Classic Rock Songs Ruined in Commercials

[SherriBerry]

Does anyone have a song they used to like, but after seeing it used in a commercial it was ruined for them? I mentioned Queen's 'Another One Bites the Dust' (Crunchie bar) in another thread which got me thinking of this. Lionel Richie's 'Stuck On You' isn't classic rock, but I used to like the song until I saw it used in a commercial for a spray cleaner called 'Fantastic'. Now the song reminds me of food stuck on a stove

Steve Perry was right to fight against Journey songs being used in commercials, but I did find an old ad of theirs using 'Don't Stop Believing' - for the 'Journey The Escape' video game :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V41ajt3euYQ

By the way, did any of you ever play this game?

[jrnyjunky]

The swiffer duster uses "Baby Come Back" and that pisses me off because I love that song, and like you said, now everytime I hear it, I think of the commercial.

You are right, Steve knew what he was doing to keep Journey songs out of commercials.

I have the Atari version of the game that you are talking about. Don't have the Atari to play it on, but I just wanted the game. lol I'm waiting for a Journey version of Guitar Hero for the Wii. I suck at Guitar Hero, I get boo'd off the stage every time. lol

[wednesday's child]

When Led Zep tuneage showed up on a Cadillac ad, I was put off for quite awhile.

[JohnH]

This is why I watch everything on DVR or tape- No songs can then be ruined.

[jrnyman28]

The swiffer duster uses "Baby Come Back" and that pisses me off because I love that song, and like you said, now everytime I hear it, I think of the commercial.

Yeah but it cracks me up to think of a mariachi band playing that song!

[swataz]

Just last week, I saw for what I believed was the first use of a Moody Blues song, Tuesday Afternoon, to promote a Visa GO campaign...I was saddened.

[swataz]

The swiffer duster uses "Baby Come Back" and that pisses me off because I love that song, and like you said, now everytime I hear it, I think of the commercial.

Yeah but it cracks me up to think of a mariachi band playing that song!

...it's effing funny too. The trailed off "Baby come bahhhhck"..

lol

[DrFU]

How to Calculate Musical Sellouts
As Rockers Cash In, The Moby Quotient Helps to Determine The Shilling Effect

By Bill Wyman
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, October 14, 2007; Page M01

A commercial during "The Colbert Report" recently featured a happy family shopping in Circuit City for back-to-school technology for their comely daughter. She's a big fan of the bubblegum punk group Fall Out Boy, and while the band's fabulous song "Thnks fr th Mmrs" plays, she imagines all the exciting Fall Out Boy-related things she could do with many different amazing Circuit City products.

As the happy family leaves the store, Dad hands her a new cellphone and says, smiling, "You can take a study break with Fall Out Boy!"

The kid is tickled pink.

Right after that came a Nissan commercial, which wanted consumers to understand that, if you owned an SUV, you could drive places. To underline the point, the commercial broke into the Ramones, who sang, "Hey! Ho! Let's go!" That's the famous break from the punk rockers' "Blitzkrieg Bop," a heartfelt ode to pogoing to the beat of a Nazi military assault.

Well, at least it wasn't a Volkswagen ad.

It seems as if every commercial these days has a rock band in it. What was once the mark of utter uncoolness, a veritable byword of selling out, has become the norm. More than a decade ago we became inured to the most unlikely parings. Led Zeppelin in a Cadillac ad. The Clash shilling for Jaguar. Bob Dylan warbling for an accounting firm, or Victoria's Secret. An Iggy Pop song about a heroin-soaked demimonde accompanying scenes of blissful vacationers on a Caribbean cruise ship.

There is no longer even a debate, let alone a stigma. "If you did an advert, you were a sellout," notes Billboard Executive Editor Tamara Conniff. "The Rolling Stones broke that when they allowed the use of 'Start Me Up' for the Windows campaign. Though there was an initial backlash, it suddenly made it okay for bands of integrity to do commercials. Now, it's almost as if as an artist you don't have a corporate partner [or] commercial, you've not really arrived."

Indeed, in the late 1990s, the techno artist Moby, as hip as they come, openly boasted of having sold every track of his breakthrough album "Play" to an advertiser, or to a film or TV soundtrack. The album should perhaps have been called "Pay."

So we submit: The battle has been lost. But that doesn't make it right. There are even some who disagree.

