This is for Em. She of the "bad commercial uses of a popular song" contest. I have seen, now, three commercials that use a song that is totally (and in one case, mind-bogglingly) inappropriate. No, not inappropriate in the sense of "I Feel Good" being used for a commercial for laxatives (as it was, some years ago), but inappropriate in the "The Hell?" sense:

1. Lipton tea. "Little Bitty Pretty One" (originally, I think, by Thurston Harris) morphed into a Zen-like chant to promote the antioxidant and supposedly calming nature of their green tea. Uh-huh. A song about a guy trying to get a cute girl to pay him some attention used in a commercial where tea is being equated with Enlightenment.

2. The main riff from "House of the Rising Sun" (Ummm...The Animals?) in a Gatorade commercial. Specifically, a part of the commercial showing an Iron Man athlete "crashing out" in a tough race in Hawaii. Okay - a song about a guy who got hung up in a brothel in New Orleans, used to back a staggering, probably-electrolyte-deprived guy on the Kona Coast.

3. Dove's "Real Beauty" campaign showing thousands of women descending upon Washington DC, all wearing identical ugly blonde wigs, and then ripping them off and throwing them over their heads like graduating sailors do with their caps at Annapolis, all to the tune of "La Goulante de Pauvre Jean" (performed by many but I most closely associate it with Edith Piaf). The song, if my understanding of its rather argotty French lyrics is correct, is about a young man who turns to a life of crime because he's rejected by women.

I don't know if the advertisers are just using the "sample" mentality - that is, if it sounds good, take it and use it and don't worry about the prior associations - or if they're really so pop-culture-history illiterate that they hear a song in a movie, think "gee, that's a cool song, I could use it in my ad" and run with it. (or maybe they think WE'RE that illiterate. All I can say is, if I can see the bizarreness of these song usages and I can't successfully name all of the Rolling Stones, then there have got to be others out there scratching their heads). If that's the case, they're in a dangerous dangerous situation, because we may soon see an advertisement, for, say, Paxil overlaid with Billy Joel's "Pressure" or one for the Unitarian Church of America with REM's "Psychokiller" as its background music.

I was originally thinking of situation #1 as my example of a mind-bogglingly "the Hell?" combination of song and advert, but now that I look at all three of them, all three are pretty surreal, if you are familiar with the song in question.

Anyone else see examples of these? I have to admit I'm kind of tickled (well, sometimes) when a song that is APPROPRIATE is matched up with an ad. There's one for the hp photoprinters now (and how I love those ads, I sit there in absolute "how do they do that?" awe every time they come on) where some old mambo-ish Dean Martiny song about being "out of the picture" has been used.