…And Now a Word from Our Sponsor
JG had a great post on her blog a couple of weeks ago that dealt with companies using pop songs for their commercials while completely disregarding the actual meaning of the song while peddling their pieces of crap. It's oh, so true. I can’t wait for Viagra to shell out some cake for the rights to Chuck Berry’s “My Ding-A-Ling”. Or for Caribbean Cruise Lines to show a gala event on one of their boats while AC/DC’s “Big Balls” cranks in the background.
And while my brain had a complete library full of these commercial offenses, when it came to responding to JG’s post, it became readily apparent that a night of Molson Canadians (theme song: Pink Floyd’s “Brain Damage”) had permanently erased them from my hard drive.
But watching TV the other day caused me to see two commercial offenses as disturbing, if not more so, than the “inappropriate lyric” commercials: The commercials that take an existing pop song and then re-write a few lyrics to match whatever it is they are selling. How can artists agree to sign over the rights to a song knowing that this is going to happen?? Granted, usually the artists are one-hit wonders and ripple sure can cost a lot these days, but do these people have any pride?
Example #1. (and if you can think of any more, please post them. A nice bottle of Shiraz caused me to only remember these two and that’s only because I wrote them down the second after I saw them).
Applebee’s is using Robert Palmer’s “Bad Case of Loving You” to hawk some special where you pick two things from the menu for the price of, well, two things from the menu. But, here’s where these Applebee dudes get clever. As the song is, with the lyric, “Doctor, doctor, give me the news. I’ve got a bad case of loving you”, it could have worked. Personally, I have never had to seek medical attention because of my infatuation with steak with chimichurri sauce and coconut shrimp, but hey, to each their own. Instead of leaving the song as is, however, Applebee’s gives it a little twist. Instead of “bad case of loving YOU”, the guy in the commercial (NOT Robert Palmer, natch), sings “I got a bad case of loving TWO.” Get it? Pick two menu items? Loving TWO? Now, that’s just piss poor. If this was a commercial featuring the Coors Light twins, I can almost understand this debauchery, but Applebee’s? Not to mention some of the song’s other lyrics are wildly inappropriate:
“I know you like it, you like it on top
Tell me mamma, are you gonna stop?”
Well, Applebee’s, if we are still talking about food here, I’d like it known that no, I don’t like it on top. Please put the sour cream for my baked potato on the side, thank you very much. And my waitress, “Mamma” her name must be, better stop with the crushed black pepper on my Caesar salad when I say to…I don’t need to be sneezing on my croutons.
The thing that really frosts my fanny about the whole thing too is how unabashedly obvious they are about the lyric they changed. Listen to the commercial. The fake Robert Palmer guy wants you to know that he isn’t singing “you”. He’s singing “TWO!!!!” And he’s taking credit for that re-write, he’ll have you know. It would be like me singing the national anthem before a Bruins game and starting it off, “O say can you see? By the dawn’s early POT ROAST!!!” And then stopping and looking around with a self-satisfied look on my face. “Hey, I know the tune’s a classic, but it needed a little updating. That ‘pot roast’ thing? That was ALL ME, baby. Next time I see this song in print, I want to read: Lyrics: F.S. Key, Dim.”
The other example I can remember is Kraft using EMF’s “Unbelievable” to pimp some crumbled cheese monstrosity that not only adds a nice flavor to your salad, but also will bind you up for the next 3-5 days. So, you ready for this one? Out of the whole song, they use merely two words. Granted, one is a contraction. But two words. And one is a Frankensteinian version of the title. And because of the rest of the song so has nothing do with crumbled Muenster bits, he sings these two words OVER and OVER again in the course of the commercial. And those two words are:
“You’re crumb-believable”.
I heard this and wretched and gagged like I just washed down my Applebee’s “Pick Two” with an Ipecac Margarita. First of all, what the flying fuck does “crumb-believable” actually mean? Did Kraft give this two seconds of thought? Did they think all consumers are suckers for crumb-believably bad puns? “You’re crumb-believable.” “Gee, thanks! You smell like popcorn.”
Is it a compliment to be crumb-believable? Or is the concept of their new product (which since the invention of cheese people have been able to do on their own using, uh, cheese and a fist) just so space-age that they had to bastardize the first 90s one-hit wonder song they could find that would cost them just a bottle of Maddog 20-20 and a Big Grab bag of Funyuns in order to herald this new marketing miracle?
I’m boycotting both Applebee’s and Kraft’s cheese balls because, god forbid, I order a cheeseburger at Applebee’s and the waitress, Mamma, comes out and puts some crumb-believable cheddar on it, I may just have to bludgeon someone to death with a ramekin while singing Tom Jones’ “The Young New Mexican Puppeteer”.
And no one wants that to happen.
-Dim.
And while my brain had a complete library full of these commercial offenses, when it came to responding to JG’s post, it became readily apparent that a night of Molson Canadians (theme song: Pink Floyd’s “Brain Damage”) had permanently erased them from my hard drive.
But watching TV the other day caused me to see two commercial offenses as disturbing, if not more so, than the “inappropriate lyric” commercials: The commercials that take an existing pop song and then re-write a few lyrics to match whatever it is they are selling. How can artists agree to sign over the rights to a song knowing that this is going to happen?? Granted, usually the artists are one-hit wonders and ripple sure can cost a lot these days, but do these people have any pride?
