The latest ads for the Wisconsin Dells feature the song “Holiday Road,” by Lindsey Buckingham. You may remember its original use as the theme song for National Lampoon’s Vacation.
On the one hand, because of its background this song’s associations in my head are not of happy times vacationing with the family. On the other hand, these same associations create an appropriate foreboding about any trip to the Dells. (Though the Dells are only a few hours away from Chicago, there were good reasons the Griswolds chose to drive halfway across the country to go to Wally World instead! Many good reasons.)
So, can you think of other odd choices for music in commercials?
Fortunately this isn’t GQ, since I can’t find a cite or anyone else who remembers this:
A cable tv company (TCI here in Dallas, I think) ad with Weird Al’s song “Cable TV”, one of the most sarcastic rips on cable programming I’ve ever heard. Were they just counting on people to miss the sarcasm?
“I’ve got the Siamese Faith-Healers’ Network,
News and weather from Peru…”
About a year or so ago, a car company had a Smithereens song in one of its commercials. Great song, cool bassline, but I don’t see why any car company would want their product associated with “Blood and Roses.” Is it supposed to be an omen for what happens with driving the car?
Australian airline has made headlines recently for failing to meet safety standards and has basically taken a flogging in the media. To renew consumer confidence, they’ve had a huge advertising campaign. They have a bunch of Australian celebrities on the ads, showing that all our role models fly on their planes, and they chose a recent Australian hit song that sounds inspirational as the background music. The song is called ‘Shine’, and they just play the line “Everyone you see, everyone you know is going to shine” over and over during the ad.
Now, I’ve mentioned this song on these boards before. When I started a thread called “Truely Bad Song Lyrics”, I used it as an example because of the chorus:
*You can live your life
You can lose your soul
You can bang your head
Or you can drown in a hole
Nothing lasts for ever
But you can try
Everyone you see, everyone you know
Is going to shine.*
I’ve always said the song makes more sense if you replace the word “Shine” with the word “Die” (it even rhymes better). So I watch this ad laughing, because if they wanted to make me think they were a safe way to fly, they couldn’t have chosen a worse song!!
There was a car commercial several years ago that used Arlo Guthrie’s City of New Orleans. A friend of mine, a major railroad buff, thought it was out of line to use a song that lamented the disappering railroads to advertise the very thing that was killing them.
I saw an ad one time for a limited-time reduced-price-for-children promotion at the local zoo. The background music in the ad was “Take a Walk on the Wild Side.” They kept repeating the same line over and over again - “Take a walk on the wild side.” I found that choice of song ironic. The reason why they didn’t play the complete lyrics is that “Take a Walk on the Wild Side” is hardly appropriate for children. The song describes all of the different things people do when the “take a walk on the wild side.”
I recall years ago noticing “What a Fool Believes” as the music in some commercial. I don’t recall now what they were selling, but I thought that was an ironic choice, no matter what the product.
Here in Israel, the major bus company decided to use the song “Another Day” by Buckshot Lefonque. It’s a nice enough song, but I think it would have been better had they left out the line “sometimes I think I’m better off without you…”
Holly came from Miami, FLA
Hitchhiked her way across the USA
Plucked her eyebrows on the way,
shaved her legs and then He was a She…
I seem to remember Filter’s song Hey Man, Nice Shot being played over a local Orlando station’s NBA ad. The song, recall, refers to a bullet wound to the head.
There was an ad not long ago for someone’s line of clothes with American flags plastered all over them – and the background music was Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son.”
As you might expect, they only used the first two lines.
The most inappropriate use of a song in a commercial is one that’s running right now over here. There is a commercial for some baseball thing (I forgot what it was for, I think some kind of Pay-Per-View special) where they play “The Kids Aren’t All Right” by The Offspring.
If you’ve ever heard that song, you know it’s about a bunch of kids who have high potential, and think they’re going to be really successful, but then end up going broke or committing suicide etc. And baseball players are the most undeservingly successful people on Earth. Whoever put that song in the commercial (Note: It was only a few seconds from the beginning and end, no chorus. I wonder why.) was an idiot.
Political campaigns have used some doozies. One of the best-known would be one of Reagan’s Presidential campaigns, I believe in 1984. Reagan would walk onto the stage with the chorus of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” thundering through the speakers. Someone (probably not Ron himself, as I don’t think he was a fan of pop music) decided it sounded upbeat and patriotic, I guess… and perhaps hoped that no one would remember that the rest of the lyrics are in fact quite cynical and disillusioned.
Irony officially died a painful death when a certain German luxury car manufacturer decided to use Janis Joplin’s classic “Oh Lord Won’t You Buy Me a Mercedes-Benz?”… :rolleyes:
IIRC, one of the Bush boys (pretty sure it was Dubya) was using “Cat’s in the Cradle” as his election theme song (Ya know I’m gonna be like him… referring to Daddy Bush) until someone pointed out the song was about a father too busy for his own kid.
I often wondered whose idea it was to use John Prine’s “Illegal Smile” as the theme song for “The Texas Wheelers.” “The Texas Wheelers” was a comedy about the Wheeler brothers (including Gary Busey and Mark Hamill) and their good-for-nothing father (Jack Elam). It was on network TV in 1974. “Illegal Smile” is about smoking marijuana. Not only did that have nothing to do with the show, but it was amazing that the song would be used as the theme song on network TV.
Some telecommunications company used that one in a commercial showing families all smily-faced and happily getting along, with that dysfunctional-family tune playing in the background.
The Washington Capitals hockey team used the opening instrumental part of the song “A Twat Called Maurice” as their theme song for the second half of this year. Never played the lyrics, though. I wonder why?
I’m surprised nobody’s mentioned the commercials for some network-hardware maker (Novell?!) centered around the song “Come Together.” With middle-aged corporate types in front of big corporate meetings solemnly mouthing the words of the song, no less! :rolleyes: