La argentinidad al palo by Bersuit Vergarabat (2004)

La argentinidad al palo is the title track of Bersuit's 2004 double album, two discs called Se Es and Lo Que Se Es, and it is an inventory of national bravado: everything Argentina claims to have invented, won or done better than anyone, chanted over murga drums with a sarcasm the band never quite lets the crowd hear. The chorus is the title. The title is the pun. The pun is the national mood.

The album went to number one in Argentina and is certified five times Platinum at 200,000 copies, and the song became a stadium chant, sung at football matches by people using the idiom in its everyday sense of flat out. The Diccionario Argentino is clear about where the phrase started, which is the only thing the song needs: an entire country singing about being erect while discussing its Nobel prizes, which is also how most national holidays go.

Its afterlife is the phrase. "Al palo" has drifted further from its origin since 2004, and the song is one reason: it gave the idiom a melody and a flag. On this list it is the one entry where the phallic reference is national rather than personal, and it is labelled interpreted because the pun lives in the language rather than in a statement by the band.