Songs with are now used to satirise the vibe they were intended to invoke genuinely

I was thinking about the way in which Enya’s “Only Time” is now used pretty much only as a joke, a way to ram home the ironic distance between the presentation of something as beautiful / solemn / profound and its rather less impressive reality.

Obviously the song was not created for this purpose, and when it became a soundtrack of sorts for some people dealing with the aftermath of 9/11 they probably weren’t putting any emotional scare quotes around their engagement.

Perhaps there is necessarily an in-between step in the transformation of the signifying qualities of a song like this, where the music is used at least somewhat sincerely but in a manner that strikes at least some observers as both too calculating and too heavy handed. There was an incredibly memorable scene early in Beverley Hills 90210 where a character marched into the show’s designated hang-out cafe and cued up “Losing My Religion” on the jukebox to signal to the world that he was dealing with some heavy shit. But then ultimately it was “Everybody Hurts”, a much less ambiguous song, that I think ended up becoming the main example of this for R.E.M.

What are some other songs that can now only be deployed ironically / satirically? And how did they arrive at that ignominious position?

the one that goes ooooh whatcha say

sarah mclachlan to thread

Any and all dubstep

It feels like it was a truly magical genre that went from being uniquely powerful n action movies and car commercials to immediately becoming a punchline in only a few years

i don't know how widespread this is but i've heard "Killing in the Name" as a spoof of unfocused angry rebel shtick for a long time

Yello “Oh Yeah”

Where is that used as a satire?

"Bad to the Bone" has been nothing but irony for a long time surely

"Peppermints and Incense" for 60s psychedelia

The entirety of the first Beastie Boys album now only signifies frat-boy idiocy, yet at the time of its release felt pretty fresh and pioneering.

"Kumbaya"

Breaking The Law when someone does something thats only a very minor infraction of social convention

I feel like Muddy Waters' "Mannish Boy" — specifically the version on Hard Again — has passed through this particular portal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSfqNEvykv0

it's sad that "cherry bomb" is becoming this song. such a cool song. but its such a cliche now for badass walking down a high school hallway.

"Born To Be Wild"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVpI3CkCA8c

I guess similarly “Let’s Get It On” and certain Barry White songs are in this category - but I think these songs always had a slight performative wink to them

yeah i was just thinking of "Je t'aime...moi non plus" and i got a headache

The Johnny Cash version of "Hurt" is mostly a meme now.

yeah I do wonder if there was a time when Barry White was considered to be legitimately romantic or if it was always kinda cornball

Darude - Sandstorm

This being political season and all, isn't it usually the opposite that happens? Song satirizing boneheaded stance is taken enthusiastically at face value by boneheads who then get told off by the artist.

Mainly thinking of its use in It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia here but 'Sadeness Part One'

There are plenty of guitar riffs that people may once thought were reeeeally cool and that are now the very naffest and cringe things you could possibly play: Smoke On The Water, Seven Nation Army, Sweet Child Of Mine, Teen Spirit, Wonderwall...

Where is that used as a satire?

It's hard to tell how much sincerity was intended in "My Way" by Frank Sinatra - or how seriously it was meant to be taken - back in 1969, but since then it's been used as satire almost every single time, suggesting egotism and hinting at criminality.

never gonna give you up

I think that one weathered its meme-hood and went back to being a song that people love unironically

Obviously that Matchbox 20 song about pushing you down

I often hear a sped-up snippet of Sufjan Stevens' beautiful "The Only Thing" used on TikTok to mock/shorthand an emotional moment

Ante Up maybe? Used to show swag and bravado in brooklyn 99 kitschely (by cops no less)

It's possible that didn't happen but I'm pretty sure it did lol

The first thing that came to mind was Ebony and Ivory playing over Chris getting beat up by the white kids in Everybody Hates Chris, but idk if that song ever had a period of being used unironically, I get the impression that it became a punchline fairly quick?

I feel like Peaches “Fuck The Pain Away” went into ironic usage territory but now it’s come full circle

I feel I've heard Ace Of Spades used sometimes in a jokey way in comedies to signify debauchery that's being played for laughs, I think that's a case were the song itself isn't considered a joke but you wouldn't see it used without some degree of irony because people would think it was too on the nose?

