Prodded by the extremely lame version of The Fixx’s “Saved By Zero” in a current Toyota ad. Ticks me off every time I hear it.
Surely you have a pet peeve or two, maybe going back several decades? Air 'em here…
I haven’t paid enough attention to the commercial to remember who made it(a cell phone company?), but there’s one on TV here with a truly abominable pop-rock cover of My Generation.
There was a recent commercial that had a woman doing an awful rendition of a Credence song…I think it was Have You Ever Seen The Rain. It was horrible.
I have to admit that I kind of like the cover of Hello, Goodbye that was on a Kohl’s commercial a while back.
The version of My Generation in the Nikon ads is pretty bad.
The version of Scandal’s “Goodbye to You” (covered by The Veronicas) in the ads for Yaz birth control is pretty awful.
The (original) version of “Walking on Sunshine” by Katrina & The Waves is one of the most overused songs in advertising, though at its heart it’s not a bad song. What is terrible are the countless cover versions that pile on the cheese and up the obnoxiousness to unlistenable levels.
Do the ones in ads for local car dealerships count, where they change the lyrics to shill for the business? For that matter, any cover versions that change the lyrics of the song to refer to the product.
Sure, go ahead and use the local stuff, just don’t expect many others to recognize the reference. As for the product placements, they’re really altered versions but that makes them even more offensive as cover versions, and thus all the more appropriate for inclusion here.
It’s funny, but like pretty much everyone else, I’ve been annoyed to various lengths by a zillion covers over the years… but now that I’ve started a thread on them, I can’t recall them. Much as I prize uncanny recall of many a sundry subject, I chalk this form of amnesia as beneficial to my emotional well-being, not to mention my ability to enjoy pop music.
It’s criminal, is what it is!
There is nothing worse than the Jonas Brothers singing Hello, Goodbye for Target. I die a little inside every time I hear that commercial.
Not only is it a bad cover, but “Saved by Zero?” A long-forgotten song from 1983? Who is their target market, over 45 boomers nostalgic for their youth?
Please note that that IS NOT the cover version I was referring to earlier. I don’t want anyone to think I like that group. The version I said I liked was by a female singer.
Funny, I have the same reaction every time I hear “Viva Viagra”
A local car dealership has been using Blondie’s Call Me for years. It’s fargin’ awful. At one point they changed the last line to “Call us!”
Not sure of the exect lyric, but at one point it was something like
Car or truck or SUV
Lately it’s been changed to
Car with better MPGs
This sounds awesome. Is it on youtube?
I can’t find a reference to it anywhere. I think the dealership is Ernie Boch, if you want to Google it yourself.
That’s the worst thing that humans have ever done, EVER.
Joe
Given that I have never been actually watching the television any time this has come on, but at one point I thought that the (I assume) Bright Eyes cover of “Devil Town” was the worst ever. Then I heard the original and realized that they actually prettied it up some.
One would think they would use a song that would remind people that it can let people avoid certain “Situations”.
To apply a 45-single metaphor, if the “A side” of this thread is panning a bad cover, the “B side” would be defending the honor of the original. I’m [cough]substantially under 45 years old, and my favorite musical period is 1977-1982 or so… and I still love the New Wave power pop songs like “Saved By Zero”. More to the point, how many other well-liked songs have a catchy “zero” riff that can be exploited to publicize a zero-interest rate, whose copyright owners were willing to license it (for a reasonable sum) for this purpose? Probably… you guessed it… zero.
Ooh, that’s another really bad one. Even more egregious when you consider how much money has already been made off of Elvis’ hits, and for that matter, his estate. Thanks to the moneychangers in charge of Elvis’ temple, there’s a generation of young people who’s growing up associating that song with Viagra instead of Las Vegas, dammit. (Although for a certain kind of tourist in particular, there is a logical enough correlation, but I digress.) If our democracy was serious about following the example of Ancient Greece, we’d have an “Anti-Corruption of the Nation’s Youth” law which would compel the cynical purveyors of the “Viva Viagra” ad to drink hemlock cocktails until they’re as dead as, well, Elvis.
I can imagine that if Elvis were still alive, he might well be persuaded into doing such a commercial, but that’d be his call, his cover, and his creaky hip-swivelling. A signature moment of the strangeness of our times is that the standard-bearer for Viagra is the uncharismatic Bob Dole, of all people. Surely Elvis could’ve blown Bob Dole clear back to Kansas…
Anyone seen an ad for brain bleach lately?