Afternoon Delight" to explain the feeling of love. The song however as about two people whose relationship is mostly sexual.
* The soundtrack for ''[[Godzilla (film)|Godzilla]]'' included the song "No Shelter" by [[Rage Against the Machine]]. While the song did mention Godzilla by name, it was only to note that it was "pure motherfucking filler." The entire song is about American pop culture blinding people to the real problems in the world, used to advertise the most [[Hype Backlash|overhyped movie ever.]]
* ''Look For A Star'' from the movie ''Circus Of Horrors''. Those who have never seen the movie named it one of the best love/inspirational songs of all-time. Go figure.
* [[Con Air|"Define 'irony'; a bunch of idiots dancing on a plane to a song made famous by a band that died in a plane crash."]] Incidentally, the song in question is "Sweet Home Alabama" by [[Lynyrd Skynyrd]], making it a repeat offender on this very page.
* [[The Psychedelic Furs]] song "[[Pretty in Pink]]" being used for the film... ''[[Pretty in Pink]]''.
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** The same song was used in trailers for the 1987 TV movie/miniseries "Billionaire Boys Club." Considering how the Boys' venture ends, it is safe to say that the song retains its original meaning.
** "Shopping" is a safe bet for use in any scene that features shopping, but it's actually about corruption. ("We check it with the City, then change the laws...I heard it in the House of Commons, everything's for sale.")
* Despite being a song about a troubled relationship, with a bridge starting with "why don't we break up / there's nothing left to say", Robbie Williams' ''Sexed Up'' has been frequently used to score a love montage on Italian reality TV. [[Cue Irony|Cue irony.]]
* PBS's History Detectives uses a part of the song "Watching The Detectives" by Elvis Costello as their theme song. The song appears to be about a young woman's very violent death, in great contrast with the usually more family friendly content of the show.
* A commercial for ''America's Next Top Model'' once used "High School Never Ends", by [[Bowling for Soup]]. The song itself is about a teenager entering high school, seeing how pretentious and superficial people are, and waiting it out for four years. Then discovering that the rest of life is the same way. First verse: "Four years, you think for sure/that's all you've got to endure/all the total dicks, all the stuck-up chicks/so superficial, so immature/But then when you graduate/you take a look around and you say 'Hey, wait!/This is the same as where I just came from,/I though it was over, aww, that's just great.'"
* In-universe example in ''[[30 Rock|Thirty Rock]]'': Jenna and her mom use a karoake performance of "Do That To Me One More Time" to celebrate their reconciliation. This provides the page quote.
* ''American Idol'' had last year's winner Kris Allen perform on stage accompanied by a montage of Haiti relief efforts. The song? "Let It Be". Talk about innapropriate...
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* Germany's ''Deutschland sucht den Superstar'' (you could say ''[[American Idol|German Idol]]'', it's the same branch) uses Melanie C's "Next Best Superstar" to celebrate their winner. ''"Crack a smile in denial; throw your morals on the fire"''.
* Elimination show and beauty contest ''The Swan'', which took ordinary-looking women and gave them plastic surgery to bring them closer to mainstream notions of conventional beauty made use of Groove Armada's "If Everybody Looked the Same", oblivious to the meaning of the song's refrain "If everybody looked the same, we'd get tired of looking at each other".
* ''[[America's Funniest Home Videos]]'' music montages occasionally fall into this trap; one of the worst was the choruses (''only'' the choruses) of [[David Bowie]]'s [https://web.archive.org/web/20140902092915/http://www.teenagewildlife.com/Albums/YA/YA.html "Young Americans"] being used to underscore cute toddler clips.
* Again with [[David Bowie]] music being inappropriately used! [https://web.archive.org/web/20110125061311/http://unrealityshout.com/blogs/single-review-x-factor-finalists-2010-heroes This review] of ''[[The X Factor]]'''s 2010 Christmas charity single, a cover of ""Heroes"", goes into much detail about how a song that mocks the idea that [[War Is Glorious]] is a poor match-up to a charity supporting injured soldiers.