Satie - Gymnopédie no. 1

“Solsbury Hill” for carefree happiness/new romance in romcom movie trailers (real and meme parodies)

“Hallelujah” and probably in a similar vein, just a generation earlier, “Imagine”

The entire Forest Gump soundtrack.

all of the gonna fly now/ you're the best/ eye of the tiger/ burning heart training montage genre. maybe feel the heat belongs in here too. whatever, stuff's about to go down.

that business was always cheesy so i don't know what the sincerity/ irony differential is.

rom-coms have to have this, but i can't think of any examples. there's always a scene where the tenor shifts: hey, i always just thought of you as my sexless female best friend but then you took off your glasses and you're actually pretty and suddenly i want to kiss you also you've always been there for me and i was too stupid to notice until now type of thing. something's playing when the tectonic shift occurs, could be a renee zellweger movie or a molly ringwald movie or a rachael leigh cook movie. but i think there's a genre attached to this and i'm pretty sure i've seen parodies of this on snl or whatever.

robert tepper! there's no easy way out, there's no shortcut home, bitch! i forgot about him. what's the genre handle for mostly 80s action movies 3rd tier soundtrack tracks that suck but are also awesome? montagecore? if jd ryznar can invent categories that didn't previously exist and monetize them so can we. karla devito, we are not alone. middling 80s song qua 80s song, 100% micro-genre exemplar.

Ante Up maybe? Used to show swag and bravado in brooklyn 99 kitschely (by cops no less) used seriously / celebratorily in TMNT Mutant Mayhem (but with approx 47% of the lyrics muted)

KFC in the UK amongst others used "Ante Up" for a while so yeah i feel you but blame the evillest industrty in the world, not people observing their machinations

i think sterling archer's love of danger zone also qualifies but then again it's first-tier pop and also has baked-in cheesiness so maybe that's self-disqualifying.

sidebar: whenever ppl mention h john benjamin they always note archer and bob belcher and coach mcguirck and sometimes the the soup can but in my heart he's always ben katz. not relevant to the thread but that's what's in my heart so i'm putting this here.

i worry about ben katz. i hope he's ok. that's the central theme of dr. katz, professional therapist: he's mediocre at helping his celebrity clients but the father/ son relationship is where his efficacy shines. i hope ben turned out ok. again, not thread relevant but that's where this went.

I'm thinking of the closing scene of an episode of Father Ted where the Saddest Priest in Ireland gets the bus home in a happy frame of mind for a change, only for Radioheads "Exit Music" to come on the radio and his demeanour instantly changes

Re: Ante Up. There was also this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bHJSOfi1cI

“Walking on Sunshine” by Katrina and the Waves

I’ve seen “Hide and Seek” by Imogen Heap used ironically in Tik toks

"Ante Up" is currently being used to promote football games on Amazon in the US. (And possibly sports betting as well.)

Born to be Wild has been one of these for a long while.

Wasn’t Fleetwood Mac’s “Go Your On Way” used for some burger chain hawking how many choices the customer had?

Boys are Back in Town

“For What It’s Worth” and the Youngbloods’ “Get Together” basically represent the 60s and no longer exist outside that signification. Actually they were probably both on the Forrest Gump soundtrack already mentioned upthread lol

Tchaikovsky - Romeo and Juliet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRaI7ZOmTr4

Tchaikovsky - Romeo and Juliet

Wasn’t Fleetwood Mac’s “Go Your On Way” used for some burger chain hawking how many choices the customer had?

Not only that, but shortly after Buckingham got booted from the Mac he made a great FU move by clearing a cover version to be used in a ad for a laxative/digestive medicine.

... which reminds me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3JiWJbQ7tY

“For What It’s Worth” and the Youngbloods’ “Get Together” basically represent the 60s and no longer exist outside that signification.

