Payola - Satire of Payola Practices

Satire of Payola Practices

In 1960, Stan Freberg did a parody on the Payola Scandal, by calling it "Old Payola Roll Blues", a two sided single, where the promoter gets an ordinary teenager, named Clyde Ankle, to record a song, for Obscurity Records, entitled "High School OO OO", and then tries to offer the song to a Jazz radio station with phony deals that the Disc Jockey just won't buy it. It ends with an anti-rock song, saying hello to Jazz and Swing, and goodbye to amateur nights, including Rock and Roll.

In episode 6 of season 4 of the CBS show Cold Case, the detectives investigate the murder of a DJ in 1958 who was suspected of accepting a payola.

The Vancouver, BC, new wave band the Payola$ chose their moniker during the punk explosion of the late 1970s.

The practice was criticized in the chorus of the Dead Kennedys song "Pull My Strings", a parody of the song "My Sharona" ("My Payola") sung to a crowd of music industry leaders during a music award ceremony.

The They Might Be Giants song "Hey, Mr. DJ, I Thought You Said We Had a Deal" is another song about the practice. It is narrated from the point of view of a naive and inexperienced musician who has been coerced by a disc jockey into paying for airplay – the disc jockey then disappears and does not deliver on his promise.

The song "Payola Blues" by Neil Young from his album Everybody's Rockin'. It opens by saying "This one's for you Alan Freed" and then states "'Cause the things they're doing today would make a saint out of you," implying that Payola corruption is bigger now than it was in the '50s.

The practice was also referenced in Billy Joel's song "We Didn't Start the Fire," during the verse dealing with the events of 1960.

"Sell Out" by the Reel Big Fish can be seen as a satire of payola scandals.

In 2002's video game "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City" the DJ for Flash FM, in a Freudian slip admits that the station used a payola scheme to have Love Fist's songs on the radio ahead of their concert. Also in the 2008 "Grand Theft Auto IV", the fictional radio host Lazlow is accused of numerous payola scandals.

The Basque country band Berri Txarrak record a LP/CD called Payola.

The Dead Milkmen song "Methodist Coloring Book" contains the line "God is honest; he don't take payola."

Payola was depicted in the film The Harder They Come (1972) where a record producer, not the recording artist, controls the airwaves. The portrayal of its protagonist (Jimmy Cliff) as an aspiring musician who is forced to sign away his rights to make a hit record depicts the role of record producers and radio DJs as a dominance - the musician ends up with no aspirations or living the same lifestyle (as in the case of the film Rockers).

An episode of the TV series WKRP in Cincinnati entitled Johnny Comes Back features a story involving a DJ accepting money and drugs from a promoter in exchange for playing specific records.