Over at out sister site TV Squad, Joel hepped us to this list of great retro pop songs (also mentioned by Chris here) ruined forever by being used in commercials. Now, I'm not one to get hung up on such things, and with the exception of using one of my favorite songs ("Pictures of You" by The Cure) in an HP commercial, I couldn't really care less about these other pop songs or how they're used.
But let me tell you what does bother me a little: that so many commercials these days use alternative or underground songs. I don't blame lesser known bands for trying to make a little extra scratch, but when I turn on a commercial and hear a song by Modest Mouse or Ben Lee, I'd be lying if I said it didn't irk me a little bit. I mean, turning "Unbelievable" into "Crumbelievable" is one thing, that insipid EMF song is already cheesy, but when a discerning music fan never hears his favorite music on the radio but does hear it in a commercial, that's kind of annoying. But again, such is the nature of this bizness.
1. The problem with using recognizable pop songs is two fold. First, each recognizable song comes with emotional equity that people have in a non-commercial experience. Then they feel that their attachment to something relatively pure has been sullied by lame marketers (my first memory of this was when Buick corrupted Buddy Holly's "Oh Boy" into "Oh Buick").
So, the second problem with a known song is that you can never completely own that song. Sure, there might be a connection, but when companyies have jingles written for their product -- specific and relevant songs that have no connection to anything else in the world, the company owns that melody and words. Think about Hamm's Beer. Think Dr. Pepper (I'm a Pepper, he's a Pepper, etc.). Think Miller Beer (If you've got the time, we've got the beer). Those songs have no outside connection to anything but the product, therefore they work that much harder. Windows 95 may have bought Start Me Up from the Rolling Stones, but that song will revert back to the Stones in peoples' memories.
Posted at 12:29PM on Nov 16th 2006 by Johnny