Mar 052008
I just saw this last night — a commercial featuring The Kinks’ “Everybody’s a Star (Starmaker)” from Soap Opera. Song choices in advertising are getting more and more obscure. How soon till Apple gets its hands on “Think Visual”?
I just saw this last night — a commercial featuring The Kinks’ “Everybody’s a Star (Starmaker)” from Soap Opera. Song choices in advertising are getting more and more obscure. How soon till Apple gets its hands on “Think Visual”?
I saw that commercial last night too. I got really distracted from what was being sold by the song, which I couldn’t place. I figured it was some new band working in The Kinks’ tradition. Boy, The Kinks were ahead of their time when it comes to Raggedy Rock!
I was flipping between primary coverage on MSNBC and a South Park rerun. I can’t remember which channel I saw this one.
Were it not for the Target logo at the end, I wouldn’t have had a clue. Only today did I realize Converse was involved as well.
Soap Opera is one of my least favorite Kinks albums, but this song is much better than I remembered.
I think I saw it while watching some new show, New Amsterdam, about a 399-year-old detective. Promising, for fans of cheesy USA dramas, like myself. (This is a Fox show, mind you.) We noticed the Converse star; only a minute or two after the commercial ended did it occur to me that Target had something to do with the ad.
I always like singing out the *naughty bits* on commercials songs where they fade ’em out or talk over ’em:
‘SO YOU GOT A GREAT CAR’
(what’s wrong with it today)
-or-
‘HERE COMES JOHNNY IN AGAIN’
(with his liquor and drugs – and his sex machine – he gonna do a lil strip-tease HEY MAN WHERE’D YOU PUT THAT LOTION?)
So whadd’ya think will be the LAST song standing? – the only song that will be left that has never been used in a commercial?
I guess you’d have to eliminate ones with outright swears and fornication from contention – no ‘Rodeo Song’ for Chevy Trucks or ‘Dynamo Humm’ for Sears Ponchos…
I thought maybe ‘Lost in the Supermarket’ might have a chance but recently even the dead Joe Strummer made it onto the advert pages for some thing or another…
I’ve been seeing the Starmaker commercial for a few weeks now. I watch a lot of MSNBC, so I presume that’s where I caught it. I could not have told you before this thread what product was being advertised with the song. I’m one of the few Kinks fans that really likes Soap Opera, so it caught my ear right away. As usual the irony inherent in the original is drained away by editing and the recontextualization.
And btw isn’t it Johnny ‘Yen’ Iggy is singing about? He borrowed the name from William Burroughs. The rhythm is borrowed from Sandy Nelson’s Let There Be Drums, so Iggy’s made quite a bundle with second hand goods.
Ach du leiber!
I stand corrected. My pantheon is loaded with misheard lyrics and unnatural connotations…
‘scuse me while I kiss this guy…
So what other Burroughs literary references in popular song? Of course ‘Steely Dan’; also from NL via the Tubes ‘a babys arm holding an apple’.
I think I heard those right…
King Ron asked:
Last Song Standing for Commercial use? Tough one. I predict the Penultimate Song Standing will be The Clash’s “White Riot”, used in ads to promote The Gap’s summer line of white cotton clothes.
Hey, King Ron — your URL doesn’t work, and I therefore can’t tell if you’re the Richard Harrington who writes music stuff for the Washington Post — or a fan of his, or what. In any case, welcome!
I predict the last song standing for commercial use with be “Owl Caricature” by Jon Wayne. This inside joke will be funny for Townsman Mockcarr. For the rest of you: the song is sung in the first person by Jon, and tells the story about busting in on Jimbo, the drummer, in flagrante delicto, and noting that his johnson “looked like a… a… a OWL CARICATURE!”
This song thus faces the triple challenge of being about whores, somebody’s dick *and* being lyrically impenetrable.
While on the subject: is it a trend that songs are now being broken by first being put out on a crummy commercial? I’ve heard at least four NEW songs on the radio that I first heard on TV ads…
At least they’re not GOOD songs – so far…
Other questions: hearing what song on a commercial has been most disappointing?
(Top of my head: the Clash ‘Pressure Drop’ for NISSAN)
Conversely: have any of your favorite songs made an otherwise unbearable commercial make you grin?
(Ca plane pour moi?)
I just noticed the name check above – thanks for the welcome. I’m not that guy. I’m a long time fan and amateur guitarist out of Chi. My posted url is currently a wasteland, I should change it.
http://www.jungleofcities.com has some usable backstory.
Key, King — I write music for TV for a living, and slotting up-and-coming talent (and premiering new music, though less often) in commercials is in fact a trend. A big one — it’s taken more than a few jobs out of my pocket, I can tell you!
They remade Fish?
I’ll have to put some thought into the least viable song for a commercial question. But as the original question points out, lyrical content isn’t a problem, since they’ll just fade out the lines they don’t want you to hear and assume you don’t know/care what the song is about already.
Since the Kinks have turned into a viable commercial commodity in the last few years, any guesses for what song of theirs will be the next in line and what product it will advertise? I gotta think some ad exec with a car account is going to accidentally stumble onto Arthur any day now and almost break his neck in the rush to use “Drivin’”.
Why hasn’t Pepsi used Suicidal Tendencies “Institutionalized”? You would think that Shout detergent would use that Tears For Fears song.
I’m somewhat amazed at the choice of songs used with commercial. A few years ago “Alone Again Or” by Love was used in a Miller Beer ad.
As for next Kinks song you will hear in a commercial…someone like Fidelity or another investment bank will use Shangri-La (which isn’t really viable of course).
Mr. Clean, has Chevrolet contacted you guys about Bitchin’ Camaro, or were your demands too similar to Bob Seger’s?
I can’t remember if we were ever contacted about that song…but what were Bob’s demands?
I always imagined a song on our last studio release called “I’m Flying Away” would be perfect for a cruise ship line or one of those island paradise get-a-way places…
The last commercial left standing? Probably a Dead Kennedys song, what with all the hoopla Jello Biafra made last time it was tried.
I remember hearing Sky Blue Sky, one of the few songs I really liked on the new Wilco album on a car commercial, which was pretty cool. Also they used Skin Is My by Andrew Bird in another commercial once.