PR-Bridge

Earlier this week, AdvertisingAge reported on a talk by Procter & Gamble interactive marketing exec Ted McConnell, with the provocative title: “Digital Guru Not Sure Marketers Belong on Facebook.” Reacting to the attempts to “monetize” social media sites, McConnell explained, “What in heaven’s name made you think you could monetize the real estate in which somebody is breaking up with their girlfriend?”

I discussed this issue in detail in early August, advocating that organizations move away from thinking of social media sites like they do television, radio, or billboards, and instead uncovering new ways of using social media to build relationships. McConnell also brought up this point, dispelling the “media” aspect of “consumer-generated media.”

“Who said this is media,” McConnell asked. “Consumers weren’t trying to generate media. They were trying to talk to somebody. So it just seems a bit arrogant…We hijack their own conversations, their own thoughts and feelings, and try to monetize it.”

Recently, USF public relations students in my Writing for Public Relations classes have been doing research on college students and attitudes toward branding, brand loyalty, and how they are dealing with the economic downturn. While I won’t divulge much of the information they’ve uncovered, since we’ll be releasing it over the next several weeks, I will reveal that the brands students are most loyal to interact with them in ways they desire, such as sending discount coupons through the mail, not by blitzing them with ads on Facebook and MySpace.

I also wonder if the rock band Pearl Jam might provide some lessons about how organizations should reach out to customers. At the height of its worldwide fame, the band stopped making videos and cut back on marketing, essentially removing themselves from the mainstream pop universe. While it shed casual fans, it built online communities of dedicated followers, even handing over control of its music. For instance, allowing people on fan sites to trade bootlegs legally.

As a result, Pearl Jam now has a large, dedicated group of fans that sell out every show and support its CDs. While it will probably never reach the heights it did with its first several albums, in terms of overall CD sales and radio play, one could argue that Pearl Jam is more popular than ever.

I think the answer lies somewhere in the idea of building a group of intense users and then figuring what that group wants from the brand and how to deliver it in the most efficient manner.

According to a recent AP article, some 10 million people in the United States are now jobless. The national unemployment rate stands at a 14-year high of 6.5 percent, according to government statistics. That number will increase, since several large employers announced new rounds of layoffs, including Ford and GM.

Certainly 10 million unemployed is a significant number – the highest in 25 years. Moreover, the “official” government statistics only tell part of the story when it comes to determining the national unemployment rate, which I discussed in a 2004 article, “The Downside of Downsizing” at The History News Network. These figures only count people actively searching for work, not those who have dropped from the search altogether. More telling in today’s economy, the figures also do not account for people who are underemployed — like a marketing exec, for example, forced to work part-time or in a service industry position to make ends meet.

What cannot be overlooked as the incoming Obama administration searches for ways to fix the ailing economy is that many of these 10 million unemployed people may never fully recover from the psychological devastation of getting downsized. The lack of humanity in the process is staggering, certainly considering the decades of experience corporations now have with mass layoffs. Anyone who has had experience with being laid off or interacting with family or friends who have can relate. Many honest, ethical, hard working people never shake the downsized stigma, carrying it around for the rest of their careers.

From an internal communications perspective, many companies assume that putting together a decent severance package heals the wound. One could argue, however, that putting a dollar figure on an employee’s tenure or work history merely accentuates the pain. For many, no amount of money can overcome the psychological pain, basically equating the job loss with feelings of inadequacy or worthlessness.

When laying off employees, organizations often resort to lawyer-speak in an attempt to thwart potential lawsuits. As a result, people are not provided with meaningful explanations of their termination. Corporate platitudes about stock price, redundancies, and other explanations do little or nothing to keep workers from hefting the psychological scars associated with being laid off.

Economic chaos is going to be the status quo for the immediate future. In response, we should do as much as we can to help those downsized to regain meaningful employment. If those positions are not readily available, then at least we can treat people with dignity, not like outcasts. A critical aspect of fixing the current economic troubles is getting people back to work. Rather than tossing those laid off overboard, the nation needs to find new ways to harness their experience and business knowledge.

Scholars will examine the 2008 presidential campaign for a long, long time. The money spent by each candidate guarantees this, particularly the tremendous advantage Barack Obama has wield in the battle with John McCain.