** ''[[The X Factor]]'' is guilty of this, too. "Heroes" has nothing to do with war in anyway, shape or form.
* ''[[Glee]]'' had Emma wanting to use [[Intercourse with You|"Afternoon Delight"]] to promote the Abstinence Club, under the mistaken belief that it was about having dessert in the middle of the day.
** Idina Menzel in a special mentions how during her appearance in the first season, the touching reunion song with her daughter being "Poker Face" by Lady Gaga seemed odd, to say the least. Special attention was given to the bridge's lyrics.
* The BBC used a reworking of Lou Reed's ''Perfect Day'' as an advert to demonstrate its commitment to bringing pleasure through music, each line of the song voiced by performers as diverse as rap singers and opera divas, in order to demonstrate the diversity of the Beeb's commitent to supporting and promoting musical talent. The subtext was that the BBC is a jolly nice organisation and you too can have a wholesome and indeed a perfect day with clean-living BBC radio and television. Yet wasn't Lou Reed's original a deceptively stealth little number, only superficially about two lovers enjoying a perfect day together - but deeper down it's about his destructive relationship with the love of his life - heroin - and what it can do to screw you up long-term?
* For a few seasons, the long-running BBC technology series ''Tomorrow's World'' used an instrumental portion of [[The Divine Comedy]]'s "In Pursuit of Happiness" as its theme tune. Anybody who heard the lyrics would realise the song is quite the opposite of the show's upbeat outlook on progress - the edit used on the show looped back to the start just in time to avoid the vocal coming in with "Hey, don't be surprised if millions die in plague and murder".
* ''Suicide is Painless'' from [[M*A*S*H (television)|Mash]] is quite upbeat, while the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlnB34ZDo9g original version] with lyrics from film is very sombre.
* The ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' episode "Family" ends with a scene of Willow and Tara dancing to the song "I Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You" by Melanie Doane. The effect of this otherwise touching scene is somewhat marred if you know that the acompanying music is actually a love letter to {{spoiler|a television}}.
* ''[[Criminal Minds]]'' did a [[Lampshade Hanging]] of this trope in "Unknown Subject", in which the unsub likes to play songs from [[The Eighties]] when raping his victims. When one of his victims {{spoiler|(who has managed to kidnap him)}} tells him she has recognized that the song he played at the bar was the same he played when he was raping her, he explains that he played it because he was the music that he chose when he asked for his wife's hand. The victim doesn't buy it... because the song was "Total Eclipse of the Heart".
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== Music ==
* Despite being an upbeat love song, because of its title and somewhat ambiguous chorus, some people believe that [[Johnny Cash]]'s "Ring of Fire" is about demonic destruction, not passionate love, and will use it in scenes with people fighting in flames or being burnt alive.
* In a similar vein, [[The Police]]'s downright creepy "Every Breath You Take" has also appeared in love scenes and has been used in weddings. The Police call it an [[Anti-Love Song]].
** An early advertisement for the Singapore Civil Defense has used the "Every Breath You Take" as a background song, sampling the chorus as an example of how well the Civil Defense (kinda of like the country-wide fire department) takes good care of you. It just ended being [[Paranoia Fuel]].
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* "Better Man" by [[Pearl Jam]]. What a great romantic wedding song... about a woman unable to bring herself to end an abusive relationship. "She lies and says she's in love with him..."
* "Don't Leave Home" by Dido is supposed to be about addiction, and even without that [[Word of God]], lines like "You won't need other friends anymore" and "I arrived when you were weak / I'll make you weaker like a child" ought to be a tip-off. Dido has said that people have told her they played it at their weddings and that she finds this fact a little disturbing.
** On another note, "White Flag." Typically used by fandom to describe their support for an [[One True Pairing|OTP]] ("I will go down with this ship!"), it's a love song all right... regarding unrequited love. "White Flag" is actually about someone still in love with their ex and wanting to stay together with them, though it's clear the relationship is already over.
