Mostly this post will make sense to those of you in the US, although I’m pretty sure that the same thing happens everywhere around the world. Your sitting watching TV, and a commercial pops on. Low and behold, you instantly recognize the song in the sound track. Happens multiple times a day to me. It used to be that if a song was in a commercial, the artist was instantly branded a sellout. Now days, I’m not sure anyone really cares. But I remember distinctly the first time I heard a rock song in a commercial. It was some stupid Nike ad, and the Beatles Revolution was used. I was kind of pissed off, and taken aback all at once, until I found out that Micheal Jackson owns the song and had let Nike use it.
So, today, I thought I would throw out some of the better songs used in commercials. Mind you, for the most part, all these songs are songs I really like. The unfortunate thing is that now, when I hear that opening riff from Rock and Roll, instead of thinking about the bars I heard it in when I was younger, all I can picture is a Cadillac. But then again, I suppose thats really the purpose.
Oh, and the Tom Jones tune epic! Not so much in the Hummer ads…I’m not a fan of Hummers at all. But the Dr. Pepper ads make me seriously hungry for some ice cream!
- Robert Palmer - Simply Irresistible
- Blondie - One Way or Another
- Led Zepplin - Rock and Roll
- Beach Boys - Fun Fun Fun
- B52s - Rock Lobster
- 867-5309 (Jenny)
- Cars - Just What I Needed
- Queen - I Want To Break Free
- Squeeze - Tempted
- Madness - Our House
- Sweet - Ballroom Blitz
- Devo - Whip It
- Modern English - I Melt With You
- Thomas Dolby - She Blinded Me With Science
- Tom Jones - Help Yourself
3 responses so far ↓
1 Silent 3 // Jun 7, 2008 at 11:06 am
Yeah, I’m a rock n roll oldie, and remember when I first saw an artist “Sell Out” as we called it in the day. It was Eric Clapton doing a Michelob beer commercial. I thought, “Great. A smack addict wants to sell me on another addiction.”
But the trend continues unabated. When I saw a commercial for Cadillac featuring Led Zeppelin, the first thing I thought was, “When I was listening to Zep back in the 70’s, the LAST car you’d associate with Cadillac was Zep.” Cadillacs were for old men with hair in their ears.
And the Mercedes commercial with Janis Joplin’s song “Mercedes Benz?” Sheesh, don’t those idiots know she was making fun of people who would buy a Mercedez?”
Oh, and the Stooges’ “Lust for Life” advertising for a cruise ship? I could only wish that the ship had Liquor and Drugs and a Sex Machine. And Striptease.
Oh, and I think “I melt with you” has been used twice in commercials. The first one was for Burger King. And there’s the recent one.
I guess these days, it’s not “selling out.” It’s Buying In.”
Silent 3’s last blog post..Are you qualified for this job?
2 Infonistacrat // Jun 7, 2008 at 3:56 pm
@Silent 3:
And how about the fact that Courtney Love is now letting Kurt Cobain’s image be used to sell Converse sneakers? Even though they are some nice sneaks, I’m still not loving the idea.
It’s a shame that the bands are so fast to sell these great songs to sell “crap” we seriously don’t need.
3 silent 3 // Jun 8, 2008 at 10:16 am
True true.
I remember Joni Mitchell summed it up this way:
“In the 60’s, we thought we could change the world with our music. In the 70’s, we thought, well, maybe we can change ourselves with our music. In the 80’s we thought, ‘Fuck it. Let’s make money.’ ”
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