"People say making money is making money, but there's a difference," says Bill Brown, a onetime rock critic who now works in the New York publishing world. He examines the implications of this new age in rock commercialism at great length and no little erudition on his Web site, Notbored.org. "If you're in a band, you want to be paid, definitely, but the music is for people to use and enjoy. The problem with branding yourself and selling your songs to commercials is the music is no longer for the listener.

"Instead, the ad is signaling that, 'This company is cool, and we've gotten this band to sell us some of their music.' It's the difference between selling to me, and something else: Pete Townshend sold a song to Hummer!"

Clearly, what we need is an objective formula for determining just how offensive a particular rock-based advertisement is. I am proud to announce that this lack has been righted.

I recently enlisted the aid of Jim Anderson, a senior lecturer in mathematics at England's University of Southampton. An expert on hyperbolic geometry, he embarked on this task with tongue firmly in cheek, and developed a formula that can be used to process the ethical and aesthetic implications of any one instance of the pervasive blurring of the lines between rock and advertising.

The formula kicks out a number that could be used to determine just how much of a sellout is a particular artist.

We are pleased to call this number the Moby Quotient and to assign the Greek letter "mu," to designate it.

The equation is designed to put things in perspective. If Kelly Clarkson sings for Ford, where, in the end, is the harm? Negligible artists singing on subjects that can be of less-than-pressing social import advertising silly products. One does not look to Disney pop culture puppets or artists given an imprimatur by the viewers of a Fox TV show for artistic integrity. Ms. Clarkson can sing for her supper anywhere she wants, and the world sits solidly on its foundations.

However. If you are an artist who traffics in -- or has trafficked in -- your outsider status; if you were a punk or a rebel or a beast whose rude yawp emerged from the underground and you are now hawking your anthems of defiance as ear candy to further the sales of a crummy telecom company, a new line of SUVs or the marvelous things General Electric is doing, well then, sir or madam artiste, expect your Moby Quotient to be somewhat higher.

The formula sits proudly on this very page, along with a few examples of the sorts of Moby Quotients certain artists earn. We have to be realistic: This tide of greed will never slide back out. Indeed, it can only get worse, since new generations of rock fans have grown up with the practice and apparently see nothing wrong with it.

Our one hope is that what greed created, greed may eventually eliminate -- in other words, that younger artists will view Moby's career as a cautionary tale. The jut-jawed vegan still makes a good living touring and doing film soundtracks and the like. But it's also true that commercially and artistically, his recorded work since "Play" has been on a downward spiral. Let the sellouts beware.

Bill Wyman, the former arts editor of National Public Radio, writes the blog "Hitsville" athttp://hitsville.org.

The calculator:

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/2007/sellout-songs/

[Rockindeano]

You only have to look at the bands themselves. They are the one's who sold out.

Journey did it for Fedex. Zeppelin did it for Cadillac. It is sad. Now REO has done it for Hallmark.

[KDOUBLEU]

Does anyone have a song they used to like, but after seeing it used in a commercial it was ruined for them? I mentioned Queen's 'Another One Bites the Dust' (Crunchie bar) in another thread which got me thinking of this. Lionel Richie's 'Stuck On You' isn't classic rock, but I used to like the song until I saw it used in a commercial for a spray cleaner called 'Fantastic'. Now the song reminds me of food stuck on a stove

Steve Perry was right to fight against Journey songs being used in commercials, but I did find an old ad of theirs using 'Don't Stop Believing' - for the 'Journey The Escape' video game :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V41ajt3euYQ

By the way, did any of you ever play this game?

Iplayed the game once in the game room at the Grand Hotel on Macinac Island.

[Michigan Girl]

Does anyone have a song they used to like, but after seeing it used in a commercial it was ruined for them? I mentioned Queen's 'Another One Bites the Dust' (Crunchie bar) in another thread which got me thinking of this. Lionel Richie's 'Stuck On You' isn't classic rock, but I used to like the song until I saw it used in a commercial for a spray cleaner called 'Fantastic'. Now the song reminds me of food stuck on a stove

Steve Perry was right to fight against Journey songs being used in commercials, but I did find an old ad of theirs using 'Don't Stop Believing' - for the 'Journey The Escape' video game :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V41ajt3euYQ

By the way, did any of you ever play this game?

Iplayed the game once in the game room at the Grand Hotel on Macinac Island.

I did not know it was in there?!?!?
Do they still play Somewhere In Time over and over on every TV screen in the place?!?!?

