Most people don't realise it, but
Wesley Willis' classic
Rock'n'Roll McDonalds isn't just about McDonald's in general - it's about a specific
McDonald's restaurant in Chicago, one with a rock'n'roll theme. The "Rock'n'Roll McDonalds" is located at 600 North Clark Street,
Chicago, Il, 60610.
It's packed full of rock'n'roll memorabilia; it's debatable as to whether Willis dined there regularly, or was merely aware of it as a local landmark - as with the Magikist billboard sign which provided Willis with his most memorable abjective. Willis' song is ambivalent as to the restaurant and McDonald's in general, and therefore unlikely to appear in one of the company's advertising campaigns except in severely truncated form.
In the song, written and recorded in the mid-1990s, Wesley Willis claims that "A Big Mac has 26 grams of fat / A Quarter-Pounder has 28 grams of fat". According to their UK website, a McDonald's Big Mac has 22.9 grams of fat, whilst a Quarter Pounder with Cheese has 26.9 grams (as far as I am aware McDonald's in the UK no longer offer a Quarter Pounder without cheese). In the USA, the figures are 34 and 30 grams respectively, with a plain Quarter Pounder having 21 grams of fat. Of course these figures will vary depending on the individual meal and they may well have changed since Willis wrote his song. Nonetheless, the figures are catastrophically high for anyone not trekking across the Antarctic.
In the song, Willis claims that "McDonald's are the worst", and that these figures are higher than those of Burger King, which might have been true at the time but is true no longer, for a Whopper with Cheese has 50 grams of fat.