While most of the major polls — like Yahoo! with its scoreboard estimate of the popular vote and electoral college – have Obama winning easily (right now, Yahoo! declares Obama winning 51.6 percent to 44.3 percent), what no poll or polling group can account for is the deep-rooted racism of the American public. On the surface, the equation seems straightforward. If Obama wins by less than 6 percent (or, if McCain somehow emerges victorious), then I posit that many voters, in their heart of hearts, stood in the voting booth and simply could not vote for a black man for president.

The potential role of race in the election seems more compelling when one examines the latest information about the candidate voters think will do more for the economy and to change Washington. Despite McCain’s self-avowed “maverick” status,  voters claim Obama leads on these issues. Obviously, some undecided voters could walk into the booth and go with McCain based on his experience and foreign policy viewpoints. That may account for the close election, if it gets close. Race, however, is a more compelling explanation.

Throughout the election season, information about the potential racism and its consequences popped up irregularly. On NPR, for example, correspondents went into battleground states and spoke to party stalwarts. In West Virginia, some Democrats interviewed flatly said that they were uncomfortable with Obama because of race. A poll in that state identified that 25 percent of voters would not vote for Obama due to race. Other NPR interviews revealed voters concerned about “the Muslim issue” and Obama, insinuating that Obama was a Muslim, not Christian.

An article in the Dallas Morning News, “In Areas of Pennsylvania, Issue of Obama’s Race Remains,” discusses the potential fallout in areas of that key state that have traditionally voted Democrat. “People won’t make up their mind or say they are going to vote for Obama because they are afraid that they could vote for a black man,” said Phil McGrogan, a retired salesman who said he’d vote for Mr. Obama. “In some of the yards where I see signs that say ‘Another Democrat for McCain,’ I know the people and I know they are racists. I even told my wife, you can almost pick out the rednecks.” McGrogan had the guts to tell the reporter what many others either think or see in their own neighborhoods.

The reason a Dallas paper would venture into southwestern PA is due to the fallout generated by the area’s Democratic Rep. John Murtha, who referred to the western part of his state as “a racist area.” He later rescinded his comments, but for many the notion stuck.

Even the now famous Joe the Plumber resorted to coded language, criticizing Obama for tap dancing through an answer, ”Almost as good as Sammy Davis Jr.” An Associated Press article lists several overtly racist ads run by pro-Republican groups, ranging from “a California group, which distributed anti-Obama literature with stereotypical black America images of a watermelon, ribs and a bucket of fried chicken…[and] A Virginia GOP official said Obama would hire rapper Ludacris to paint the White House black.”

The race challenge is one that haunts surveys — people often either lie or tell the person conducting the survey what they think they want to hear. What potential voter is going to admit to a pollster that they are racist? To get at reality, many polls have gone to computer-generated systems that eliminate human interaction.

Polls are attempting to get at the center of the race issue, but not until tomorrow’s election will the real consequences be revealed. A recent AP-Yahoo News poll, for example, determined that 40 percent of all white Americans hold at least a partly negative view toward blacks. Race may determine the outcome of the 2008 election, but whether it does or not, the results should show how far the nation still must travel to overcome its racial divide.

Rather than rallying around Sarah Palin, the soccer moms of the world should be uniting against the media’s portrayal of her as their unofficial leader. To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen: Sarah, I know many smart, engaging, intelligent soccer moms, and you’re not those soccer moms.

I cannot imagine what the Hillary Clinton voters see in Palin other than that she’s female. They are as opposite in worldview, education, and lifestyle as two people can be. The idea that women voters are going to automatically flock to McCain/Palin because of her presence on the ticket seems to mock the intelligence of female voters.

The media fallout post-debate is that Palin “held her own.” According to the Chicago Tribune: “She displayed the political strength we saw in her address to the Republican National Convention. She knows how to speak to America’s heart.”

Were the editorial board members listening to the same debate the rest of us were? ”Political strength” is not a phrase that most people would use to describe that show, but then one is hit with the AP report of a post-debate poll: 

“A CNN poll of 611 adult Americans who watched the encounter found 51 percent thought Biden did the better job in the debate, while 36 percent said Palin did. But an overwhelming 84 percent said Palin did better than expected.”

One line of thought here is that the expectations for Palin, after the dreadful performances in her Gibson and Couric interviews, were so low that she could do “better than expected” by merely speaking in semi-coherent sentences. But, did nearly 4 in 10 people really believe that she did better in the debate than Biden? 4 in 10! What about the other 13 percent. They couldn’t even decide? Results like this make me glad commentators like my friend Rick Shenkman are out there providing insight, like that found in his new book: Just How Stupid Are We?

One must wonder what the public finds so appealing about Palin. I heard one potential voter tell NPR that he liked her because she understood the middle class, since she was part of it, unlike the rest of the candidates. This is a plausible reason for the attraction. Another notion is that voters do not like “intellectuals,” an argument made so well by historian Richard Hofstadter many decades ago.

What scares many people, however, is Palin’s utter lack of knowledge of current events or anything outside her dogmatic worldview. And, at this point, there is plenty of ammunition for those who are fearful. In a recent Newsweek column, Fareed Zakaria, a really smart commentator discussed Palin’s utter lack of qualification for national office. He astutely points to her “vapid” answers to Couric’s questions, many of which were “nonsense.”

Zakaria quotes at length Palin’s answer to a question about the $700 billion bailout. In reponse to the question, Palin said, “I, like every American I’m speaking with, were ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the healthcare reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the–it’s got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it on the right track…”

Is this the kind of blathering we applaud? Would anyone grading Palin’s presentation in a high school or college class give her passing marks?

Yet, here we are about a month away from one of the most important presidential elections in history with potential voters jumping on the McCain/Palin bandwagon. Palin seems like the tens of millions of working and overworked mothers/women in America. She litters her speech with soccer momish phrases like, “you betcha,” sports a perky pulled-back hairstyle and funky glasses, and has that same strange middle America inflection in her voice, like one uses in pleading with children to clean up their toys people understand. But none of that makes her qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency. Haven’t the last eight years shown us the challenges of an underwhelming chief executive?

[This is another reply to Benita Steyn that I wrote in the ongoing discussion regarding PR theory at PR Conversations]

 My “approach” first and foremost is to avoid being explanatory or provide overarching definitions for topics under research. I see a much better approach in attacking a challenge through interrogation, exploration, and speculation. Too often, I think, scholars try too hard to give an answer or explain everything. 

My criticism of Dr. Grunig’s reliance on symmetry and the larger so-called Excellence Theory includes:  

– Attempting to define PR through Excellence actually made the field more self-reflective and insular. As a result, public relations is further alienated from inter-related disciplines and the broader academic community. PR scholars thus spend a lot of time spinning their wheels redefining PR and why it should be part of management, rather than tackling issues that impact practitioners. 

– Public relations can be ethical, effective, and important to an organization without the emphasis on “management” or where the top communicator sits in an organizational hierarchy. 

– All communications efforts (marketing, PR, and advertising) should be aligned to the organization’s overall strategic goals, as one would see in Hoshin planning. 

– Two-way symmetrical communications does not take into account the power relationships involved in the relationship between an organization and all its “publics.” Furthermore, the technological age makes it nearly impossible to talk about “publics” in any uniform manner. For true symmetrical communications to occur, one would have to have countless communicators constantly negotiating with various individuals and groups. 

– While communicators may have a deep knowledge of the environments inside and outside their organizations and facilitate discussions between audiences and the organization, their work is conducted to further the organization’s goals and objectives. Communicators are not society’s ombudsmen. 

– Communications research should be practical and applied. 

So, Benita, these are some of the ideas I have about communicators, but I’m not attempting to come up with an overriding “theory” of PR. You asked, so I jotted down some thoughts. 

I do not think it is advantageous to use a single theory to explain one’s worldview. We attempt to teach our students to be critical thinkers, then watch as scholars use postmodernism, Marxism, realism, etc. as the lens through which they see their world. Dr. Grunig and his followers have been so diligent in building the work into an “ism” that its muted work on other important areas or forced others to use it as their own lens. 

I don’t think that our basic ideas regarding PR are all that different, we’re just approaching some things from different vantage points. And, the differences are healthy and necessary. 

[And a follow-up post]

While it seems I’m the lone dissenting voice in this discussion, there are others in the field (both professionals and academics) who share similar feelings.

In Public Relations Theory II, edited by Carl Botan and Vincent Hazleton, the editors write, “Most scholars would agree that Symmetrical/Excellence Theory is, at least potentially, a paradigmatic theory. Most would also agree that it is the only such paradigmatic theory yet developed in public relations. This speaks well for the Symmetrical/Excellence folks, and ill for the rest of the field” (9).