[artist4perry]

The swiffer duster uses "Baby Come Back" and that pisses me off because I love that song, and like you said, now everytime I hear it, I think of the commercial.

Yeah but it cracks me up to think of a mariachi band playing that song!

Ditto! Died laughing the first time I saw that one!

[AlteredDNA]

Does anyone have a song they used to like, but after seeing it used in a commercial it was ruined for them? I mentioned Queen's 'Another One Bites the Dust' (Crunchie bar) in another thread which got me thinking of this. Lionel Richie's 'Stuck On You' isn't classic rock, but I used to like the song until I saw it used in a commercial for a spray cleaner called 'Fantastic'. Now the song reminds me of food stuck on a stove

Steve Perry was right to fight against Journey songs being used in commercials, but I did find an old ad of theirs using 'Don't Stop Believing' - for the 'Journey The Escape' video game :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V41ajt3euYQ

By the way, did any of you ever play this game?

http://www.zfcamaro.com/ArcadePictures/ ... urney.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1Si3TRS ... r_embedded

[Jubilee]

Does anyone have a song they used to like, but after seeing it used in a commercial it was ruined for them? I mentioned Queen's 'Another One Bites the Dust' (Crunchie bar) in another thread which got me thinking of this. Lionel Richie's 'Stuck On You' isn't classic rock, but I used to like the song until I saw it used in a commercial for a spray cleaner called 'Fantastic'. Now the song reminds me of food stuck on a stove

Steve Perry was right to fight against Journey songs being used in commercials, but I did find an old ad of theirs using 'Don't Stop Believing' - for the 'Journey The Escape' video game :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V41ajt3euYQ

By the way, did any of you ever play this game?

I gotta tell ya, it really doesn't bother me. In fact I rather get a kick out of hearing some of those old Classic Rock tunes that I haven't heard in years. It's funny how some music that was reviled by the establishment in its day is now being used to peddle some of the most bourgeois products of today (was that "Crazy Train" I heard in a Lexus commercial??) I can understand some artists not wanting to have their music used for these purposes, on the other hand, I see nothing wrong with artists who choose otherwise. It really gives some of those Classic Rock tunes a second life, and that, I believe is a good thing.

[SherriBerry]

You only have to look at the bands themselves. They are the one's who sold out.

Journey did it for Fedex. Zeppelin did it for Cadillac. It is sad. Now REO has done it for Hallmark.

Which Journey song was used for FedEx?

[SherriBerry]

How to Calculate Musical Sellouts
As Rockers Cash In, The Moby Quotient Helps to Determine The Shilling Effect

By Bill Wyman
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, October 14, 2007; Page M01

A commercial during "The Colbert Report" recently featured a happy family shopping in Circuit City for back-to-school technology for their comely daughter. She's a big fan of the bubblegum punk group Fall Out Boy, and while the band's fabulous song "Thnks fr th Mmrs" plays, she imagines all the exciting Fall Out Boy-related things she could do with many different amazing Circuit City products.

As the happy family leaves the store, Dad hands her a new cellphone and says, smiling, "You can take a study break with Fall Out Boy!"

The kid is tickled pink.

Right after that came a Nissan commercial, which wanted consumers to understand that, if you owned an SUV, you could drive places. To underline the point, the commercial broke into the Ramones, who sang, "Hey! Ho! Let's go!" That's the famous break from the punk rockers' "Blitzkrieg Bop," a heartfelt ode to pogoing to the beat of a Nazi military assault.

Well, at least it wasn't a Volkswagen ad.

It seems as if every commercial these days has a rock band in it. What was once the mark of utter uncoolness, a veritable byword of selling out, has become the norm. More than a decade ago we became inured to the most unlikely parings. Led Zeppelin in a Cadillac ad. The Clash shilling for Jaguar. Bob Dylan warbling for an accounting firm, or Victoria's Secret. An Iggy Pop song about a heroin-soaked demimonde accompanying scenes of blissful vacationers on a Caribbean cruise ship.

There is no longer even a debate, let alone a stigma. "If you did an advert, you were a sellout," notes Billboard Executive Editor Tamara Conniff. "The Rolling Stones broke that when they allowed the use of 'Start Me Up' for the Windows campaign. Though there was an initial backlash, it suddenly made it okay for bands of integrity to do commercials. Now, it's almost as if as an artist you don't have a corporate partner [or] commercial, you've not really arrived."

