A Tommy Hilfiger commercial has CCR’s “Fortunate Son” playing in the background. Beautiful people frolic in Tommy clothes, with accents on the colors of the flag.
The lyrics they play are:
Some folks are born,
made to wave the flag.
Yeah, They’re Red White and Blue.
They leave out the zinger:
When the band plays
‘Hail to the Chief’
They’ll point the cannon at you.
So it goes from protest to patriotism.
So what I’m looking for are other songs which have had their meanings twisted in the service of moving product. I love to see beautiful spin.
Silly one, but when Burger King was doing some special, two something-or-others for the price of one, they used “Double Vision” so even years later everytime I hear that song, I think of BK, which totally sucks. Not that “Double Vision” was a good song to begin with, but . . .
The one that’s getting to me lately is “Shorts!” a advo-filk on “Fame!” I think they’re Old Navy commercials. Everytime I see it, I change the channel or mute the sound quickly, then think about Irene Cara sobbing everytime she sees this horrible thing.
Some television commercial used the Beatle’s “It’s getting better”, cutting off just before “they can’t get much worse.” Later on they added a couple of odd notes to the cut-off point, presumably to stop the mind from continuing with the song.
“Should I Stay or Should I Go?” by the Clash. Became a hit after its use in a Levi’s commercial about 15 years ago, and then reemerged in another commercial for some kind of vodka or something last year.
I think it’s both hilarious and sad that Jefferson Airplane’s “Volunteers” is being used as the theme music for an E-trade commercial. Somehow I suspect that E-trade was not what Gracie Slick had in mind when she sang “Look what’s happening out in the streets/Got a revolution, got to revolution…”
I’m pretty sure that was Lee, not Tommy Hilfiger. I made note of the bitter irony of them leaving off the verse about pointint the cannon to TLL. It reminded me of Bush the elder using Born in the USA as a campaign song.
I’ve seen a Mercedes commercial with JJ’s Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz within the last year or two.
Some cruise line uses Iggy Pop’s Lust for Life which really rubs me the wrong way and a mobile phone company used The Ramones’ Blitzkrieg Bop, no doubt causing three of four of them to spin in their graves.
Don’t forget that Microsoft used the Stones’ Start Me Up to launch their Windows 95 campaign. Of course they looped the song before it got to the line about making a grown man cry.
Don’t know what jeans company played “Fortunate Son”, but the Tommy commercial HeadNinja refers to used “American Woman”, which also is probably not in the Big Book O’ Patriotic Songs.
AppleBee’s has an especially annoying commercial where they sing some stupid song to the tune of Chuck Berry’s “No Particular Place to Go”. It goes something like this:
“Riding around in my automobile/My family is hungry and needs a meal”
My first thread and I totally goof. I did confuse the “American Woman” Hilfiger commercial with the “Fortunate Son” Wrangler commercial. Sorry about that.