And, “According to Kuhn (1970), theoretic paradigms frame and guide research in a field. However, they may also stifle and prevent the consideration of innovative ideas and theories. Regular and frequent public examinations of theories by scholars not directly tied to those theories may help a naturally polyparadigmatic field like public relations avoid the unhealthy condition of a lack of paradigmatic struggle.”

[My reply to the conversation as it turned to Dr. Grunig’s speech at The Institute for Public Relations: “After 50 Years: The Value and Values of Public Relations”] 

While not in the audience that evening, I’ve read Dr. Grunig’s speech many times on the Institute Web site. I don’t find any magic bullets in it. 

As a matter of fact, I think the speech reveals some of the faults of the Excellence work. Although I loved being a professional communicator and love teaching public relations even more to hundreds of students each year, I don’t see PR playing the role of the white knight swooping in to keep evil organizations from pillaging the public. 

Dr. Grunig advocates PR playing a do-gooder role based on symmetry that “helps society.” Yet, in his examples from the speech, take Ivy Lee and Rockefeller for instance, was Lee truly advocating for the public or rather for Rockefeller to take steps so that he ultimately achieved his objectives? And, I’m really looking forward to the day when some bright scholar calls Bernays out for his gimmickry and self-promotion, turning the supposed “Father of PR” into the “Father of Publicity,” which is a more accurate picture. But, I digress. 

Dr. Grunig also takes a rather elitist view of the standoff between his beloved “elite practitioners” and the lowly “mass of tacticians and technicians.” I think many professionals would lose their lunch if given that section of the speech.  

Dr. Grunig constructs a false fight between strategists and tacticians, but ultimately places the latter in the camp of “buffering” and those who “make decisions in isolation from publics.” Please, let the thousands of people teaching PR in on the secret to become an “elite practitioner” because I don’t want my students merely becoming one of the masses who “fly by the seat of their pants or simply do what employers or clients ask them to do.”  

Furthermore, what is the good, “bridging” strategist doing after whispering in the CEO’s ear, other than going back to a staff of lowly tacticians to implement that plan? 

And, while Fraser did not address this point, I’d like to ask why PR academics _automatically_ assume that as soon as one mentions any form of integrated communications that it means that PR must take a secondary/subservient role? The hangups over defining PR — for the millionth time — and posturing about its place as management or not management obfuscates the true meaning of integrated communications. Simply, that different communications divisions work together toward the goals and aspirations of the organization.

I could not help myself. I had to get involved in the discussion taking place at PR Conversations. And, Jim Grunig responded. If you’re interested, take a look.

I was even accused *GASP* of displaying an “unpleasant tone.”

Feel free to jump in too, either at the original or at PR-Bridge.

Heather Yaxley is leading an amazing exchange at PR Conversations. I urge you to check it out. Not only is the wonderful Ms. Yaxley displaying her vast knowledge, but Jim Grunig has made several posts as well.

Thanks to Judy Gombita for directing me to the posts.

Imagine a group of guys playing hoops in a small gym in Novato, California. Between games, one person notices his buddy’s new shoes, so he asks about them. A discussion ensues. In the short couple of minutes while the other guys are getting drinks and stretching out, a conversation takes place. The first guy decides to check the shoes out at the mall in San Rafael that weekend based on his friends’ enthusiasm.

Next, imagine that the small gym becomes the hottest place to play in Northern California. Instead of 8 to 10 guys showing up, suddenly there are hundreds or thousands. Not only are the original players getting crowded out, but soon marketers want to bring in billboards and buy ad space on the walls.

Perhaps one of the original players owns the gym. He can take a slice of the action or eliminate all the clutter that takes away from the games. It is his gym and his ball. Opening it to others, initially, enables the games to proceed under the universal gym rat rules. However, letting everyone and their brother into the gym not only changes the dynamic, but makes it difficult to maintain an even flimsy control of the proceedings. The reason for showing up gets diluted as more people arrive.

In the second scenario, everything that is not about playing basketball is unnatural and, more or less, unwanted, at least by the original crew who just wants to play some hoops. Suddenly, their little haven is a zoo. No one can get on the court anymore. Old gym rats like me will immediately understand this harrowing feeling.

In thinking about social media the last couple of months, I get that same odd sensation. My feelings about social media are transforming, particularly the rush to “monetize” or create return on investment (ROI) that seems to be at the center of the PR/marketing industry. These attempts, along with creating social media “campaigns,” seems to be bastardizing the very vehicles that communicators want to figure out. In other words, I think that public relations and marketing professionals are going about social media all wrong.

