This story should also go in the "Weird Recruitment Stories" thread.
The song is 1982's "Welcome To the House of Fun" by the 1970's/1980's British pop/ska band Madness.
This popular song was in steady rotation on MTV and on KROQ (Rock of the 80's). It was selected in the fall of 1983 by our Day 2 Rush chair to accompany a slide show of our chapter to showcase that we are "the house of fun." And while our DG chapter did have many fun and exciting events during the year, we certainly were not the "House of Fun" that the song lyrics reference. Our sweet and naive Day 2 chair and our Recruitment VP truly had no idea what the song was about.
All they noticed was the chorus repeating "Welcome to the House of Fun!"
The song is actually about a sixteen year old boy going to the chemist (pharmacist), purchasing condoms and looking forward to his first adult intimate encounter. However the lyrics would not necessarily be easy for most Americans to understand the message.
We only realized this during the last minute rehearsal for Day 2 when the slide show was presented to the chapter for the first time. As soon as the first 20 seconds were played, at least half of the chapter was in shock or burst out laughing.
Our Day 2 chair and VP Recruitment could not understand the reaction to the song but realized that something must be inappropriate.
You can imagine their shock when they were told its meaning. There was only 30 minutes before our first party arrived, so it was decided that it was too late to select a new song that synched with the slide show. Therefore we were told to keep the conversations going during the presentation in an effort to drown out the lyrics.
Now there were a few rushees who caught on to the song but they kept their reactions under control and just smiled during the presentation. After that, all songs to be used in any future presentation were thoroughly scrutinized.
https://www.songfacts.com/facts/madness/house-of-fun
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