Example #1. (and if you can think of any more, please post them. A nice bottle of Shiraz caused me to only remember these two and that’s only because I wrote them down the second after I saw them).
Applebee’s is using Robert Palmer’s “Bad Case of Loving You” to hawk some special where you pick two things from the menu for the price of, well, two things from the menu. But, here’s where these Applebee dudes get clever. As the song is, with the lyric, “Doctor, doctor, give me the news. I’ve got a bad case of loving you”, it could have worked. Personally, I have never had to seek medical attention because of my infatuation with steak with chimichurri sauce and coconut shrimp, but hey, to each their own. Instead of leaving the song as is, however, Applebee’s gives it a little twist. Instead of “bad case of loving YOU”, the guy in the commercial (NOT Robert Palmer, natch), sings “I got a bad case of loving TWO.” Get it? Pick two menu items? Loving TWO? Now, that’s just piss poor. If this was a commercial featuring the Coors Light twins, I can almost understand this debauchery, but Applebee’s? Not to mention some of the song’s other lyrics are wildly inappropriate:
“I know you like it, you like it on top
Tell me mamma, are you gonna stop?”
Well, Applebee’s, if we are still talking about food here, I’d like it known that no, I don’t like it on top. Please put the sour cream for my baked potato on the side, thank you very much. And my waitress, “Mamma” her name must be, better stop with the crushed black pepper on my Caesar salad when I say to…I don’t need to be sneezing on my croutons.
The thing that really frosts my fanny about the whole thing too is how unabashedly obvious they are about the lyric they changed. Listen to the commercial. The fake Robert Palmer guy wants you to know that he isn’t singing “you”. He’s singing “TWO!!!!” And he’s taking credit for that re-write, he’ll have you know. It would be like me singing the national anthem before a Bruins game and starting it off, “O say can you see? By the dawn’s early POT ROAST!!!” And then stopping and looking around with a self-satisfied look on my face. “Hey, I know the tune’s a classic, but it needed a little updating. That ‘pot roast’ thing? That was ALL ME, baby. Next time I see this song in print, I want to read: Lyrics: F.S. Key, Dim.”
The other example I can remember is Kraft using EMF’s “Unbelievable” to pimp some crumbled cheese monstrosity that not only adds a nice flavor to your salad, but also will bind you up for the next 3-5 days. So, you ready for this one? Out of the whole song, they use merely two words. Granted, one is a contraction. But two words. And one is a Frankensteinian version of the title. And because of the rest of the song so has nothing do with crumbled Muenster bits, he sings these two words OVER and OVER again in the course of the commercial. And those two words are:
“You’re crumb-believable”.
I heard this and wretched and gagged like I just washed down my Applebee’s “Pick Two” with an Ipecac Margarita. First of all, what the flying fuck does “crumb-believable” actually mean? Did Kraft give this two seconds of thought? Did they think all consumers are suckers for crumb-believably bad puns? “You’re crumb-believable.” “Gee, thanks! You smell like popcorn.”
Is it a compliment to be crumb-believable? Or is the concept of their new product (which since the invention of cheese people have been able to do on their own using, uh, cheese and a fist) just so space-age that they had to bastardize the first 90s one-hit wonder song they could find that would cost them just a bottle of Maddog 20-20 and a Big Grab bag of Funyuns in order to herald this new marketing miracle?
I’m boycotting both Applebee’s and Kraft’s cheese balls because, god forbid, I order a cheeseburger at Applebee’s and the waitress, Mamma, comes out and puts some crumb-believable cheddar on it, I may just have to bludgeon someone to death with a ramekin while singing Tom Jones’ “The Young New Mexican Puppeteer”.
And no one wants that to happen.
-Dim.
posted by Dim at 11/28/2005 11:17:00 AM
4 Comments:
Holy crap...I saw the commercial for the "crumb-believable" thing and thought I was going to have to gouge my eyes out with a fork. How completely AWFUL. I so agree with you. The Applebee's jingles always bother me...every time they come out with a new product they need to market, they bastardize some song that probably wasn't great to begin with.
Crumb-believable really takes the cake, though. *shudder* Also, the product is pretty much crap. I can do that with a simple cheese implement or my fingers, thanks. I don't need to pay 3 times as much for them to do it for me.
We have a furniture store in the area called N.B. Liebman, and they used to have a jingle about how their furniture/prices were "N.B.-liebable". I thought that was pretty bad, too. The Crumbles just reminded me of that. :)
I have no idea what it is about local furniture stores that brings out the worst in advertising, but there are no fewer than 3 local-area furniture stores that advertise on the channel that shows all the sports games up here. Now, they don't have bad puns like "N.B.-lievable", which is gag-worthy, but they have awful and annoying catch-phrasers and the owners of these establishments feel the need to "star" in the ads. Awful!
That site is GREAT! Umm..."House of the Rising Sun" is about a brothel. I can see it being used for the Cottontail Ranch or something, but Gatorade?!
I wish I could remember when the very classic "She Blinded Me With Science" was used in a Kohl's commercial. I love that song, and the Rock Maven claims it was used in an ad.
I'm with Jenny on the car commercial guys from around here. I don't know why they seem to feel like they have to appear in their own ads. The one guy is SO skeevy, and he actually points at the screen! I don't like being pointed at, and it's certainly not going to make me want to go to Frederick, the Supermarket of Cars.
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