Viewing Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and other sites as vehicles for disseminating info about selling products or services is not the best way to think about social media. When creating campaigns based on using Facebook or YouTube as a strategy with specific tactics to create “buzz” or friend lists, etc. the PR pro is assuming that the sites are like newspapers or magazines.

Instead, what I see is that social media sites are really like special interest clubs…even if they have 75 million unique visitors like MySpace did in July. The attempt to infiltrate these societies, if you really want to think about what a large social media entity could be, is unnatural, unless that interest group wants to be marketed to.

Creating a MySpace or Facebook page for a product or service is really pretty worthless in most cases. I realize some companies have had success doing so and they may even have the statistics available to back it up. From what I have seen, though, many of these instances have been lucky hits, which is why they are not being replicated across the board. (I do, however, think the rules change if one is marketing a celebrity, movie, or musician via MySpace, Faceboo, or another pre-formed site. When it comes to popular culture topics, there are natural interest groups that already exist.)

 Fortunately, I think the answer for how companies should use social media techniques already exists. Rather than attempt to push into Facebook and MySpace — communities formed for social (not commerce- or consumer-based) interaction — companies should create their own social media sites that will enable interested users to visit and interact with the specific company and others who have the same interest. I envision an organization’s social media, then, to look like a company-created Craigslist, but including the bells and whistles of other social media sites. The user decides to go to the site, not be accosted by the product, service, or organizaton as they go about their Web-based social endeavors.

I would much rather see countless million little Web communities based around products and services than trying to hijack a portion of Facebook, or whatever the next big site is in the industry. The benefit to the organization is that its little user community would be inhabited by people who actually want to be there. I think eBay is another example of this potential, as well as smaller sites, like the reader-writer community Readerville.com. In Readerville, for example, a person who comes into the community to just market products is essentially shouted down by the people who make up the membership.

The big mantra in Web 2.0 is that the user has control over content. The rationale for joining Facebook, for example, is to interact with friends and family, network, and the like. Users do not join Facebook hoping to be marketed to by Coke, Burger King, or other entities. That is not why social media sites exist. One could argue that people do not watch television to be marketed at either, but they still turn on the tube. The counter is that with technological innovation, it is becoming easier to circumvent traditional advertising.

The same attitude that leads PR practitioners to think they can just push their way into social media sites carries over into the way they interact with bloggers. A recent post by Robert Scobel discussed his dismay with the way PR pros pitch him and other bloggers.

“See, some of them [PR professionals] (er, most of them) are treating bloggers as just ‘channels of message distribution.’ We’re there to take the news they are pitching and regurgitate it and spit it at all of you. That exercise is totally not interesting. For all the reasons I’ve gone over here. It doesn’t let me figure out my own take on the story. It doesn’t let me hear from customers who are wildly happy. It doesn’t let me even figure out if the product works (many of those kinds of stories are pitched to bloggers who don’t even have any expertise in what they are pitching). Here, do another exercise. Let’s assume that StackOverflow was pitched to me by a PR company in an email. Would it have gotten coverage here? No. It doesn’t let me really find my own voice, or build an audience that’s any different than anyone else on Google Reader or TechMeme.”

These are PR class 101 mistakes — not treating the journalist respectfully and believing that sending out a million press releases equals good PR. For a great counter-discussion of PR’s importance in the Web 2.0 world, read Brian Solis’ essay defending the industry.

This particular essay is not going to devolve into an anti-PR screed. There is enough of that going on. I do, though, think that public relations must change/transform as the channels around the profession evolve. I still see too much spamming releases and sloppy research to prove that PR is attempting to hurdle these deficiencies.

Steve Rubel at Micro Persuasion echoes this sentiment, saying: “Every day I am deluged with hundreds of PR pitches. They come from everywhere: startups, big companies, competing PR firms and, occasionally, from people inside Edelman where I work. I read all the emails but delete 99.99% of them. I don’t even respond. I feel bad about it, but they’re so off base I can’t even begin to tell you how bad they are…However, I can’t fault these PR pros. They’re doing their job. They are doing what has always worked for them and I guess continues: sending out lots of email pitches in hopes that some stick. But those days are coming to an end.”

This is why I think that building mini-social media sites will reinvigorate public relations and give it the central position it should have as the communications conduit between organizations and audiences.

