IS IT TIME FOR RUSH LIMBAUGH TO STOP USING THE PRETENDERS SONG AS HIS THEME MUSIC?

For the past few days Rush Limbaugh has been catching some long-time-coming hell for his remarks against a Georgetown University student, and people are asking Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders on her own Facebook page to consider revoking the rights for Rush to use “My City Was Gone” as his theme music. It remains to be see if she will, but we sure hope so.

One People’s Project

Rush Limbaugh has said more than a few things over the past 20 years or so as the most popular radio show host in America, but the vicious remarks towards Georgetown University student Sandra Fluke were too much for the public to ignore. In the wake of those remarks Limbaugh has been hemorrhaging advertisers and two stations removed his radio program from their airwaves. In addition, artists had revoked the rights for Limbaugh to use their songs on his show. Peter Gabriel’s rep said in a statement that the singer has asked him to remove his song “Sledgehammer” from his program, saying “It is obvious from anyone that knows Peter’s work that he would never approve such a use”, and the band Rush has sent the host Rush a cease and desist order to block him from using their work as well. To date, these are the only two acts that have made this call, but it remains to be seen if the artists who perform the most prominent music on Limbaugh’s program will also follow suit. That would be Chrissie Hynde and her band the Pretenders, who recorded the song that Limbaugh has used as his theme song, “My City Was Gone”.

According to Limbaugh, he has been using “My City Was Gone” as a theme song since October 1984, when he was in Sacramento, CA for KFBK-AM. “I was told that because of programming requirements I had to open each hour with a theme song,” he said. “Now I had been a disc jockey, I had…worked at news stations, I had never used a theme song.” Eventually after listening to several songs and settled on the Pretenders staple, because although he just played the non-lyrical portion of the song because he liked the driving bassline, he thought that if people would learn the lyrics, which he said “bashes real-estate developers”, it would be considered an unexpected choice and the antithesis of what he believed.

But the politically-active Hynde and her label EMI were outraged over its use when Limbaugh went national and they heard “My City Was Gone” being used by him. For a number of weeks Limbaugh tried different theme songs, but eventually Hynde allowed him to use the song so long as he donates the royalty fees to PETA. In a 2009 interview, Hynde said that Limbaugh was of no matter to her. “I was hounded and followed by Americans worldwide, who said ‘You’ve got to make him stop,’” she said. “I hadn’t even heard the show. Actually so many people told me to take it off, I thought ‘Fuck it.’ I don’t have to do what you people want me to do. That show doesn’t matter to me. I think people are too easily baited. Those talk guys are just part of the gossip culture. Everyone’s got opinions on other people. “

In recent days however, people have taken to Twitter and Facebook using the #boycottrush hash tag asking Hynde to rethink her decision about letting Rush use the song. “@Chrissie_Hynde For 3 days Rush berated a woman and asked for explicit videos. This is not how you treat women”, wrote “John B”, while “middleroad” simply tweets, “@Chrissie_Hynde Time to pull your song from Rush”. Meanwhile, Debates have been raging for days on Hynde’s Facebook page.

To date Hynde has not responded to the recent events. There has not been any response from the Twitter account bearing Chrissie Hynde’s name, the last of the few tweets there being Feb . 7.