Elvis Costello hawks Lexus

Nina Simone, "Backlash Blues."

I always like when they use songs about heroin to sell stuff ("There She Goes", "Lust For Life").

And Kentucky Fried Chicken using "Sweet Home Alabama" just screams "We don't care how stupid this is. We're aiming for your lizard brain."

 

Let's not forget Pete Townshend selling the Who catalogue to damn near everyone.

 

I think my favorite was using Fortunate Son to sell jeans, but cutting the son off right after the line "some folks are born, made to wave the flag, Oh the red white and blue" while attractive young white people run across a beach looking like happy American patriots.

Yes, cleary, a protest song about Vietnam and the country's class system helps put people in the mood to buy blue jeans. America! Yeah!

 

It was indeed "Start" and Caddy.

(Not the commercial, but rare Jam footage.)

Great riff by a great band that never got its due in the States.

 

Wasn't The Clash's "London Calling" used in a car commercial a couple of years ago?

Chevy's used Bob Seger and John Mellencamp songs in their commercials (or was Mellencamp singing for Ford?), how soon before those guys actually appear in one of the spots?

 

Nothing better than The Who having an album called The Who Sells Out in a mocking term and then, years later, do it over and over and over and over and over again.

 

Don't forget Burger King using the Violent Femmes' masturbation song ('Blister in the Sun') to sell Whoppers.

 

Pretty sure Mellencamp was in some of the Chevy spots

 

I really, really doubt Joe Strummer would have done that. Maybe his estate, but I've never heard it.

If so, he would roll over in his grave. A friend of mine loved the Cure, and was so pissed when Picture of You was used in a commercial.

 

Of course, theere's always Michael Jackson selling all the Beatles songs.

And the anti-chris herself, Yoko Ono, selling Instant karma. Where's her fucking karma?!?!?!

 

He was alive and OK'd it:

"Yeah, I agreed to that. We get hundreds of requests for that and turn 'em all down. But I just thought Jaguar...yeah. If you're in a group and you make it together, then everyone deserves something. Especially twenty-odd years after the fact. It just seems churlish for a writer to refuse to have their music used on an advert and so I figured out, only advertise the things you think are cool. That's why we dissed Coors and Miller. We've turned down loads of money. Millions over the years. But sometimes you have to earn a bit, so everybody gets some."


I don't have so much a problem with songs being used. The artists themselves appearing in the ad is different.

 

Well, wow. I never thought he would do that. Interesting.