Friday, August 1, 2008

Music that hurts - or helps others to hurt you


Mother Jones magazine has uncovered a list of the songs used by US interrogators to play repeatedly, at high volume, to detainees, in an attempt to break their spirits.

1. Die MF Die - Dope
2. Take Your Best Shot - Dope
3. White America - Eminem
4. Kim - Eminem
5. Barney Theme Song - Barney The Dinosaur
6. Bodies - Drowning Pool
7. Enter Sandman - Metallica
8. Meow Mix TV commercial
9. Sesame Street TV theme
10. Babylon - David Gray
11. Born In The USA - Bruce Springsteen
12. Shoot To Thrill - AC/DC
13. Stayin' Alive - Bee Gees
14. All Eyes On Me - Tupac
15. Dirrty - Christina Aguilera
16. America - Neil Diamond
17. Bulls On Parade - Rage Against The Machine
18. American Pie - Don McLean
19. Click Click Boom - Saliva
20. Cold - Matchbox 20
21. Swan Dive - Hed P.E.
22. Raspberry Beret - Prince


Hmm. Some of those would be enough to drive me stark, staring bonkers! Play Barney's theme to me over and over again and I'd be whimpering, begging for mercy, within an hour! On the other hand, many of those tracks (particularly the R&B/hip-hop/rap tracks) I wouldn't dignify with the name "music" at all.

How about it, readers? If you had to pick a music track to aurally torture someone, which would you choose? Answers in Comments, please, and I'll try to select the most interesting response for discussion in a subsequent post.

Peter

13 comments:

Christina RN LMT said...

I'd definitely go with the Barney theme song, and the Meowmix commerical song. Anything too bouncy and cheery would probably do me in. Also, I've heard that in the prisoner-of-war simulation portion of survival school (USAF), they play tapes of babies crying. Continuously. Or at least they did ten-fifteen years ago.

PresterSean said...

Voulez-Vous, ABBA

Anonymous said...

Oh, puhleaze! The only possible answer to this one is, "It's a Small World."

That song has been torturing Americans for decades!

Andrea

Simeron Steelhammer said...

Teletubbies....no doubt

Anonymous said...

Of course it would be the mother of all torture classics, Ape Call by Nervous Norvus.

Funny once, but over and over? Too much to contemplate.

Goatroper

Anonymous said...

This is the part where everybody laughs at me for having a bunch of those in my regular playlist rotation, right? No, not Barney and Meow Mix, smartasses.

Anyway, the one song sure to drive me up a clocktower in the shortest amount of time is Cat Stevens'* "Cat's In the Cradle & The Silver Spoon." Pretty much anything by him is on par with a dentist's drill for me, but that song in particular makes me want to go on a violent rampage, seeking out every CD, every hard drive, every record, 8-track and casette with a copy and burning them and whoever was dumb enough to pay money for it (or dumb enough to steal such a miserable, horrible, stomach-churning excuse for so-called music). Lock me in a padded room, put me in a straight jacket, and play that song non-stop and I promise that within an hour I'll have come up with *something* to make it stop that'd make MacGuyver look like a rookie at improvisation.

*What did he change his name to? Islam McDeportation or something?

SpeakerTweaker said...

Matchbox 20?

*shivers*

I'd make it through that song maybe four times before I confessed to flying one of the planes into the World Trade Center!



tweaker

Anonymous said...

Cat Stevens is now called "Yusuf Islam.

Go figure.

Chris M said...

Harry Chapin recorded "Cats in the Cradle." Cat Stevens did "Moon Shadow" which would qualify as torture. Or anything by Donavan; a few hours of "Mellow Yellow" ought to have anyone crying and willing to spill their guts.

Kevin said...

FREEBIRD

Stairway to heaven

Prince: little red corvette

Mini Ripperton: Loving you....

Donovan's 'Babylon' would be real fitting

Rocky Horror soundtrack would be fun to torture someone with
I can almost see the Jihadis doing the time warp!

Harrison said...

Alvin and the Chipmunks' Christmas Song and Jingle Bell Dogs.

Whenever some idiot radio station plays one of those, it's a race to see if AHM can get to the radio before we rip it to shreds.

The Old Man said...

If you're doin' Christmas stuff, it's gotta be "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" by Patsy & Elmo - for 4th of July hit 'em with "Kick Ass, USA" by Milo Tremly.... Labor Day would be the Soviet Men's Chorus doing "Sweet Home Alabama" with the Leningrad Cowboys.

Anonymous said...

That damn Police song - Sendin' out an SOS