Saturday To Get Tortured By Another List

December 13th, 2014 at 11:42am
Kip Wingerschmidt

Torture. Sure, it gets a bad rap but you know you love it. Giving, sure, but mostly receiving (we’re watching you). Does that make you a masochist? Pretty much, but I won’t hold it against you. I mean c’mon — if I told you I had a boner, would you hold it against me?

Anyway, torture has clearly evolved over the years….I remember visiting The London Dungeon when I was a kid and learning about all sorts of devilish techniques for torturing a naughty little piggy (getting drawn & quartered particularly stuck with me, although dunno if that really counts as torture per se if the person is ultimately going to be killed). Chinese Water Torture always struck me as pretty fascinating too. And of course we all remember the famous scene in A Clockwork Orange (pictured above) when the main character is forced to watch horrible images in an effort to rehabilitate him from being such a vicious, sadistic sociopath…

Naturally, there are underhanded ways of employing our beloved MUSIC to make people feel so horrible that they will offer up all sorts of secrets. As reported in 2008 on inflammatory political muckraking website Mother Jones (based on a leaked interrogation log, news reports, and the accounts of soldiers and detainees), below is a playlist of songs that are commonly used for torture by American guards and interrogators. Seriously dude — I can barely listen to “American Pie” once without wanting to gouge my own eyes out, let alone a number of times in a row.

So now that the dust has cleared from all of our year-end list shenanigans, buckle up and get ready to be tortured by one more sadistic list…

UPDATE: Skinny Puppy won’t stand for their music being used for torture and have filed a bill to the US government for $666,000!