| "(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)" | |||||||||
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| Single by Beastie Boys | |||||||||
| from the album Licensed to Ill | |||||||||
| Released | 1987 | ||||||||
| Recorded | Spring 1986 | ||||||||
| Genre | Rap rock, hard rock | ||||||||
| Length | 3:29 | ||||||||
| Label | Def Jam/Columbia | ||||||||
| Writer(s) | Beastie Boys, Rick Rubin, Tom Cushman | ||||||||
| Producer | Rick Rubin | ||||||||
| Beastie Boys singles chronology | |||||||||
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"(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party!)" (sometimes shortened to "Fight for Your Right") is a song by American rap group the Beastie Boys, released as the fourth single released from their debut album Licensed to Ill (1986). One of their best-known songs, it reached #7 on the Billboard 100, and was later named one of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. The Beastie Boys also included the track on their hits album, The Sounds of Science in 1999, and Solid Gold Hits in 2005.
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Ironically, the song, written by band friend Tom "Tommy Triphammer" Cushman (who appears in the video), was intended as a parody of party and attitude songs, such as "Smokin' in the Boys Room" and "I Wanna Rock". However, the irony was lost on most listeners. Mike D commented that, "The only thing that upsets me is that we might have reinforced certain values of some people in our audience when our own values were actually totally different. There were tons of guys singing along to 'Fight for Your Right' who were oblivious to the fact it was a total goof on them."
The band Public Enemy sampled the song for their 1988 song "Party for Your Right to Fight". Both bands were signed by Def Jam at that time.[1]
Despite probably being the group's most famous song, the Beastie Boys have expressed distaste for it. In The Sounds of Science liner notes, MCA jokingly says the song "sucks", though they did not feel the album would be complete without it. The group has not performed the song live since 1987.
Sammy Hagar covers the song on his 2008 solo album Cosmic Universal Fashion.
Warrant, Trixter, and FireHouse covered the song as an end of the show jam during Warrant's Cherry Pie tour.
Ke$ha covered the song as the finale on her 2011 Get Sleazy Tour.
Blondie covers the song as an interpolation with their 1981 hit "Rapture" in the shows of their Panic of Girls Tour.
Many elements of the music video for "Fight for Your Right" appear to be influenced by George A. Romero's zombie horror movie Dawn of the Dead. In Dawn of the Dead a biker gang infiltrates a shopping mall and attacks the zombies with (amongst other things) pies-in-the-face. At one point a biker even smashes a television set with a sledge-hammer, just like MCA in this video. There are also numerous cameos in this video, including an unknown at the time Tabitha Soren, Def Jam label mate LL Cool J, members of the punk band Murphy's Law, as well as the Beastie Boys' producer, Rick Rubin, who was shown wearing a Slayer shirt, who were also signed to Def Jam at the time.
Soren, whose hair was dyed blonde for the shoot, got her chance to be in the video because she was a friend of Rubin's and attended nearby New York University. "I worked hard at not getting any pie goo on me", she recalls, because the whipped cream used had been scoured from supermarket trash cans since there was no money in the budget for it. As a result it was rancid and had a foul odor. "The smell in that room, when everyone was done throwing pies, was like rotten eggs. You wanted to throw up."[2]
In 2011, Adam Yauch directed and wrote a surreal comedic short film entitled Fight for Your Right Revisited to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the original video's release. The video serves as a short film for the single "Make Some Noise" from Hot Sauce Committee Part Two. Most of the non-sequitor dialogue between characters were a result of improvisation by the cast.
'Revisited' acts as a sequel to the events that took place in the original music video and features Mike D, Ad-Rock and MCA (played by Seth Rogen, Elijah Wood, and Danny McBride, respectively) as they get into more drunken antics, before being challenged to a dance battle by the future Mike D, Ad-Rock and MCA (John C. Reilly, Will Ferrell, and Jack Black, respectively), coming out of a DeLorean.
The short also features a wide number of cameo appearances, including Stanley Tucci, Susan Sarandon, Steve Buscemi, Alicia Silverstone, Laura Dern, Shannyn Sossamon, Kirsten Dunst, Ted Danson, Rashida Jones, Jason Schwartzman, Rainn Wilson, Amy Poehler, Mary Steenburgen, Will Arnett, Adam Scott, Chloe Sevigny, Maya Rudolph, David Cross, Orlando Bloom, Martin Starr, and the actual Mike D, Ad-Rock & MCA. Many of the listed appearances only appear for a few seconds.
Although the song itself is not performed, it can be heard at the beginning of the short.
| Chart (1987) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Canadian RPM Singles Chart[3] | 7 |
| Dutch Singles Chart[4] | 10 |
| German Singles Chart[5] | 25 |
| New Zealand Singles Chart[6] | 17 |
| UK Singles Chart[7] | 11 |
| U.S. Billboard Hot 100[8] | 7 |