Songs with Earlier Histories Than the Hit Version

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Tagged: Dean Friedman

McDonald’s Girl

Written and first recorded by Dean Friedman (1981).
Also recorded by Barenaked Ladies (1992)
Hit version by The Blenders (NOR #1 1998).

From the wiki: “‘McDonald’s Girl’ was a track from Dean Friedman’s third album, Rumpled Romeo, and found him falling in love with a girl who works at McDonald’s – ‘an angel in polyester.’ Friedman’s previous album had produced hits in the UK, with ‘Lucky Stars’ and ‘Lydia’, but this one ran into a problem: the BBC refused to play any song where the name of a product or company was mentioned in a way they could be considered an endorsement. The Kinks had gotten around this in their song ‘Lola’ by swapping out ‘Coca-Cola’ for ‘cherry cola’, but there was no way to edit ‘McDonalds’ out of this one. Friedman recalls, ‘I thought ‘McDonald’s Girl’ was a surefire hit. It was released by CBS Records in the UK. But it was immediately banned by the BBC.’

“The Barenaked Ladies played ‘McDonald’s Girl’ at many early concerts and, in 1992, they also performed it on an appearance on the Toronto radio station CFNY. In 1998, the Minnesota a capella group, The Blenders, released their version as a single. It went to #1 in Norway. In 2011, their version was used in a commercial for McDonald’s.”