What is it with ad agencies and their music selections? Major League Baseball is apparently playing catch up with the NFL when it comes to worst song to grab a line from and represent their product. While the NFL likened their game to the apocalypse (although a nice one as only Morissey can), MLB has chosen to give us the warm fuzzies of being executed. I have seen the ad on the MLB channel and they have just enough time to use "...and touch the green, green grass of home." A nice enough line on it's own, but of course there is a context. The song's narrator is singing about being buried back home after being executed. The only version I have ever heard was by Johnny Cash, Im sure there are others.


Green, Green Grass Of Home - Johnny Cash

As unfortunate as that choice may be, it doesn't really compete with this next one as far as sheer uncomfortableness goes. Sir Mix A-Lot's "I Like Big Butts" is of course a classic. On it's own, it is a rather forthright ode to his favorite attribute on a woman. Burger King has tied this classic in with a spongebob square pants promotion. I don't know if it's the women dancing with square butts that is so disturbing, or the use of a very adult theme tied in with a kids character, but the result is unwatchable. BK isn't doing anything to make me want to come to their restaurant.

What is it with ad agencies and odd/inappropriate songs for their ads? I've talked about "Every Day is Like Sunday" for the NFL network before, but there are a couple of new ones making the rounds...

A car company (Lincoln?) is using a cover of "Space Oddity" by Bowie in it's commercial. Huh? Yeah, they lead up to the line "... you've really made the grade..." but they conveniently leave out the critique of that "success" by not asking "...and the papers want to know whose shirts you wear..." Oh, and of course the elephant in the commercial is the obvious drug content. The protagonist, Major Tom, goes up in a spaceship, is amazed, and never comes back. The song is transparently about drug use. Bowie himself sums up the song (his first hit) in his later song, "Ashes to Ashes"

Ashes to ashes, funk to funky
We know major toms a junkie
Strung out in heavens high
Hitting an all-time low

The other ad that jumped out at me is an HP one using Joan Jett's ode to horniness "Do ya want to touch me?" The commercial is touting the new touch screen computer, the song is about getting to third base. The images show a finger(!) doing all sorts of things on the display. In the meantime, the song is giving this message"

"Do you wanna touch (Yeah)
Do you wanna touch (Yeah)
Do you wanna touch me there, where?
Do you wanna touch (Yeah)
Do you wanna touch (Yeah)
Do you wanna touch me there? Where?
There? Yeah!

YEAH, OH YEAH, OH YEAH"

Don't get me wrong, I love the song, it even brings up happy memories (ahem), but it does seem a little inappropriate to me. I have a feeling that the people at HP are trying to be "edgy." I dunno, it seems a bit much to me...

... except that he's not dead of course. The NFL network is now using "Every Day is Like Sunday" for their ad. The title makes sense for them, but like so many other examples of this kind of ad, the rest of the song doesn't.

The song is, IMO, the best apocalypse song of all time. The great thing about the song is that he wants the world to end. C'mon, only the Moz could get away with that. In the song, he says, "Every day is like Sunday, every day is silent and gray..." Not exactly what the NFL is looking for. Funnily enough they don't have him sing the song. The NFL has revamped the song giving it a little more, um, testicularity and a little country twang. When you think of singers with the NFL Hank Williams Jr., sure. The Moz, not so much...

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