President Obama’s campaign playlist is out; it is, unsurprisingly, unexciting.
I’ve already made known that were I ever to run for office, my campaign theme would be “Life During Wartime”—This ain’t no party/This ain’t no disco/This ain’t no fooling around—which may go a long way toward explaining why I will never be elected to anything.
More fun than coming up with campaign song-lists, however, is considering anti-campaign songs: all those tunes which would doom any possibility of election.
Some suggestions:
- Radiohead, “Creep”
- Beck, “Loser”
- Beth Orton, “Devil Is My Angel”
- REM, “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)”
- Talking Heads, “Road to Nowhere”
- Talking Heads, “Psycho Killer”
- Be Good Tanyas (Townes Van Zandt): “Waiting Around to Die”
- Mission of Burma, “That’s When I Reach For My Revolver”
- Velvet Underground, “Heroin”
- Bjork, “Army of Me”
- Birthday Party, “Release the Bats”
- Any song by Serge Gainsbourg
- Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, “Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry” (Terrifying. . .)
- Smiths, “Unhappy Birthday”
- Wilco, “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart”
- Butthole Surfers, “Pepper”
- Bruce Springsteen, “Atlantic City”
- Bob Marley, “I Shot the Sheriff”
- Thee Headcoatees, “Don’t Want to Hold Your Hand”
- Bruce Cockburn, “If I Had A Rocket Launcher”
- Loretta Lynn, “The Pill” (Sigh. . . )
- B-52’s, “Dance This Mess Around”
- B-52’s, “Hot Pants Explosion” (Just because)
- Dead Kennedys, “Let’s Lynch the Landlord”
- Nina Simone, “Mississippi Goddamn”
- Rolling Stones, “Shattered”
- Semisonic, “Closing Time”
- X, “See How We Are”
- X, “Hungry Wolf”
- XTC, “Dear God”
- Sam Roberts, “Where Have All the Good People Gone”
- Christine Fellows, “Roadkill”
- Violent Femmes, “Kiss Off”
This could go on and on—feel free to drop your own suggestions.
Anyway, it would be awesome if someone were willing to use any of these songs—now that person would be someone I’d want to have a beer with.
AbsurdBeats 