Indeed, in the late 1990s, the techno artist Moby, as hip as they come, openly boasted of having sold every track of his breakthrough album "Play" to an advertiser, or to a film or TV soundtrack. The album should perhaps have been called "Pay."

So we submit: The battle has been lost. But that doesn't make it right. There are even some who disagree.

"People say making money is making money, but there's a difference," says Bill Brown, a onetime rock critic who now works in the New York publishing world. He examines the implications of this new age in rock commercialism at great length and no little erudition on his Web site, Notbored.org. "If you're in a band, you want to be paid, definitely, but the music is for people to use and enjoy. The problem with branding yourself and selling your songs to commercials is the music is no longer for the listener.

"Instead, the ad is signaling that, 'This company is cool, and we've gotten this band to sell us some of their music.' It's the difference between selling to me, and something else: Pete Townshend sold a song to Hummer!"

Clearly, what we need is an objective formula for determining just how offensive a particular rock-based advertisement is. I am proud to announce that this lack has been righted.

I recently enlisted the aid of Jim Anderson, a senior lecturer in mathematics at England's University of Southampton. An expert on hyperbolic geometry, he embarked on this task with tongue firmly in cheek, and developed a formula that can be used to process the ethical and aesthetic implications of any one instance of the pervasive blurring of the lines between rock and advertising.

The formula kicks out a number that could be used to determine just how much of a sellout is a particular artist.

We are pleased to call this number the Moby Quotient and to assign the Greek letter "mu," to designate it.

The equation is designed to put things in perspective. If Kelly Clarkson sings for Ford, where, in the end, is the harm? Negligible artists singing on subjects that can be of less-than-pressing social import advertising silly products. One does not look to Disney pop culture puppets or artists given an imprimatur by the viewers of a Fox TV show for artistic integrity. Ms. Clarkson can sing for her supper anywhere she wants, and the world sits solidly on its foundations.

However. If you are an artist who traffics in -- or has trafficked in -- your outsider status; if you were a punk or a rebel or a beast whose rude yawp emerged from the underground and you are now hawking your anthems of defiance as ear candy to further the sales of a crummy telecom company, a new line of SUVs or the marvelous things General Electric is doing, well then, sir or madam artiste, expect your Moby Quotient to be somewhat higher.

The formula sits proudly on this very page, along with a few examples of the sorts of Moby Quotients certain artists earn. We have to be realistic: This tide of greed will never slide back out. Indeed, it can only get worse, since new generations of rock fans have grown up with the practice and apparently see nothing wrong with it.

Our one hope is that what greed created, greed may eventually eliminate -- in other words, that younger artists will view Moby's career as a cautionary tale. The jut-jawed vegan still makes a good living touring and doing film soundtracks and the like. But it's also true that commercially and artistically, his recorded work since "Play" has been on a downward spiral. Let the sellouts beware.

Bill Wyman, the former arts editor of National Public Radio, writes the blog "Hitsville" athttp://hitsville.org.

The calculator:

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/2007/sellout-songs/

It does seem more acceptable for pop music to be used in ads, because most pop artists are a result of marketing anyway. But for a Bob Dylan song to be used in an ad for an advertising agency? Rock music used to be the voice of dissent and now Led Zeppelin is pushing Cadillacs, a status symbol of the upper class (unless it's Elvis's pink cadillac ). It does seem like a much bigger sellout.

[SherriBerry]

The swiffer duster uses "Baby Come Back" and that pisses me off because I love that song, and like you said, now everytime I hear it, I think of the commercial.

Yeah but it cracks me up to think of a mariachi band playing that song!

Ditto! Died laughing the first time I saw that one!

I use a Swiffer and now I hear that song when I dust!

[walkslikealady]

Don't like commercials so I tape things and FF through. Won't that kill some sponsor somewhere who thinks he's spending millions to get me to buy his product?

I've noticed nowadays they don't do catchy (obnoxious) jingles, but think they have to have a rock/pop song instead. Can anyone from marketing tell me which comes first? The song or the idea for the commercial?

[Vladan]

Lionel Richie's 'Stuck On You' isn't classic rock, but I used to like the song until I saw it used in a commercial for a spray cleaner called 'Fantastic'. Now the song reminds me of food stuck on a stove

Hahahaha! yeah I hear ya, I still love that tune, great song, great song. Thankfully I have NEVER seen that dreadful commercial, what a way to soil a classic song.

