'Royals' banned: Why San Francisco won't listen to Lorde song

Baseball fans in San Francisco and Kansas City have singled out alternative pop singer Lorde as the latest pawn in their pre-World Series superstitions.

Kansas City fans are rallying around the 17-year-old’s hit single “Royals” – and renditions there of – while Giants fans have banned it from the airwaves.

KFOG Radio in San Francisco announced it wouldn’t play the song during the next week.

Similarly, 96.5 KOIT wrote on its website that several emails and social media comments prompted the station to remove the song “until the San Francisco Giants win the World Series.”

“Our listeners told us to do it, so we did it! As of 4 p.m. today we’ve removed Lorde - Royals from the our playlist until the end of the World Series. Go Giants, beat the Royals,” program director Brian Figula wrote.

Meanwhile, Royals fans are not only championing the song, but producing their own tailored versions.

One Kansas family swapped out the lyrics in a parodied version sung by four sisters a capella.

“We’ve never seen a diamond series ring/ We cut our teeth on losing teams in the 90s/ And we’re not proud of this losing thing in a baseball town/ Nothing but envy,” the parody begins.

“The other teams are like gold gloves, Cy Youngs, dynasties and trophies, broke bank, contracts, highly paid free agents/ We don’t care/ We’re gonna build it from the bottom up.”

Earlier in the season John Long also released his own version.

“Everybody’s like Cardinals, Red Sox, what about the Yankees, Mets, Braves, Marlins, Tigers and the Phillies/ We don’t care/ We ain’t caught up in your love affair/ Cause you’ll never beat the Royals.”

Are fans appropriating something that has nothing to do with baseball? Actually, no.

The New Zealand native told VH1 the song was inspired by a photograph of a Royals player she saw in National Geographic.

“I had this image from the National Geographic of this dude just signing baseballs,” Lorde told us when we sat down with her recently. “He was a baseball player and his shirt said, ‘Royals.’” Lorde was so taken by the image and the word that she penned the song around that idea. “It was just that word. It’s really cool.”