* Similarly, [[The Smashing Pumpkins]]' song "Lily (My One and Only)" at first sounds like a beautiful love song. Then, when you listen to the lyrics properly, sound like the horrible tale of a stalker. Finally, if you look into it, it turns out it's a song of dedication, written by Billy Corgan, to his CAT.
* Chumbawamba's "Tubthumping" has been used as theme music for hopeful, perky young protagonists, despite the fact the song itself is about getting drunk and brawling in bars with your better days long gone by. (It was written as an ambiguous anthem for "[[British Political System|Old Labour]]" after [[Tony Blair]]'s "New Labour" had sucked the spirit out of the British left in the-mid 90s; Chumbawamba are left-wing anarchists. In short, the person "pissing the night away" is British Socialism).
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* German group Die Prinzen's 1993 song "Alles nur geklaut", which mocks, among other things, cover versions of hit songs, has been covered by female singer Sha... with altered lyrics.
* German band Geier Sturzflug's 1980s hits "Bruttosozialprodukt" (a heavily ironic song about workaholics) and "Die pure Lust am Leben" (a genuinely upbeat song, but with an ironic attitude referencing social criticism, about the singer not losing his lust for life despite all the things thrown at him) have now been reduced to Carnival and party fun songs, both due to people not paying attention to the lyrics and because the lyrics (at least of the latter song) have lost their zeitgeist-specific context.
* The Scots folk-song "The Bonnie Banks O' Loch Lomond", aka "You Take the High Road", has been almost universally misrepresented, even in Scotland, as a cheerful walking song, and as such has been used as upbeat background music and even as the title of a soap opera. In fact it's about two prisoners, one of whom is to be released and the other executed at the same hour. The "low road" referred to is the road that the dead go on - the speaker will get home faster than his friend because he'll be travelling as a ghost, but he'll never meet his true love again in this life. "Auld Lang Syne" is likewise a slow, sad song about ageing, nostalgia, loss and regret, although it gets sung as a happy bouncy bit of festive trivia. "Auld Lang Syne" sung properly will make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck.
* Greg Lake's "I Believe In Father Christmas" is faithfully trotted out by radio stations each December for their "all-Christmas-music" programming, despite the fact that the song mocks the holiday rather bitterly.
* "Have Yourselves a Merry Little Christmas," as originally written and as performed by [[Judy Garland]] in ''Meet Me in St. Louis'', was a melancholy "buck-up" song about having hope for the future in light of the lousy present. Understandably for 1944, it struck a chord with soldiers serving overseas. Today, arguably more people are familiar with Frank Sinatra's more upbeat arrangement, after he asked the songwriter to "jolly it up."
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* As described in [[Distant Duet]], the song "Somewhere Out There" from ''[[An American Tail]]'' is about two characters separated by thousand of miles that wish to reunite some day. The movie version? Was sung by two siblings. [[Brother-Sister Incest|Oddly, this does not deter people from using it as a love song.]]
* It would be difficult to describe [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Awy4biqD_dA "White Wedding"] by [[Billy Idol]] as having [[Lyrical Dissonance]], given the dark melody is very fitting for a song about a man resenting his younger sister's fiancee, while the bride starts having second thoughts but is forced to accept her fate. Yes, it has been played at many many weddings since its 1982 release.
* Sara Bareilles' "Love Song" is often used in ads for romantic comedies. The story behind it is that the record company [[Executive Meddling|wanted her to write a love song]] and she refused. They continued so she wrote a song to tell them off. The most ironic part is that the line "Not gonna write you a love song" is what's usually featured in the ad.
* [[Queen]]'s ''Radio Gaga,'' a song about how terrible it is that radio is being reduced to meaningless background noise, can most often be heard on an oldies station providing meaningless background noise.
** The sheer irony of [[Queen]] complaining about how video clips are more important than the music was not lost on the band: there's a reason why the clip to ''Radio
* The Supernaturals' [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEdyCQNuqls "Smile"] features a bouncy melody, goes "Smile! Smile! Smile! Smile!" and is very often taken as an upbeat, happy song. Despite the fact that anyone paying attention to... well, almost * any* lyrics beyond that would realise that it's a much darker and more downbeat song than that.
