Veteran rocker Pat Benatar has removed his best-known song “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” from the set list to protest the shootings and pay homage to the victims and their families.
used interviews with Benatar America Today find out He won’t be playing the 1980 hit on Thursday, so he thinks fans should listen to it at home if they want to have fun.
In other words, he wants to reject the song and any association with gun violence.
We don’t do it with Your Best Hit, and fans are having heart attacks and I’m sorry, out of respect for the families of the victims of these mass murders, I’m not singing the song,” the broadcast added. “If you want to hear a song, I say go home and listen to them.”
Released as a single from his second studio album, Crimes of Passion (1980), the song became Benatar’s first US top ten hit.
The lyrics speak of a man with a broken heart and a potential crush who challenges him to “do his best”, and Benatar’s protest focuses on the lines in the chorus.
In three parts of the song he challenged “Hit me with your best shot – Why hit me with your best shot – Hit me with your best shot – Hit”.
“[The title] ironic, but you have to draw the line. I can’t say these words out loud with a smile on my face, I just can’t,” explained Benatar, 69.
“I’m not going to the stage and the soapbox – I’m going to my MPs – but this is my small contribution to the protests. I will not sing. That’s difficult.”
File / Pat Benatar performing at the Quick Chek New Jersey Festival 2017 Balloon Festival at Solberg Airport in Redington, NJ, July 29, 2017. (Bobby Bank/Getty Images)
Benatar also contested the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the 1973 decision. Rowe vs. WadeReferencing the events of 2022 directly affects “the tenor of a piece you sang 30-40 years ago.”
“Well, ‘Avenger’ is really important,” he said of the Grammy-nominated hit, which was used as the theme for the 1985 movie. The Legend of Billie Jean. “Like all of us, I am concerned about fundamental rights to autonomy. It’s a slippery slope. For me, this is not an abortion. I’m worried that people aren’t paying attention to what that really means.”
In this song, he says, “We can’t afford to be innocent,” and later adds that it’s a life or death situation.
According to Breitbart News, Benatar was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in May alongside Dolly Parton, Eminem, Lionel Richie, Carly Simon, Eurythmics and Duran Duran.
Source: Breitbart
