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Maybe John McCain will bring back “Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran”

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Political candidates love to get the juices flowing at campaign rallies by playing pop hits that, well, supposedly capture the spirit of their campaigns. But isn’t it a little embarrassing when a seemingly endless array of singers and songwriters behind the songs start going public, asking you to stop using their tunes? That’s what has happened to the McCain campaign in recent days. As Ana Marie Cox notes at Time’s Swampland blog, McCain is running out of songs to play at his rallies after getting cease-and-desist complaints from a slew of artists, including Van Halen, the Foo Fighters, Jackson Brown and Heart.

Cox links to all the various complaints. They include the Foo Fighters, who said their song, ‘My Hero,’ was being used in a way that ‘perverts the original sentiment of the lyric’ since it was written ‘as a celebration of the common man and his extraordinary potential,’ as well as Heart, who after seeing Sarah Palin appear at the Republican National Convention, accompanied by ‘Barracuda,’ issued a scathing statement saying the group had never authorized use of the song, adding ‘Sarah Palin’s views and values in no way represent us as American women.’ (One of my friends has suggested that the media-shy Palin adopt Lynyrd Skynyrd’s ‘Don’t Ask Me No Questions’ as a new theme.)

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Every politician deserves a good theme song. So what should McCain do? Surely there must be an anthem out there that’s a good fit for the maverick Senator from Arizona. Maybe we can help. If anyone has some helpful song suggestions, fire away. I’ll try to post the best ideas soon.

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