* [[Rihanna]]'s "Te Amo" is celebrated as a song of lesbian love ("Te amo, te amo [I love you], she says to me...") - except that in the song Rihanna rejects the other girl because she doesn't feel the same way (whether it's towards the other girl specifically or just women in general is not made clear).
* In 2001, some bright spark at Air France decided that Madonna's cover of "American Pie" would make wonderful inflight entertainment. "American Pie" is about the deaths of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper in a plane crash.
* Eve 6's [[wikipedia:
* Randy Newman's "I Love LA" tends to be played whenever the music director of a film / TV show set in Los Angeles needs a soundtrack for an "isn't it great to be in LA?" scene. A closer listen to the lyrics would reveal that the song is, if not outright cynical, then at least ambivalent about exactly how great a place Los Angeles (and the narrator of the song, who is at one point heard to be chortling over the suffering of a homeless person) is.
* Many [[Kidz Bop]] albums (probably all of them) give shades of this when you hear children cheerfully singing gems like "Oops!... I Did It Again" (about toying with another's emotions), "Burn" (about a devastating breakup), "Dirty Little Secret" (about cheating in a relationship), amongst others. Ostensibly, this is a good alternative to letting your kid listen to the songs as they're originally recorded by artists with dubious wholesomeness... but if they're covering unwholesome songs to begin with, what's the point? A few lyrical tweaks don't make most of them kid-friendly.
** Probably the best example was their cover of [[Lady Gaga]] 's "Born This Way," which is about acceptance. Nothing wrong with teaching kids tolerance, right? Oh, did we mention they take out all the parts that have to do with accepting gay or bisexual people? It's been referred to as "Born This Way: Homophobic Version."
* "[[The Sound of Music|My Favorite Things]]" is not a Christmas song. It has at most two lyrics which bring wintertime to mind, and one of those lyrics is supposed to be [[Have a Gay Old Time|about groceries]]. Nevertheless, current popular culture has more or less superglued the song to the Christmas season.
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We show them we're the bold gendarmes! }}
* "You Are My Sunshine" by Jimmie Davis is usually used as an uplifting, upbeat song about how loving someone and how they make you happy. The song itself is about how the love of the singer's life has left him, and how miserable he is, and how she'll never be happy without him.
** Ironically, The Doctor likes to sing this to [[Star Trek: Voyager|Seven of Nine]] (or have her sing it to him) as a love song. Talk about missing the point...
* Jason Derulo's sampled [[Imogen Heap]] for his song "Whatcha Say", wherein he sings along with the chorus about his apology. The problem is, in Hide and Seek, the singer was clearly sarcastic, about how the person in question ''didn't'' mean well. So, in this context, it's Derulo singing about just how unfaithful and spiteful he is ("I don't want you to leave me\Though you caught me cheatin'"). Oops.
** Derulo missed the point of the song he's sampling again in "Don't Wanna Go Home", where he samples "Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)", about a guy who's working so hard he can't wait to go home... to talk about a guy who's partying so hard he doesn't wanna go home!
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* In yet another case of a politician completely missing the subtext of a song, presidential candidate John McCain made an appearance at a primarily Latino high school alongside reggaeton rapper Daddy Yankee, and made reference to the latter's song "Gasolina". Suffice it to say, said song uses putting gasoline in a car as a metaphor for...[[Intercourse with You|well, think about it for a second]].
** I heard once that "Gasolina" is also Puerto Rican slang for general illegal/underground activity. Which makes it even funnier.
* American right-wing radio crank [[Rush Limbaugh]] has long used the Pretenders' "My City Was Gone" as his theme
* Special mention should go to [[Bruce Springsteen]]: in 1984 his "Born In The U.S.A.," a song about a disaffected Vietnam veteran, nearly got picked up by [[Ronald Reagan]]'s campaign until Springsteen turned him down.
