The mostly harmless pedant. ([info]stormdog) wrote,
@ 2008-05-13 08:11:00
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Current mood: working

A number of people in my life who I am close to are in distress. Periphery interaction with the disturbance has kept me from getting much done, though I did manage to get a few things on Ebay last night.

So, though I have heard about the earthquake in China (and commented to my team lead that I wish the 900 school children who were trapped could be swapped for the government officials who are permitting organ harvesting from live Falun Gong prisoners; there's some, if you'll pardon my language, fucked up shit going on over there right now), it wasn't from NPR. That's because I've been listening to the CD of MP3s I made for my commute instead of the radio over the last couple of days.

Primarily I've been listening to the second half of Abbey Road, but this morning, as I was playing Sgt. Pepper's and I got up to Getting Better, I was reminded of it's highly inappropriate use in a GE commercial some years ago.

Do you know the song? It's the one that has an upbeat little guitar melody with a chorus of
"You've got to admit, it's getting better;
Getting better all the time."

Even aside from the fact that, if you listen carefully, you can hear another one of the fab four, after each repetition of "You've got to admit, it's getting better" chime in with "It couldn't get no worse!", I can only imagine that the people in marketing who came up with the idea were either not smart enough to listen to the entire song before using a significant piece of it, or assumed that the American public was either too young to know it, was too drugged out when they were listening to it to remember it, or just didn't care about the rest of the contents. Contents like:

"I used to be cruel to my woman
I beat her and kept her apart
from the things that she loved.

Man I was mean,
But I'm changing my scene
And I'm doing the best that I can."

Yeah, that's great, GE. Really makes me want to buy a toaster.

So tell me; what is your favorite misappropriate of something musical, pop-cultural, or otherwise artsy for use in advertising that it never should have been used in? I'm all ears.


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[info]custardfairy
2008-05-13 01:57 pm UTC (link)
Gah! I'm remembering a tourism commercial that uses a mellow version of a rock song and it used to annoy me so badly -- but darned if I can remember which state or which song right now! Hmmmm....

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[info]custardfairy
2008-05-13 02:03 pm UTC (link)
Just remembered! It's Iggy Pop's Lust for Life on a cruise ship commercial. The commercial is all family friendly and stuff, but the lyrics outside the chorus? Um...yeah.

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[info]stormdog
2008-05-13 02:18 pm UTC (link)
Yowza. I don't know the song myself but I looked up the lyrics. That's a good one. *nods*

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that's easy
[info]netrage
2008-05-13 02:15 pm UTC (link)
"Revolution" by the Beatles used in Nike comercials!

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Re: that's easy
[info]stormdog
2008-05-13 02:19 pm UTC (link)
Oof. Yeah, that's painful.

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[info]jimcyl
2008-05-13 02:15 pm UTC (link)
Mine probably has to be the use of "Let the Sunshine In" from "Hair" in a Kia car commercial. Talk about loss of context, considering that it's a protest song.

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[info]stormdog
2008-05-13 02:22 pm UTC (link)
That's a good one. It's funny how so many of the songs from the sixties that are known well have suffered the same fate. It's almost like the public doesn't care what kind of energy those songs flowed out of as long as there's energy. When I think about it, it seems parasitic in a way.

By the way, I hope you don't have any relatives in the area the earthquake affected. I was thinking of you and hoping any of your family there are well.

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[info]jimcyl
2008-05-13 02:25 pm UTC (link)
Heh. I think it's more a that some marketing person hears a catchy bit of lyric and doesn't actually bother to listen to the entire song or do any research into the context and the next thing you know, it's in a commercial for something.

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[info]stormdog
2008-05-13 02:46 pm UTC (link)
Perhaps not consciously, but on a larger scale, it's a sort of cultural parasitism, don't you think? Songs that got to be well known because they meant something drift through time and become targets of opportunity for people who want to exploit their resource of recognizability without contributing resources of their own. Maybe I'm just being overly analytical.

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[info]jimcyl
2008-05-13 03:14 pm UTC (link)
I think it's more a lack of knowledge than a real intent to exploit without contributing. I mean, these are ad people. Their goal is to create something that will sell a product or service. In a sense, what they're creating is the commercial, which can be a work of art unto itself. And also remember they had to get the right to use the song to begin with, so someone had to agree to sell it to them.

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[info]stormdog
2008-05-13 03:24 pm UTC (link)
*nods* That's a valid way of looking at it too. Thanks for putting it that way.

I didn't mean to say that there was any intent toward exploitation; just that that's the way things happen. As for why things happen that way... Is it indicative of problems in the surrounding framework? At the corporate level, where profit comes before any responsibility or consciousness? At the cultural level, where the most important thing is being excited about buying great stuff to fill a manufactured need? At the level of the human race itself, where we are so quick to strip context from anything neat and shiny and more than eight years old?

I guess you can keep stepping up through the system, level by level, looking for a reason that things are they way they are and eventually find yourself so far removed from reality that you can't get back. *grins*

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[info]jimcyl
2008-05-13 02:28 pm UTC (link)
And thanks for the thoughts re my family. As far as I know, all our relatives who still live over there are in Hong Kong, so nowhere near what happened.

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[info]polymorphism
2008-05-13 10:53 pm UTC (link)
I was very angry when they took footage of Gene Kelly's beautiful dancing and used CGI to replace his partner with a vacuum cleaner.

