Do Ad Agencies Even Listen To The Songs They Choose For Car Commercials These Days?

One of my new favorites - Local hospital using feelgood song of the year to sell its bedside manner: Street Hassle. Maybe if they were promoting their rehab program it'd make sense ...

Hey, that cunts not breathing
I think shes had too much
Of something or other, hey, man, you know what I mean

I think the real point is that cruises are the new heroin.

Ah, I thought someone might have mentioned the Pogues song in the Cadillac ad aired during the Oscars last night. "Heart full of hate and a lust for vomit" seems fitting for an SUV filled with upper middle class gits though.

Ohh, it's gone all 'typing'...

Well, since they used The Stooges' "No Fun" to advertise CBeebies, nothing and that means nothing is that surprising anymore...

If I hear another mobile phone advert soundtracked by some freakfolk bullshit, I'm going to cry.

The thing a lot of folks miss is that the ad execs in question aren't really using these songs. Not in the way that you, the hyperliterate music fan imagines. They're often just using a few moments of sound in order to create a mood.

Sure, it's possible that someone is nicking "Heroin" in order to explicitly invoke the drug reference, associating the product with indulgent depravity. But it's much more likely that they're using the associative qualties of a brief fragment to speak to a large audience that doesn't even know the song.

Hip, semi-obscure songs are usually chosen because they're unfamilar (thus cheap, and not cross-branded in the "average consumer's mind"), and because they're evocative. While most people might not want to hear the whole thing as pop entertainment, a moment or two of almost any noise can be quite striking, in the proper context.

Ohh, it's gone all 'typing'...

This, at last, is Lord Custos's legacy.