** Of course, that's after John (Cougar) Melloncamp refused to allow Reagan to use his song "Pink Houses" which has a "patriotic" chorus, but similar disillusionment in its verses.
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** Granted, the reason Palin used that song was because her nickname in high school was "Saracuda", and that was something that her supporters were aware of at the time. Might bring up some [[Unfortunate Implications]] but at least they weren't using the song because of some perceived lyrical meaning.
* In 2009, the British National Party used the Manic Street Preachers' "If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next" on their website, without permission. The song contains the lines "If I can shoot rabbits, then I can shoot fascists". The song was removed when Sony threatened legal action.
** The song has been used by various political movements from all sorts of political leanings, from bleeding heart liberals to fascists, since children-based
* "[[Cabaret|Tomorrow Belongs to Me]]" has been recorded by more than one White Nationalist band. At least they're honest.
* Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada, sang John Lennon's "Imagine" with a little Asian girl for a photo op during his 2011 campaign trail. Stephen Harper is a conservative who planned to buy warplanes to wage war in the middle east, boost military spending, reduce gun control, and has much of his backing from conservative religious communities. [[Yoko Ono]] was so displeased, she demanded that [[YouTube]] pull all videos of the performance.
** During this performance, his only comment was "I might get in trouble for that line!" referring to "Imagine there's no heaven." 'Cause, you know, that's the most jarring part of a pro-war state leader singing a song about world peace through enlightened anarchy.
** PM Harper had earlier sang "I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends" with the Toronto Philharmonic Orchestra during a parliamentary crisis in which all the other party leaders threatened to band together and form a coalition government against him.
*** Including the line "I get high with a little help from my friends". Harper's government
* Former British prime minister [[Tony Blair]] attempted to give his "New Labour" makeover mass credibility and some glamour by pulling in stars of music, theatre and TV to Downing Street parties and receptions. He called his new era ''Cool Britannia''. Had he or his party wonks properly done their homework, they would have realised this is the title of a Bonzo Dog Doodah Band musical parody from thirty years previously, when Britain was being called "cool" for different reasons in 1967. The musical pranksters performed a deliberately discordant and amateurish jazzed-up version of ''Rule Britannia'' with extremely corny new lyrics, involving what was then in-slang being sung in a very plummy British accent that palpably fails to sound cool or with-it. ''Cool Britannia, Britannia, you are cool! (Take a trip!)/Britons ever, ever, ever, shall be hip! Groovy, mama!'' After this was pointed out, Blair's big idea of Cool Britannia was quietly dropped. It is understood that surviving Bonzos such as [[Neil Innes]] put in a claim against the British government for copyright money for the use of their intellectual property.. They certainly, very pointedly, revived the piece for reunion gigs in the early 2000's, dedicating it to Tony (Blair) and Gordon (Brown).
* In a reverse of the way it usually goes (ironic song being used unironically), ads for Discovery Channel's show ''Who The [Bleep] Did I Marry?!,'' about people who married criminals without knowing their histories, used the first few lines of Peter, Bjorn and John's "Young Folks" (''If you knew the things I did before, told you who I used to be, would you go along with me?''). The lyrics are meant to invoke sleaziness and artifice in their use in the commercial... But in the [http://youtu.be/51V1VMkuyx0 actual song], not only are they not malicious (seeming to be more about past relationships than anything else), the female singer implies she has a similar past (unlike in the show).
* Michelle Bachmann attempted to use Tom Petty's "American Girl", often thought to be about a young girl committing suicide, as her campaign anthem. Tom Petty successfully forced her to pick something else.
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** [[Word of God|He did]]. Chimbley is not supposed to be innocent by any stretch of the imagination.
* Parodied in ''[[The Onion]]'': "[http://www.theonion.com/articles/song-about-heroin-used-to-advertise-bank,1489/ Song About Heroin Used To Advertise Bank]".
* ''[[Cracked.com]]'' has its [http://www.cracked.com/article_16757_9-most-inappropriate-soundtrack-choices-all-time.html Top 9] of "Inappropriate Soundtrack Choices".
== [[Western Animation]] ==
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