We'll never be Royals

I'm not a huge baseball fan, but I tend to pay attention come playoff season. This year MLB fans get the bonus of watching game seven tonight between the Kansas City Royals and the San Francisco Giants, to decide who takes the title.

The Giants are perennial playoff contenders; the Royals... not so much. Personally I'd like to see KC win it tonight, especially since the underdogs are playing at home.

At the start of the final series I came across a story that mentioned the city of San Fran was going to ban the song Royals by Lorde in some sort of solidarity with the Giants. A Kansas City radio station then "retaliated" by claiming they'd be playing the song once an hour for the duration of the series.



Now, this is all well and good. Harmless fun, whatever. Unless, of course, you have a brain between your ears that is taking in that particular song. Much like the horribly misconstrued Born in the USA by Bruce Springsteen, this song does not mean what you think it means.

Lorde: 

And we'll never be royals (royals).
It don't run in our blood
That kind of luxe just ain't for us.

Springsteen:

Got in a little hometown jam
So they put a rifle in my hand
Sent me off to a foreign land
To go and kill the yellow man

Just because a song's got a title that might possibly mean what you hope it means, that don't make it true friendo. Lorde is happy NOT being a royal. Springsteen is calling out the government on Vietnam and poor economic prospects. But that won't stop people from misusing these kinds of things to support their own ill-gotten opinions.

When it comes to baseball, each city has the entire thing backwards. San Fran should be chanting "we'll never be Royals" while KC should boycott such a phrase. Yet they gleefully do the opposite. I suppose in a generation that's preoccupied with nothing at all, that only reads/listens to the opening quip or title of anything put before them, this isn't all that surprising. It's sad as hell, but not unexpected. Twitter, shortform everything, yadda yadda.

Then again, Born in the USA was released in 1984. So I guess this proves that no matter the generation, you can always count on the echoing stupidity of America.