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Media Research Failure/Music: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
Who really wants [[Cowboy Bebop
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* ''The Ottawa Citizen'' described [[
** In a very famous outtake, ''American Top 40'' radio presenter Casey Kasem flipped out and ranted about U2; "These guys are from England, and who gives a shit?"
** A recurring problem with Irish musicians (and indeed other celebrities). MTV has referred to Westlife as British (you would think they at least should know better).
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* ''[[Kids in The Hall]]'' theme song creators "Shadowy Men from a Shadowy Planet" are often referred to as a "surf band". Hence, their song "We Are Not A Surf Band".
* For high hilarity, check out the US media coverage of the rise of Beatlemania. When the first reports of [[The Beatles]] and their massive British success started trickling across the ocean, it was portrayed as some sort of quasi-religious cult centered around a bunch of untalented losers who sing "yeah yeah yeah" over and over. When they hit America, many people struggled to understand what made the music so different. It sounded like rock-and-roll, but everyone knew rock-and-roll was that 50s fad that ended when Elvis went into the Army.
* The Ambassadors of Funk produced an album titled ''[[Super Mario]] Compact Disco'', in which they sang rap-based tunes about the [[Mario]] games. Throughout the album, they mistakenly stated that Princess Daisy from ''[[
* People keep on writing [[Meat Loaf]]'s name as one word, when it's actually two.
** His early promotional material flip-flopped on this as well.
* The artist that appears to suffer from this trope most consistently is [["Weird Al" Yankovic]]. A huge amount of humourous music, especially music available for download on P2P services, is misattributed to him. This is something of a sore spot with the artist. He has gone on record saying that he doesn't mind people sharing his music; but strongly dislikes the misattribution, mainly due to the lyrical content. Although a frequent user of [[Double Entendre]], he still makes an effort to keep his work family-friendly. Interestingly, the majority of the mislabled songs are the work of another, almost as well-known, parody musician, Bob Rivers and his Twisted Radio show. Rivers' work is decidedly less family-friendly than Weird Al's; and often includes profanity and sexual references.
* It's still common to see "The Legend of Zelda" [[Misattributed Song|attributed to]] [[System of a Down]]. The song is actually an Overclocked Remix song by Joe Pleiman, and System of a Down have denied having anything to do with the song in interviews.
* In a similar bit, a great many weird German songs are attributed to [[
** [[All Germans Are Nazis]], [[Sarcasm Mode|don'tcha know?]]
** See also [[Music to Invade Poland To]].
** Dutch Comedian Frank van der Plas, AKA "Ome Henk", did a parody of [[
*** Neither is the above mentioned "Juden Hasst", which is actually the beautiful song "Mladshaya Sestrenka" by russian band Lube and, guess what, doesn't have anything to do with jews or [[WW 2]].
** This isn't helped by the fact that some enterprising soul set recordings of Adolf Hitler speeches to Rammstein's "Sonne" and uploaded the result to [[P 2 P]] networks as "Vampire" or "Sieg Heil." The original song is just pure boxer entrance music.
* The Brazilian network responsible for the ''Rock In Rio III'' broadcasts had some of those "about the band" blurbs. During [[Oasis]]' concert, it said "they've grown bigger than the band that influenced them, [[Blur (
* The book ''Encyclopedia of Indie Rock'' has several glaring errors in almost every entry, as if the authors had no clue what they were writing about. Among these:
** Confusing which members of At The Drive-In formed the bands Sparta and [[The Mars Volta]].
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*** Also, NIN plays ''industrial'' rock, not indie rock. [[I Am the Band|Moreover, it's not a they]].
* A rare example of this being done on purpose, a report about Oasis on British radio station Radio 1 made several factual errors, including referring to the band as "The Oasis" (the band is just called Oasis, no The) persistently throughout. Unlike the other examples on this page, though, this was actually being done deliberately, almost like a public broadcast form of trolling.
* The Partners in Kryme performed a [[Theme Tune Rap]] for the first ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (
* On his ''Theme Time Radio Hour'' show, Bob Dylan said he was in talks to be one of the celebrity voices for GPS car navigation systems, but it was actually just a deliberately corny segue to introduce Ray Charles' "Lonely Avenue". After the show was broadcast in the UK, The Telegraph reported it as a serious news story, and the BBC, The New Musical Express, The Guardian, The New York Times and The Washington Post all picked it up too. Of course, since this came just a few days after Dylan confirmed that he was releasing a Christmas album, this is an understandable mistake.
* After they got tired of being asked why they picked the name Toto for their band, the members started claiming that it was in honor of the real name of lead singer Bobby Kimball: Robert Toteaux. Fine, except Kimball's real last name was actually Kimball. That didn't stop many reputable reference books from printing this "fact" for over a decade before it was finally cleared up.
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* Check out [http://www.hermenaut.com/a135.shtml this amusing article] by writer Ingrid Schorr. Who? She was the college girlfriend of REM's Mike Mills, and the inspiration for "(Don't Go Back To) Rockville". As she reports, her relatively minor role in the early years of REM and the Athens, Georgia alternative music scene got more and more distorted over the years because writers and journalists were copying and magnifying each other's mistakes, without bothering to simply ask her what the truth was.
* Australian newspaper The Sydney Morning Herald did an article that quoted the lead singer of Australian rock band [[Short Stack]], Shaun. Unfortunately, not only did they get his age wrong, the picture accompanying the quote was actually of another band member, Andy. Oops.
