Bored Panda
JUN 20, 2022

closetothesilence reply

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My high school choir allowed the seniors (in choir) to vote on a song to perform at graduation. We would spend a day sorting nominated songs to narrow down to a couple which would have a brief defense of the song and why it should be chosen put before the group and then we'd all vote. Simple democratic process. It was usually some moderately popular pop song, no big deal. My senior year, several of us are huge Freddie Mercury / Queen fans so we grouped together to nominate Bohemian Rhapsody, which won the vote by a huge (over 95% margin). We were happy, the choir was happy, the director and administration were happy. Life was good.
Then... The next week... One senior girl approached the director in tears about how "this song about DRUGS is going to ruin MY graduation!" (she didn't understand the line "so you think you can stone me and spit in my eye." She literally thought it was about getting stoned...)
Anyway, the director tells is all what happened, we laugh at how ridiculous it is, until she says that because of this, we will have to change the song.
Wut...
No f*****g way, we selected it democratically and it was voted for by a massive margin. So we were forced to go before the choir AGAIN, opposite little miss still crying dumbass, and argue for the song again and she gets to argue her case as well. Her only words to the class were how "if this song is picked I REFUSE to participate in graduation, because I don't believe in drugs!"
There was no vote this time. The director decided we would not sing the song. And substituted it with an African freedom song, which we neither picked nor voted on at any stage. We threatened to not sing at graduation if that was the case and she just told is to "not cause any additional drama.". The administration tried to offer is a compromise by playing the song as we exited at the end, which we begrudgingly accepted.
Graduation comes, little Miss Priss stands in the top row with a s**t eating grin on her face, and proudly sings the African freedom song, while a bunch of us stand and refuse to open our mouths but it's moot at that point.
And as one final f**k you to us, it seemed, we get to the end of the ceremony and instead of Bohemian Rhapsody playing, they put on Bittersweet Symphony... I heard that the next year they had a "banned songs" list that we're not allowed for the senior vote. It was full of random rap and pop songs (like someone googled a top 40 list) and right there at the top was Bohemian Rhapsody.
I don't know what that girl's problem really was, but she somehow bested a 400 person graduating class and effectively banned a modern masterpiece purely because she was too stupid to understand the lyrics... This was 15 years ago and I'm still bitter...
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