Also: "Turn Turn Turn", which is on the Forrest Gump soundtrack.

lust for life being used for luxury cruise ads (maybe doesn’t fit the premise entirely but still lol)

fight song post 2016

a lot of this is less "satirise" and more "natural flow of the impulse of Bad Boys toward feudal capitalism"

I think the final countdown is a good example maybe. rewatched arrested development and as much as they flog the joke its still pretty funny to hear those synth horns coming in each time, iconically cheesy and un-majestic vibes

I have never known a world where "The Final Countdown" wasn't ironic cheese

I recently re-watched Donnie Darko for the first time in like 20 years, and found myself scrolling through Letterboxd reviews. A reoccurring theme was amusement/surprise at the Gary Jules cover of "Mad World" being used unironically

pro tip: "cheese" is some bullshit that nonces believe in

sorry i might've worded that a bit strong

LMAO no offense taken, but I disagree

Don't get me wrong, I am all for the unironic appreciation of things, and I rejoice at the death of the concept of "guilty pleasure." But some stuff is just cheesy!

I mean, it's right there in the MST3K theme song

i honestly didn't mean to be nasty about it but hell no cheesy is in the ear of the beholder

the behearer :D

anyway sorry again there was no call for me being a dick thanks for tolerating it

I don't disagree, but the same goes for all matters of subjectivity/taste. I think to have taste at all necessarily involves a demarcation between what's good and what isn't, and what succeeds or fails. I didn't mean to give the impression that I think cheese is objective

xp don't sweat it!

I have never known a world where "The Final Countdown" wasn't ironic cheese

Having been involved with a high school production of Go Ask Alice where a drug-fueled meltdown was unironically used to convey the lead character’s descent into addiction, I have a slightly different experience.

Finally watching the last season of Fargo and i didn't think that anyone could use "Y.M.C.A." in a way that i would enjoy after all the Trumpiness but they did it right.

The main theme from "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" by Ennio Morricone

You Get What You Give? I mean I don’t really know or care what it was going for in the first place (freedom & realness, man?) - but it has become such a staple of corporate blah that it is hard to imagine it being deployed unironically.

Ride of the Valkyries
O Fortuna

The Halleluah chorus from Handel's Messiah

Finally watching the last season of Fargo and i didn't think that anyone could use "Y.M.C.A." in a way that i would enjoy after all the Trumpiness but they did it right.

Never gonna give you up — map otm — so otm “lock thread” tbrr wu

first few bars of "the sound of silence"

Yea.. TikTok (and Vine) responsible for a lot of these

eg the breakdown of “Remember Walkin in the Sand” right before something extremely painful happening

this thread should just be a rickroll .... mods???

Ode to Joy? Often invoked (as in Die Hard) to convey comically over the top wonder.

Maybe Vince Guaraldi's 'Christmas Time is Here' ?

Hendrix' All Along the Watchtower for (1) Vietnam (unironically) and (2) when the drugs kick in (ironically).

The song is so good it is impervious to all this for me.

Lots of stuff subverted by soundtrack overuse, but even without Tarantino's help basically the whole of Neil Diamond's catalog has been converted to kitsch. I guess you could argue it's always been there, but something like "Sweet Caroline" is just a goofy sporting event singalong now.

Like Eye of the Tiger, Danger Zone is another big soundtrack pump-you-up anthem that is now a punchline.

Carmina burana and peer gynt morning mood.

Ravel's bolero was ironicized brutally in the dudley moore movie but seems to have recovered. The same might be true of orinoco flow, i think it was ironic for a long time but now it's treated as a universally loved guilty pleasure bop on par with the finest yacht rockage.

I think some 80s songs with sexy sax, the song as a whole is beloved now but if the sax part is excerpted, if your clip leads with that, it's ironic. Smooth operator, careless whisper, maneater.

Xp I'd say some diamond still has bite... solitary man, shiloh. Cracklin' rosie straddles the line between kitsch and tragedy even more perfectly than macarthur park or desperado.

the sound of silence

Yeah istr there being a meme-type thingy about "Hello darkness my old friend..." being used to react to ever-more-trivial disappointments.

I think that was pinched from Arrested Development

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtfoRESVir0