Pat Benatar Drops ‘Hit Me With Your Best Shot’ From Concerts in Deference to Gun Violence Victims
variety.comChris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticOn her current tour, impending Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Pat Benatar is singing what she calls “the holy 14 — songs that if we don’t play them,” the audience will rebel.
But not among those 14, surprisingly, is one of her best-known hits, “Hit Me With Your Best Shot.” And Benatar allows that she has gotten some fan pushback on that, but she’s not giving in.Her reason for dropping it from the show?
Any possible literal connotations of the metaphoric lyrics in the strictly-for-fun classic rock tune, which she feels are inappropriate to sing in public in a time of multiple mass shootings.“We’re not doing ‘Hit Me With Your Best shot,’ and fans are having a heart attack,” she said in a new interview with USA Today. “And I’m like, ‘I’m sorry, in deference to the victims of the families of these mass shootings, I’m not singing it.’ I tell them, ‘If you want to hear the song, go home and listen to it.'” While she concedes the title “is tongue in cheek, you have to draw the line.
I can’t say those words out loud with a smile on my face, I just can’t. I’m not going to go on stage and soapbox — I go to my legislators — but that’s my small contribution to protesting.
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