No, not sure at all. Just guessing.
We had always joked about the day when Black Sabbath songs would be used in commercials. That’s why I did a double-take and then burst out laughing when I first saw this one.
(And yes, I know it’s actually from Ozzy’s first solo album, but it’s frightening enough.)
Dr. J
Hell, Nissan used the opening to Tom Sawyer for one of their commercials.
Or was it Lexus?
My commercial-song pet peeve? Geico. Their commercials used to be somewhat witty. But lately, they are overdoing the whole gekko thing. That was not a good move, IMHO. It makes it look like they are trying too hard. The final straw came when they savaged that beautiful song “…and sometimes when we touch” (don’t know if that’s the actual title of it). I used to love that song, and now it’s completely ruined.
[hijack]That car commercial with the sucession of boyfriends? I remember a song from the very early 80’s called “My Lucky Boyfriend.”(Or that’s what I thought it was called at the time.) Was the Tom- tom club really just the Talking Heads without David Byrne? I’m more of an Aerosmith girl myself. [end hijack]
I guess I’m cynical. If the artist is making a buck off their own work, more power to them. But when Michael Jackson started whoring out the Beatle catalogue…steam came out my ears.
Anyone remember Pepsi using “Brown Sugar”? Wonder if they read all the lyrics to that one. I don’t recall the “hear him whip the women” line in there though, so maybe they did.
I would also llike to add that for some reason, I find the woman in the commerical the OP mentions to be scorchingly hot. Thank you, that is all.
I tend not to object to commercialization of songs – just occasionally noting the irony of the juxtaposition of a given song with a given product, and wondering what the ad agency, the company selling the product, and the performer must have been thinking.
But the one song that pushes my button on this is “Like a Rock” – a song focused on integrity and its challenges as one becomes adult, used to sell trucks. If ever there were a sell-out, that has to be the ultimate.
Using Jethro Tull’s Thick As A Brick to plug in a Hyundai commercial was pretty fucking obtuse.
*You put your bet on number one and it comes up every time.
The other kids have all backed down and they put you first in line.
And so you finally ask yourself just how big you are –
and take your place in a wiser world of bigger motor cars.
And you wonder who to call on…
So you ride yourselves over the fields and
you make all your animal deals and
your wise men don’t know how it feels to be thick as a brick…*
Thank you Crusoe, for an absolutely brilliant link. That website’s on my favorites list now!
I was appalled, I tell you, when Marlene Dietrich’s evil bitch trog daughter from hell, Maria Riva, sold her mother singing “Falling in Love Again” to be used by Mercedes-Benz.
Backstory: Marlene was a virulent anti-Nazi, was banned from her home country because of her work for the Allies during WWII. Mercedes, of course, had a terrible war record, using prisoners from concentration camps for both factory labor and “safety” tests. Marlene would spin in her grave of she knew she was being used to plug these cars—which is exactly why Maria did it, I’m sure.
Ah, but if they had used to promote a horse-drawn hoeing device or a seed drill?? 
Too bad the song didn’t have Jagger’s original title/chorus, “Black Pussy”. Now THAT would have been an interesting commercial!
Fogerty won the case, because it was so obviously ridiculous.
I’m glad you started this thread, because i’ve been ranting to all my friends for days about how inappropriate the use of “Fortunate Son” is in a commercial that’s trying to show a “wave the flag” type of attitude.
The Onion did a story once called “Song About Heroin Used in Bank Commercial”.
In the “Fortunate Son” commercial, they also snipped out the line directly preceding the chorus:
“And when the band plays ‘Hail to the Chief,’
Ooh, they’re pointing the cannon at you.”
Another one is the car commercial that uses Smash Mouth’s “Walking on the Sun,” but chops out the funniest line of the song:
“Allow if you’re still alive, six to eight years to arrive.”
Of course, this practice isn’t new. When he ran for his second presidential term in 1984, Ronald Reagan used the Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” as a campaign song. Good god, have you ever listened to the words of that song?! I don’t know about you, but I don’t exactly swell up with patriotic pride when a song begins with the words :
“Born down in a dead man’s town,
The first kick I took was when I hit the ground.
You end up like a dog that’s been beat too much,
'Till you spend half your life just covering up.”
The ending isn’t much happier:
“Down in the shadow of the penitentiary
Out by the gas fires of the refinery
I’m ten years burning down the road
Nowhere to run ain’t got nowhere to go”
(Partial hijack)
<<Not to mention 'Zep’s “Rock-n-Roll” for the new Cadillacs. And they’re flying off the lots. Hmmmmm…>>
I love that commercial where they show an old tail-fin cadillac next to one of those awful goddamn new ones…like most people, I think, I 'd take the old one in a hearbeat before that silly Starship Trooper model.