* When the band [[Journey (
* [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] by [[Pink Floyd]] in the song, "Have a Cigar"'. "The band is just fantastic, that is really what I think, [[I Am Not Shazam|oh, by the way, which one's Pink?]]"
** According to David Gilmour, this was actually something that producer-types frequently asked.
* [http://bit.ly/626gax This article] about a concert of former [[
* 2 Live Crew's album ''As Nasty as They Wanna Be'' raised a big controversy because of their infamous song "Me So Horny" which apparently had a 'graphic description of the destruction of a woman's vagina' in it. The line in question was "I know he'll be disgusted if he sees your pussy busted", ''i.e.'', deflowering a girl, not mutilating her privates. However, conservative groups, including Focus on the Family, failed to recognize it as a slang term, even though it's clear in the lyrics that the girl is consenting to all this and is just doing naughty things like many teenagers will do. In the end, this actually helped raise the group's popularity.
* "We're Not Gonna Take It" by [[Twisted Sister]] was also a victim of the [[Moral Guardians]] where supposedly a boy was calling his father a 'disgusting slob' who was 'worthless and weak' and then blasting him out of the window. In the video, the FATHER was berating his son (a [[Shout
** [[Did Not Do the Research|Tipper Gore led that charge, and she ain't a conservative.]]
* The BBC radio show ''Woman's Hour'' once booked Ladysmith Black Mambazo to appear, under the misapprehension that they are an all-female group. In fact they originated in the town of Ladysmith, South Africa, and are all male.
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* Many music video stations, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l94v8u1Cv_o such as MTV] erroneously credited [[The Minutemen|Minutemen]]-spinoff punk rock band fIREHOSE as [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ETENrv8cnU Firehouse], a glam metal band. A somewhat understandable mistake since there's only a one letter difference in their band names, but still...
* At one time it wasn't uncommon for [[Moral Guardians]] to get [[Marilyn Manson]]'s gender wrong.
* One issue of Guitar World had a biography on Chuck Schuldiner from [[Death (
* Metallic hardcore band Converge themselves [http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_llg7k2EZdk1qjl4w9o1_1280.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ6IHWSU3BX3X7X3Q&Expires=1309210670&Signature=IH8a7PMDzFzLbIn7%2FmxHxB1%2Bi8U%3D pointed out an example of this in ''Terrorizer'' magazine ]. The band (who are almost all straight edge) answered the questions with joke answers and were surprised that they were accepted at face value.
* [[David Bowie]]'s groundbreaking 'Berlin Trilogy' is often referred to as being produced by Brian Eno. While all parties involved have noted Brian Eno's huge influence on the records, the fact is that the actual production was down to Tony Visconti. Tony Visconti himself has complained about how critics can't seem to be bothered to read sleeve notes which quite clearly state 'Produced by Tony Visconti & David Bowie'
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** Similarly, their biography for [http://allmusic.com/artist/pirates-of-the-mississippi-p1768/biography Pirates of the Mississippi] says that their debut album tanked, and that their second album was more successful with the hits "Feed Jake" and "Speak of the Devil". These songs were actually the third and fourth singles, respectively, from their most successful ''first'' album. They do correctly identify "Fighting for You" as a dud single from the (unsuccessful) second album, but make no mention of the far more successful "Til I'm Holding You Again" (their second biggest chart hit). You'd think they would be able to avoid mistakes like this, particularly since Allmusic also includes track listings and chart positions for most albums in their reviews...
** They also have a habit of not doing simple checking through BMI and ASCAP databases for songwriters with similar names. [[wikipedia:Tim James (music producer)|This Tim James]] and [[wikipedia:Tim James (country music songwriter)|this Tim James]] are combined into one listing on Allmusic, but two seconds in the BMI database would show them to be two different people.
* Contrary to popular belief, [[
** And while Manilow did indeed work as a jingle writer for commercials back in the early [[The Seventies|seventies]] (he wrote the "Like A Good Neighbor" jingle for State Farm Insurance, among others), he is adamant about the fact that he ''absolutely did not'' write the famous "You Deserve A Break Today" McDonald's commercial; he only sang the vocal on it. Journalists who [[Did Not Do the Research]] are constantly claiming otherwise.
* [http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Evils%20in%20America/Hellivision/taylor_swift.htm This article] about [[
** It claims that, in making [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptSjNWnzpjg the video for "Fearless"], Swift "[lied] down on the floor, [rolled] around while wearing a negligee for some pervert's camera to film, and then put it on [[MTV]] for the world to see" when, in fact, the most suggestive part of the video is a shirtless man that appears for no more than three seconds.
** It cites a [[The Bible|Scripture verse]] claiming that miniskirts are sinful, despite the fact that Swift has never been seen wearing one.
** It says that [[
** It says that "She's only successful because she's young, attractive and willing to strip virtually naked for the camera, period!" ''[[Cracked]]'' of all people [http://www.cracked.com/funny-973-taylor-swift/ got this right.]
** Indeed, [[Jesus Is Savior|that website]] has become rather infamous on various message boards for how insane and inaccurate it is. Many of its other articles contain other glaring inaccuracies, over-analyzing minor things, extreme fundamentalism (of the "women's pants are evil!" variety) and Bible-thumping condemnations of almost everything under the sun. There have been some mutterings that the site is actually a [[Stealth Parody]] because [[Poe's Law|it's so unbelievable]]. Because there are so many examples of this trope on that site, we'll leave it at this blanket description instead of listing every little thing.
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