With summer zipping by so quickly, we at PR-Bridge are diverting from our normal public relations programming to present some popular culture thoughts that may spark further discussion.

As a proud Gen Xer raised in the hills of Western Pennsylvania, I am committing major violations by naming some of these songs in the “overrated” category. Growing up, such blasphemy would have erupted into fistfights. That’s okay – it is all in the name of fun.

Today’s features: The Five Most Underrated Songs since 1950, The Five Most Overrated Songs since 1950, and Five Bands I Never Want to Hear Again (but cannot escape because classic rock radio in Tampa plays horrible songs…)

The Five Most Underrated Songs since 1950

1. “Tangled Up in Blue” – Bob Dylan
Probably the greatest love song of all-time. Dylan’s cryptic lyrics drive a cross-country love affair encased in a snapshot of 1960s/1970s social history.

2. “Thunder Road” – Bruce Springsteen
The song has always played second fiddle to “Born to Run,” which is understandable. However, listen to them again – loud – and tell me that TR does not leave BTR in its dust.

3. “Downtown Train” – Tom Waits
Waits is a genius, a musical magician with a voice so beautiful and unapologetic that it blasts through the soul. His version of “Downtown Train” is filled with longing, anguish, and dashed dreams – all the emotion left out in Rod Stewart’s much more popular cover.

4. “Fight the Power” – Public Enemy
The first question someone could ask is how “Fight the Power” could ever be considered underrated given its exposure from Spike’s Do the Right Thing. My reply is that the song (and band, for that matter) has almost no influence on today’s rap and hip-hop, which is ludicrous and sad. The political nature of Public Enemy meant so much to listeners in the late 1980s and early 1990s. That spark is virtually nonexistent in today’s rap and hip-hop. The digs on John Wayne and Elvis are priceless!

5. “Raspberry Beret” – Prince
While the symbolic one got famous off the early hits on 1999 and accompanying videos, including Purple Rain, “Raspberry Beret” shows Prince at his playful best. The song just flat-out makes you feel good.

The Five Most Overrated Songs since 1950

1. “Stairway to Heaven” – Led Zeppelin
I love Led Zeppelin, but have not listened to more than five seconds of this song since being forced to at a bonfire keg party in 1985. Maybe it is the area I grew up in, since WDVE (102.5, Pittsburgh) played this song incessantly. Or, perhaps it is the way the football players and other gear head idiots in my high school worshipped Stairway that makes it impossible for me to listen to it. Either way, my finger can’t hit the preset button faster when I hear that first chord.

2. “Satisfaction” – The Rolling Stones
Is it just me, or does the entire Rolling Stones act just seem like one long commercial? Yes, I understand that rock needed its edge back and Mick and Keith provided that dark side. I would bet a lot of money, however, that if a listener were completely honest with himself, he could find 25 better songs from the era. I respect the Stones, my wife and I saw them at RFK in about 20 degree weather in the late 1990s, I just don’t see the fascination – particularly now that they are in their sixties.

3. “Dream On” – Aerosmith
Aerosmith has so many better songs over its long career, yet “Dream On” is the one played most often. I feel the same way about Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy.” If you like Aerosmith and “Dream On” is your favorite song of theirs, then you must be insane. I guess I would give someone a break from this if “Dream On” were their prom song or wedding song or something. Otherwise, it is just an overrated song.

4. “Losing My Religion” – REM
Yes, the song/video catapulted REM into a different musical stratosphere. However, the transformation subsequently led to some really bad albums and is a case of too much fame all at once, which sent the band off course.

5. “Born in the USA” – Bruce Springsteen
God, I feel like a turncoat putting a song by Bruce on this list, but in my defense, turning the song into an anthem enabled politicians and others to misinterpret the message, ultimately bastardizing it beyond all recognition. Anyone who sees Bruce’s recent stuff as too political should go back and re-listen to “Born in the USA.”

(Others receiving consideration: “Hey Jude” – The Beatles, “Give It Away” – The Red Hot Chili Peppers, “I Shot the Sheriff” – Bob Marley and Eric Clapton versions, “Purple Haze” – Jimi Hendrix, “Candle in the Wind” – Elton John, and everything by Bon Jovi, Poison, and all the other 1980s hair bands)

Five Bands I Never Want to Hear Again

1. Boston

2. REO Speedwagon

3. Duran Duran

4. Dio

5. ZZ Top

6. [I had to add this one] Rush