[stevew2]

I dont see anything wrong with it. i call it conmercial art.They need to make money to.People arent buying there CDs, and are downloading their shit for free. The are musicans they never took some fucking oath to leep there music "holy" ,they need money like the rest of us. Journey is the king when it comes to that shit,Cars and suvs are named after there albun names. i wonder if thats what paid for Frigas half ass winery that he gets drunk from nitely??

[Jubilee]

I dont see anything wrong with it. i call it conmercial art.They need to make money to.People arent buying there CDs, and are downloading their shit for free. The are musicans they never took some fucking oath to leep there music "holy" ,they need money like the rest of us. Journey is the king when it comes to that shit,Cars and suvs are named after there albun names. i wonder if thats what paid for Frigas half ass winery that he gets drunk from nitely??

I'm almost certain that neither Infinity nor the Escape were named after Journey albums - possiblely the Pinto Trial by Fire, but I'm not sure about that one. Anyway, the rest of your post I pretty much agree with (I think).

[Deb]

The swiffer duster uses "Baby Come Back" and that pisses me off because I love that song, and like you said, now everytime I hear it, I think of the commercial.

Yeah but it cracks me up to think of a mariachi band playing that song!

...it's effing funny too. The trailed off "Baby come bahhhhck"..

lol

Cracks me up too.

And for some reason I really like the use of The Who songs as intros on all 3 CSI's.

[stevew2]

I dont see anything wrong with it. i call it conmercial art.They need to make money to.People arent buying there CDs, and are downloading their shit for free. The are musicans they never took some fucking oath to leep there music "holy" ,they need money like the rest of us. Journey is the king when it comes to that shit,Cars and suvs are named after there albun names. i wonder if thats what paid for Frigas half ass winery that he gets drunk from nitely??

I'm almost certain that neither Infinity nor the Escape were named after Journey albums - possiblely the Pinto Trial by Fire, but I'm not sure about that one. Anyway, the rest of your post I pretty much agree with (I think).

lol your forgetting The Frontier {maybe that was named from the Journey tribute band} although Jeremey hasnt seen a cent. They problably will name the next crossover vehicle The Friga. it comes with 16 cupholders

[WiseOldTabbyCat]

Nevermind songs killed by adverts, I'm more concerned about actual artists selling themselves out to adverts.
Here in England (and possibly the rest of the UK) Alice Cooper was in a national insurance advert and Iggy Pop was in a finance advert.
Worst, and most hilarious of all, Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols was recently in a butter commerical. I am totally serious.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mSE-Iy_tFY

[Gideon]

Honestly, I see no problem with Journey songs being used in commercials. Especially for the vehicles; they're so appropriate and it's great exposure.

[Carla777]

I really doesn't mind so much, if the songs are use in a proper commercial, but some songs are butchered, like this one from Europe-The final countdown for cable channels (is a chilean one) altough the lyrics are pretty funny

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pw23C4W-CnQ

[SherriBerry]

If it's for a certain type of product deemed "cool" or relevant (like an iPod), it may not tarnish the song, but Steve Perry once said something to the effect of 'it wouldn't feel good to see the songs he put so much love into selling hot dogs'.

Does anyone watch 'Two and a Half Men'? It's my favourite comedy on TV and Charlie Sheen plays a jingle writer currently going through an economic dry spell because of advertisers moving to classic rock. I saw one episode where he explains to his brother Alan, "Why would anyone pay me to write a jingle for a tampon when they just can just run an ad using "Stuck in the Middle With You?" If I hear that song now, that's what I associate it with (at least it's funny though)! Wouldn't that ruin it for you if they let it be used for something like that? The song comes on at a party and it's, "Ew, that tampon song". There is the potential to actually kill the song.

As I said, I don't listen to 'Stuck On You' anymore, because instead of remembering the drives I had back and forth to college one year when I listened to the tape, now it reminds me of stuck on food from an ad for spray cleaner! It just killed the feeling I had for the song. If they had used it for something like an SPCA commercial for adopting animals, it would be different for me - still a positive association. So perhaps it isn't that the song is used in a commercial, but what type of product it's used to promote.

[Michigan Girl]

How many times has Turn! Turn! Turn! (to Everything There is a Season) been used in commercials?!?!?

[Rick]

How many times has Turn! Turn! Turn! (to Everything There is a Season) been used in commercials?!?!?

Oy!!! Too many!

[Angiekay]

Pat Benatar's "Hit Me With You Best Shot"

Carly Simon's "Anticipation"...all I can picture is someone trying to get ketchup out of a bottle.