I didn’t think anything would beat that cruise line’s use of Iggy Pop’s Lust for Life which, as far as I knew up until then, was a musical appreciation of heroin. Now I’m hearing Pandora (the jewelry people) using the Bee Gee’s To Love Somebody behind visuals of loving couples giving each other jewelry. This song is about unrequited love, no? Still, it’s not worse than Mercedes Benz’ unironic use of that Janis Joplin song. Or Wrangler’s Fortunate Son ads.
Why can’t all commercials use songs I wish I had heard before like Meta something’s use of The Puzzle Song? I liked the song so much I had to look it up. It’s by the same woman who sang The Name Game. Or Heinekin’s The Astral Age. Hey, maybe this should be a thread about good songs you first heard in commercials.
I’m disappointed that Frigidaire hasn’t done commercials featuring this excerpt from the Cramps’ song “TV Set”:
Oh baby I see you in my Frigidaire
Yeah baby I see you in my Frigidaire
Behind the mayonnaise, way in the back
I’m gonna see you tonight for a midnight snack
But though it’s cold
You won’t get old
'Cause you’re well preserved in my Frigidaire
As I was thinking on this OP, I thought about all the commercial songs that cut off before it gets to the ‘good’ part but couldn’t think of any specific examples. Still can’t. One will pop into my head in the middle of the night tonight and I’ll be all, “Of course!” and my husband won’t even look my way because he’s almost as used to my weird brain as I am.
Disney used a snippet from Third Eye Blind’s “Semi-Charmed Life” in the trailers for The Tigger Movie, apparently unaware that it’s a song about crystal meth addiction:
I suspect that the companies know exactly what they’re doing. The average ad viewer will completely miss the inobvious, while the “cool” people will talk about it. That’s a win-win situation from their point of view.
Yeah, I don’t particularly care what the song is “about,” just how it makes me feel. It wasn’t until this thread that I even paid attention to what “Gigantic’s” lyrics seem to be about, and I’ve been a Pixies fan since the early 90s and heard that song about a bazillion times. It’s a fun, exuberant song. (And one shouldn’t really pay too much attention to Pixies lyrics, anyway, being as abstract as they can be.) Semi-Charmed Life is similar, but I’ve been aware of what that song is about (crystal meth is explicitly mentioned in the lyrics, but they go by so fast, you may miss it.) It’s a similarly peppy song with upbeat-lyrics if taken out of context. That’s fine for selling product.
Yeahbut-- the Pandora commercial is counting on people at least half-way listening to the lyrics, no? And giving a gift symbolizing “love” while saying “you don’t know what it’s like to love somebody like I love you” is I guess a way to sell jewelry-- to creepy stalker guys.
I’ve long thought that Microsoft’s use of the Rolling Stones song Start Me Up for one of their Windows iterations was kind funny. Yeah, I get it – after versions of Windows that often caused the BSOD, they wanted to emphasize that when you started up this version, it would never stop.
But whenever I sang along I went on to the “You make a grown man cry” part. Way too many MS products have elicited tears from users.
There is also a generational thing going on the rebellious young folk of yesteryears, who like listening to controversial music about sex and drugs which shocks their elders, are now boring middle aged people with money to spend (and boring middle aged people running marketing firms). So it’s their music that’s going in commercials.
I first heard Minnie Riperton’s “Les Fleurs” (1970) in a 2019 Microsoft Surface commercial. I was immediately obsessed (with that particular song; I already knew “Lovin’ You”), and still listen to it often.
And then there’s Microsoft basing the entire advertising campaign of its most important product launch ever around the Stones’ Start Me Up, a song with the lyrics, “You make a dead man cum.”
For some reason, that was never listed as a bullet point on the Windows 95 retail box.
