The other day while riding in the car and listening to Simon and Garfunkel, a friend of mine pointed out that she can’t listen to the song “Sound of Silence” without thinking of Will Ferrell sinking to the bottom of a pool in the movie “Old School.” This got me thinking that many popular songs are ruined when used in movies and television. An example of this would be the song “Who Are You” by The Who because it is, more often than not, related to the show “CSI” instead of being a huge hit of the band. I then thought about how commercials can take very popular songs and make them somewhat unappealing to me because I can’t listen to them without thinking of a cheesy advertisement. And sometimes I don’t want to buy the product because of the song that they use, such as “Intuition” by Jewel for the razor named Intuition; I can’t stand to listen to that song.
While driving with the little girl I baby-sit, the song “Dust in the Wind” came on the radio, and she made the observation that it was the song from some car commercial she saw and asked me why the radio would be playing a commercial song. She didn’t even think that it was a real song before the commercial came on television.
This proves that commercials are possibly killing the music. I think that the usage of popular songs for commercials is tainting the quality of the music to a certain extent. In one way, people hear the music and might want to download it or add it to their iPods. But on the other hand, people might see the commercials so much that it ruins the song for them, and they don’t want to hear it other than coming from the TV.
I have had both happen to me before, and it is sometimes good and sometimes bad. In the case of movies, it can be a very funny thing when you hear a song from a favorite movie. For example, the Tom Jones song “Help Yourself” will make me think of a scene from the movie “Anchorman” from now on.
It’s obvious that these advertising companies are using songs so that the tune will get stuck into the viewer’s head and make them want to buy the advertised product. I don’t think that I’ve heard a song on a commercial that made me want to go out and buy whatever it is they are selling, but I know that humor has actually had that affect on me. For some reason, when I see Diet Dr. Pepper commercials where candy and sweets are put in place of the soda, I want to go get one, and I don’t even really care for soft drinks. The Taco Bell commercial with the two lions is also humorous and makes me want to eat their food even though I’m normally not a big fan of it.
Humor is usually a key ingredient when making proper Super Bowl commercials, which are notably the crŠme de la crŠme of advertisements. So why not use humor in all other ads and cut out using music as much?