John McCain keeps upsetting rock artists by using their songs without permission

Heart, Jackson Browne, Foo Fighters, and so much more. K-Tel Records presents "Songs used by the John McCain campaign without permission." All the classic hits by the original artists, none of whom want to be associated with John McCain.

This collection might sell really well. Jackson Browne ("Running On Empty"), Heart ("Barracuda"), Foo Fighters ("My Hero"), and John Mellencamp ("Our Country" and "Pink Houses") makes for a nice set of music.

But do you think that is all to the collection? Not even close. How about Van Halen's "Right Now" and Frankie Valli's "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" (used as a parody for McCain). Let's not forget the Orleans' classic "Still the One," written by John Hall, or rather I should say, Rep. John Hall (D-NY), mis-used by McCain in 2008 AND George W. Bush in 2004.  

And if you act now, you will get bonus tracks such as Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down" (used by Bush in 2000 against the wishes of the artist), Boston's "More than a Feeling" (Mike Huckabee in 2008). And you will get an extra special bonus track, we have Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" used with no irony by Ronald Reagan, whose team paid attention to the title of the song, but not the lyrics.

John McCain may be doing more to revive the careers of classic rock artists than a triple-play weekend on the local rock station.

And it hasn't been all bad for McCain, who did use the Beach Boys song, "Barbara Ann," after he revived interest in that song with his "Bomb Iran" parody song. I don't think the Beach Boys objected. McCain also used "Johnny B. Goode" by Chuck Berry. The rock pioneer isn't a fan of McCain -- he's pulling for Obama -- but hasn't objected to the use of his song.

To be fair, Barack Obama used the Sam and Dave song "Soul Man" until Sam Moore asked the campaign to stop using the song.

We have Bill Clinton to thank for all this, with his pick of "Don't Stop" by Fleetwood Mac as the official campaign theme song. The group had no problem having their song adopted as the official song; the group even played the Inaugural Ball for the new president, a remarkable achievement since the group reunited for the event at a time of turmoil for the band.

And this trend will keep going - wonder what Sarah Palin's playlist will look like in 2012.

Presidential candidates are going to use songs, ideally classic rock songs, but they have to learn to get used to asking permission from artists. It could be argued that perhaps, technically, the campaigns don't have to do this. But given the huge amounts of negative publicity that McCain has received, and one lawsuit from Jackson Browne, certainly approaching an artist might be sound advice.