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[info]stormdog
2008-05-14 01:56 am UTC (link)
Wow; I've never seen that, but that's really atrocious.

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[info]rileybear67
2008-05-13 02:45 pm UTC (link)
The use (and abuse?) of Meatloaf's "Paradise By the Dashboard Light".

First, they have some DIY show about how people are letting potential buys stay in the house overnight to see if they like it.

THEN, they actually get Meatloaf to demean himself by turning his song into a fracking phone commercial?

Maybe not as bad as the ones ya'll have come up with, but these two drive me irritated!

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[info]awfulhorrid
2008-05-13 02:53 pm UTC (link)
Ah ha! Paradise by the Dashboard Lights ... that's the one I was trying to remember. Then again the song is about long lasting regret, so perhaps it's appropriate. (Phone contracts that last until the end of time or at least seem that way, perhaps?)

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[info]stormdog
2008-05-13 03:00 pm UTC (link)
*laughs* That's one way to look at it.

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agreed
[info]netrage
2008-05-13 06:41 pm UTC (link)
It actually seems to fit in with it. Also, they actually changed the lyrics so its not exactly the same song. I think had they used the song as written would have been really messed up.

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[info]stormdog
2008-05-13 03:00 pm UTC (link)
Indeed; I haven't seen those, but they'd bug the snot out of me too.

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[info]rileybear67
2008-05-13 02:48 pm UTC (link)
And HUGE hugs to a beautiful pupshine, too!
:D

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[info]stormdog
2008-05-13 03:01 pm UTC (link)
Thank you for a big smile and an unexpected uplifting of spirits. *blushes*

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[info]awfulhorrid
2008-05-13 02:56 pm UTC (link)
Jethro Tull's "Thick as a Brick," or at least the music. Somehow I don't think the executives that approved that one ever heard the lyrics or perhaps they just didn't understand the phrase.

That said, I can't blame the artists for taking the money. I respect the ones that say "No" to the use of their music in ads (when they still have control over it) but I'm fine with them cashing the check and laughing all the way to the bank.

Then there's the horrible misuse of "Born in the USA." Ouch.

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[info]stormdog
2008-05-13 03:07 pm UTC (link)
"Born In the USA"; yeah, that one's particularly egregious. I've heard of Neil Young's "Rockin' in the Free World" used the same way too. As a Neil Young devotee, that one particularly makes me want to scream.





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[info]rennie_frog
2008-05-13 03:19 pm UTC (link)
"Sympathy for the Devil" by the Rolling Stones was used to advertise the TV show _House_ when it first came out...

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[info]stormdog
2008-05-13 03:29 pm UTC (link)
Hmmm.

Is it weird that I can kind of understand the relation there? House isn't exactly a saint, but I do have some sympathy for him. *grins*

And it's funny you bring up that show, because it's one of the few that really stand out in my mind for using musical pieces that are unusually well matched to the montages of video that they go with.

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[info]moiracoon
2008-05-13 03:42 pm UTC (link)
That one actually sort of makes sense...

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[info]rennie_frog
2008-05-13 10:50 pm UTC (link)
Well... Yes and no. There are parts that are a wonderful match, and there are parts that would only make sense to House when he was chewing the Oxycodone...

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[info]emrldgirrl
2008-05-13 04:47 pm UTC (link)
"fortunate son" used to sell gas eating SUV's after the start of Operation Iraqi "Freedom"

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[info]stormdog
2008-05-13 04:56 pm UTC (link)
Oh, hell no. *shakes head*

Thanks, that's a good one.

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[info]awfulhorrid
2008-05-13 04:59 pm UTC (link)
Oh wow ... I missed that one. I think I'm glad. Scratch that, I know I'm glad.

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[info]stormdog
2008-05-13 05:46 pm UTC (link)
According to Wikipedia, it was also used to sell Wrangler jeans, accompanied by the usual jingoistic tripe. Bleah.

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[info]megmoves
2008-05-13 08:28 pm UTC (link)
"I'll stop the world and melt with you..." as featured in a Burger King commercial was the first time I heard a song in a commercial that made me wretch with repulsion.

It's now a common occurrence with songs that I enjoy.

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[info]stormdog
2008-05-13 08:32 pm UTC (link)
Eeeeww. Yeah.

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[info]moiracoon
2008-05-13 09:27 pm UTC (link)
That definitely pissed me off when I heard it...

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[info]murstein
2008-05-15 01:43 am UTC (link)
I've not watched TV regularly for a loooong time, so this one is probably dated. Some oil company is misrepresenting their environmental record, and they played en excerpt of the 4th movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony, at the moment when the choir jumps in, at full volume, singing the first chorus of Schiller's An die Freude. At that moment, they showed clips of a whale and dolphins jumping out of the water.

Then there are the numerous, usually hilariously inappropriate, uses of O Fortuna from Carmina Burana.

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[info]stormdog
2008-05-16 02:35 am UTC (link)
In regard to the oil company; ick ick ick! *bleah*

You know, O Fortuna was used as part of the music for the fight against the final boss in Final Fantasy 7, or at least, some of the lyrics were. That was actually kind of neat. I'm sure it's been abused in other places though, much like some other pieces. I keep hearing tales of a Microsoft add from their 'Where do you want to go today?' campaign that was accompanied by a snippet of opera whose lyrics were describing the tribulations of hell....

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