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It is if you're John McCain. During an election year, especially one as polarizing as this one, it's no surprise to see celebrities using their voices to support the candidates they most believe in. Or not. And some musicians are not so happy to see their music being used in campaigns. Remember the whole Springsteen debacle when then-president Reagan wanted to use The Boss's hit, "Born in The USA" for his 1984 re-election campaign, completely missing the irony in that song? Well, you can add the Foo Fighters to that list of artists not too happy to have their songs used in a major political campaign. Kate Richardson from Idolator in a post called John McCain is Not Dave Grohl's Hero:
It's hard being a Republican Presidential candidate sometimes, what with most people who are in the business of writing populist anthems frowning on your usage of their songs at political events. The McCain-Palin camp has had a particularly rough go of it lately, what with Nancy Wilson tossing them a cease-and-desist after their abuse of "Barracuda" and Van Halen reigniting their old tensions after "Right Now" was played at a rally.. Now the Foo Fighters have come out of hiatus just to issue a strongly worded press release regarding the campaign's use of "My Hero."
According to the Foo Fighters' press release, "This isn't the first time the McCain campaign has used a song without making any attempt to get approval or permission from the artist. It's frustrating and infuriating that someone who claims to speak for the American people would repeatedly show such little respect for creativity and intellectual property."
Also weighing in on the "Hero" controversy and the use of copyrighted material in general, Mary from Ruined Music:
If I tried to appropriate, say, Paula Abdul’s “Cold Hearted Snake” as the theme song* for this website, I would have ASCAP lawyers breaking down my door in a matter of seconds, and I’d probably have to fork over tens of thousands of dollars in fines. Heck, when you folks quote song lyrics in your essay submissions, we’ve started editing them out before we publish them - because you just can’t be too careful these days, at least not when you don’t have tens of thousands of dollars to spare.
According to The Guardian, Bon Jovi is also taking the McCain campaign to task for unauthorized use of their song, "Who Says You Can't Go Home." In a statement, Jon Bon Jovi said:
The song has since become a banner for our home state of New Jersey and the de facto theme song for our partnerships around the country to build homes and rebuild communities."
So what's a candidate to do? Hank Williams Jr. rewrote his song "Family Tradition" as "McCain-Palin Tradition," conveniently cleaning up the lyrics and adding new ones about hunting and "radical friends", which you can read in their entirety at the Huffington Post.
What do you think? Should musicians (or all celebrities) stay out of politics altogether?
