Inappropriate Walk Up Music: 03.22.09

santo-shea.jpgFor previous Inappropriate Walk Up Music posts, click here.

Every day until Opening Day, Scratchbomb presents three tunes that are completely, unequivocally inappropriate for use as major league walk-up
music.

These are not necessarily bad songs–although that
certainly helps. They are merely songs that don’t evoke the fear and dread one traditionally associates with the walk-up song. In fact, they evoke the exact opposite.

Imagine yourself in the on-deck circle. Bottom of the 9th. Down by one. Man on second, two out. You hear the PA system blare, The centerfielder, number 20… The crowd roars at the sound of your name. And as you stroll to the batter’s box, you are greeted with the strains of one of these songs:

Today, on a whim, I decided to check out the Top 3 songs on the Hot 100 chart, figuring that they’d be inappropriate. Lo and behold, my instincts were right. The top three slots are currently occupied by terrible hip-hop songs with completely unoriginal beats and rhymes. Of course, lack of originality doesn’t necessarily disqualify a song for walk-up purposes. But each of these songs disqualifies itself in their own special way.

1. “Right Round”, Flo Rida
Let’s see: Terrible beat? Check. Rhymes cribbed from every “we up in the club” song recorded in the last 10 years? Check. Hilariously wack flow despite having “flo” in your name? Check. Paraphrasing lyrics from the similarly named bad 80s song while also giving work to Katy Perry? Check. Okay, I think we’re done here.

2. “Dead and Gone”, T.I. featuring Justin Timberlake
If you can find any true differences between this song and “Gangster’s Paradise”, you’ve got a keener ear than I do.

The number 3 song this week is actually “Poker Face” by Lady Gaga, which I picked in my first Inappropriate Walk Up Music post. So I have to skip down to number 4, where we find:

4. “Kiss Me Through the Phone”, Soulja Boy Tell ’em featuring Sammie
Aside from the cringe-worthy title, I swear I heard this beat/keyboard line combo in a Geico commercial.