Sixteen Tons - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

Music

• The Clash used Tennessee Ernie Ford's version as their intro music for their 1980 US tour, called "The 16 Tons Tour".
• Rock band Faith No More covered a snippet of the song as an intro to "Let's Lynch the Landlord" (another cover) at live concerts in the early 90's.

Television

• Ed Sullivan suggested Bo Diddley sing a version of the song for his 1955 appearance on Sullivan's television show. Instead, Diddley sang a rendition of his own song, "Bo Diddley," angering Sullivan.
• A running gag on Monty Python's Flying Circus consisted of a 16-ton weight being suddenly dropped onto one of the characters in a skit.
• The song appeared in season 5 of The Simpsons episode "Bart Gets an Elephant".
• In the South Park episode "Stupid Spoiled Whore Video Playset," Butters sings a variation of "Sixteen Tons" while mining for coal to avoid being sold to Paris Hilton. Dressed as a bear, he is seen digging outside singing: "Ya work 18 hours whadaya get? Parents sell ya to Paris Hilton".
• The song was played by the band The Nighthawks in season two of the crime drama The Wire. It was played in the bar that was frequented by the Stevedore's union. It was also featured on the soundtrack.
• The Tennessee Ernie Ford version of the song was played during the closing credits of the "Seven Twenty Three" episode of the television show Mad Men (Season 3, Episode 7, aired 2009), in which the show's lead character was strong-armed into signing a three-year employment contract.
• In the American sitcom The Big Bang Theory Sheldon Cooper sings a line of the song in the Season 2 episode "The Work Song Nanocluster".
• In 2005, General Electric ran a series of ads for its new "clean coal" campaign featuring the song.
• In the "Last Train to Oblivion" episode of the cartoon The Real Ghostbusters, Peter Venkman sings this song as he shovels coal into the train furnace.
• The American show Chuck (TV series) played this song during the episode Chuck Versus the Seduction Impossible (Episode no. Season 4 Episode 14 February 7, 2011).

Films

• The song appeared during the opening credits of Joe Versus the Volcano.
• It was also used in the undersea horror movie Leviathan.
• It appeared in the Taiwan movie The Wayward Cloud by Tsai Ming Liang in 2005.
• Ümit Kıvanç used several versions of the song in his online movie 16 Tons - A movie about conscience and free market in 2011.

Stage

• "Sixteen Tons" is one of the many songs featured in the show Forever Plaid, which premiered in 1992.
• "Sixteen Tons" was sung by Lance Guest, portraying Johnny Cash, in medley with "My Babe" sung by Robert Britton Lyons, portraying Carl Perkins, in the Broadway musical Million Dollar Quartet, which opened in on Broadway in April, 2010.

Parodies and inspirations

• John Denver performed his golf-themed parody called 18 Holes in 1997.
• The song inspired the Hungarian rock band Republic to write the song "16 tonna feketeszén".

In Russia

• In Russia, the Moscow concert venue Sixteen Tons is named after the song, which is played before each concert held in the club. The song has been famous in Russia since the Soviet era, but in the Platters' version. It was so influential that in the USSR several cover versions were made in Russian, as well as innumerable parodies in which "sixteen tons" referred to the weight of a bomb carried by some pilots to be dropped on a target country. There were versions with Americans about to bomb USSR, Russians about to bomb America, and also Russians about to bomb China. Lyrics tended to vary by performer.