When it comes to the best inventions of the last 50 years, TouchTunes jukeboxes have to be somewhere near the top, right up there with the iPhone and the Doritos Locos Taco.
Back in the day (and by that I mean not long ago because I still remember going to bars that had them), jukeboxes were limited by the number of CDs or, before that, records that they could hold. But since TouchTunes came along, we now have any song we could ever want to hear waiting right at our fingertips as we down some cold ones at the bar.
Oh, and you can operate it from your phone too, so not only do you not have to get up out of your seat to pick your song, but you can also choose whatever you want to fill the bar and nobody ever has to know it was you that played “John Deere Green” five times in a row, or queued up “Barbie Girl” on repeat as you were walking out the door. (Not that I would do that…)
Of course one of the other fun things about TouchTunes is that you can control it from anywhere across the country – whether you’re at the bar or not. And Dale Earnhardt Jr. apparently likes to use this nifty feature to have some fun with his friends when he finds out they’re out and about.
On the most recent episode of his podcast The Dale Jr. Download, Junior recalled a prank that his friend, country singer Tim Duggar, tried to play on him when Duggar found out that Junior was at the bar.
Dale Jr. said that he was at the bar for his birthday, and they were specifically there so he could play music on the TouchTunes. (Apparently Junior is a BIG TouchTunes guy and always wants to control the music, something I can totally relate to).
Well Duggar decided to hijack the TouchTunes from afar and play the 1980s hit “She Drives Me Crazy” by the Fine Young Cannibals, thinking it would, in Junior’s words, “flip the vibe.”
Well it turns out the vibe Junior had gone with that night was ’80s pop, so it fit right in. But apparently Duggar’s not the only one who knows that trick with TouchTunes, and Junior admits that he’s done it to Duggar while he’s been out at a bar in Nashville too:
“He’ll be at Batter’s Box in Nashville at 11:00 pounding beers, listening to Bocephus or whatever they’re listening to, just going Nashville hard, and I’ll play ’em some Celine Dion, a little Barry Manilow. And you can’t change it. There’s nothing they can do but sit there and let it play.”
I’d be lying if I said that I hadn’t done this to my friends before too. Of course you’re not there to see the payoff, but just knowing that you have an entire bar turning on each other as they try to find who played “Blue” by Eiffel 65 in the middle of a run of classic country music is hilarious.
And if you’re ever out and about in Nashville and a song comes on the TouchTunes that sounds out of place, just know that it might have been NASCAR’s most popular driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. playing it from his home in North Carolina.
