McDonald's Girl

Album: Rumpled Romeo (1981)
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Songfacts®:

  • A track from Dean Friedman's third album, this one finds him falling in love with a girl who works at McDonald's - an angel in polyester. Friedman's second album 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 got around this by swapping out "Coca-Cola" for "cherry cola" in their song "Lola," but there was no way to edit this one. In our Dean Friedman interview, he said: "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.
  • In their early year, the Barenaked Ladies played this song at concerts, and in 1992 they played it on an appearance on the Toronto radio station CFNY. In 1998, a Minnesota group called The Blenders released their version as a single, and it went to #1 in Norway. In 2011, their version was used in a commercial for McDonald's.

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