165. "Fight for Your Right" by the Beastie Boys
Written as a pie-in-the-face parody of party-on rockers, this song is better than most of the rock songs it tries to lampoon.
Kick it!
Fight for Your Right
When I die, I don't want a funeral. Instead, I want my nieces and nephews to honor my memory by having a pie fight like the one in this video.
This song came out during what I call "The Lost Years"--the two years I was on a mission. In Sweden, I was able to hear some new American music that was playing in public places or on the TVs in people's houses, but my exposure to new songs during that time was quite limited. Sweden usually got American music and films well after it came out in the states, so a lot of the music I heard at the beginning of my mission was old stuff that I'd heard 6 months before I left. When I got back home to Idaho in May of 1987, there were a bunch of great 80s songs that were old to everyone else, but brand-spankin' new to me. "Fight for Your Right" was one of them. I found out about this song from my sister Ruth, who when I said I didn't want to go to a church-sponsored dance/party because it would be really lame, yelled out the line, "You gotta fight…for your right…to paaaarrrrrrrtaaay!" and then started to laugh out loud. I had no idea what was going on. Then I saw this video a couple days later, and it all made sense. (Post-mission reorientation required lots and lots of MTV and video rentals.)
While "Fight" is my favorite song from the boys, I think the best video is "Sabotage." If I thought I could have this much fun being in a hip-hop group and make videos spoofing old 70s television shows, I'd do it.
Sabotage
Fred Kelly is Bunny!
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