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Repurposed Pop Song
Charlie: Everyone's using old rock songs now. They're not gonna hire a guy like me to write a jingle for tampons when they can just play "Stuck in the Middle With You".
— Two And A Half Men

So there's this song from your youth. Whenever you listen to it, it brings back a whole lot of good memories, and you end up going through the rest of your day with a smile.

What better tune to use to advertise a product?

Advertising is all about appealing to emotion to make a sale, and few things hold more unalloyed positive emotion than a favorite song. It's not surprising that the advertising industry very quickly seized upon the idea of buying the rights to a song and using it in an ad. The basic argument is that the good feelings the viewer has for the song will be transferred at least in part to the product, making a new customer or reinforcing an existing one.

As virtually everyone will tell you, it doesn't always work. But that doesn't keep the agencies from trying again and again.

Repurposed Pop Songs come in several varieties:

  • Played straight. Usually the most expensive option. The agency bought the rights to the specific recording that everyone knows. It's used almost untouched except possibly for a bit of editing to make it fit the length of the commercial, or to get right away to the "good bits" (i.e., the part that has relevance to the commercial's pitch).
  • Cover version. The agency didn't buy (or couldn't afford) the rights to the actual recording, so instead they acquired the right to use the song itself and did their own version. Sometimes it's made as close to the original as possible; sometimes it's wildly different.
  • Product-specific lyrics. An extension of the "Cover Version". The song's lyrics are rewritten to extol the virtues of the product. This can have the biggest backlash if potential customers feel the original song is somehow "cheapened" or "ruined", so this treatment is often reserved for older or more obscure music.

An agency with an especially low budget (or high concept) might also do any of the above with a song from the public domain, up to and including nursery rhymes. This has much the same effect, but with fewer lawyers and a lot less money involved.

A song can also be instantly repurposed if an advertiser buys the rights before it's even released. In such cases the commercial use hits the airwaves at the same time as the original song, or sometimes before, and effectively turns it into a Celebrity Endorsement.

Repurposing a pop song can have a Broken Aesop effect if the message of the song is subtler than you'd get by listening to the loudest parts of the lyrics. For example, there is a movement to make Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run" the official state song of New Jersey, despite the fact that it's about how terrible it is to live in New Jersey and how much the songwriter wanted to leave. (See Isnt It Ironic.) Seth Stevenson has written two articles for Slate about this.

Contrast with Top Ten Jingle.

Examples:

  • The Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations" used for Sunkist orange soda.
    • And in Australia, used as the advertising jingle for The Good Guys ("come in and see the / good good good / guuuuuys!")
      • The Good Guys apparently proved, if you stick with the same product (or in this case, store) specific lyrics for long enough, it will eventually work.
  • Sheryl Crow's "Every Day Is A Winding Road" for the Subaru Impreza.
  • Microsoft may as well hold the record for Completely Missing The Point:
    • The Rolling Stones' "Start Me Up" for Microsoft Windows 95. (Note the Broken Aesop variant here; the next line to the song, not appearing in the commercial itself, is "You make a grown man cry." Another line not used is "I can't compete", which some snarkier types have found quite amusing in light of Microsoft's apparent monopolistic ambitions, coupled with notorious quality control problems (especially in the area of security).
      • They actually tried to buy R.E.M.'s "It's the End of the World as We Know It" which would have probably been even worse; however the band turned them down.
    • The portion of Mozart's "Requiem" that talks about the souls of the damned.
    • Also, a viral ad for Microsoft's Origami platform contained Regina Spektor's "Us", omitting the line "We're living in a den of thieves".
      • The song appears to be about living in a crumbling, decadent, totalitarian empire. Take your pick whether it's the Soviet Union or Microsoft.
    • One ad for Microsoft Office XP used Red Rider's "Lunatic Fringe". No, really. Needless to say, the commercial ends before the lyrics start up...
  • Adverts for Philips electronics have used The Beatles' "Getting Better" with another Broken Aesop (the next line is "can't get much worse").
  • You want Completely Missing The Point: imagine Bob Dylan's counterculture anthem "The Times They Are A-Changin'" used to promote a bank. The Bank of Montreal thought it worked.
  • In late Spring 2006, Hampton Inns ran a commercial featuring a rewrite of "Wouldn't It Be Loverly" from My Fair Lady.
  • Bananarama's cover of Shocking Blue's "Venus" for Gilette's Venus razors.
  • The Orb's "Little Fluffy Clouds" for the New Volkswagen Beetle commercials.
  • Trio's "Da Da Da" for the Volkswagen Golf.
    • A version of "Da Da Da" with rewritten lyrics was also used to advertise Ariston domestic appliances in the UK during the mid-80s.
  • In 2001, progressive rock fans were surprised to recognize a fragment of Jethro Tull's "Thick as a Brick" used in a Hyundai ad.
  • At some point in the 1960s, McDonald's applied product-specific lyrics to the old gospel tune "Down By The Riverside": "McDonald's is your kind of place..."
    • In the 1980s, they used "Mack the Knife" with product-specific lyrics.
  • In 1984, Elton John released the single "Sad Songs (Say So Much)" and simultaneously licensed it in a product-specific form to hawk Sasson Jeans by way of the Mondegreen "Sasson (Says So Much)". Worse yet, the video for the song and the commercial were all but identical except for length and that one line.
  • In 1989, Pepsi-Cola paid $5 million to use Madonna's single "Like A Prayer" in a commercial, but the soft drink company chickened out after protests by religious groups in the wake of the song's video release.
    • A video that, for anyone that doesn't know, includes burning crosses, stigmata, and Madonna having sex with Black Jesus. Mmm, Pepsi.
  • Glad advertised its plastic wrap for a couple of years using Billy Strayhorn's "It Don't Mean A Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)" rewritten to "It Don't Mean A Thing (If It Ain't Got That Cling)".
  • More recently (2007), Grolsch beer has licensed "It Don't Mean A Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)" for use in its ads for a lager sold in beugel bottles that have a swing-top cap.
  • A non-commercial version of the Broken Aesop effect can be found in the "Kidz Bop" CDs. These take songs that are popular on the radio and re-record them with children doing the lyrics; presumably because some studio executive feared that Avril Lavigne may have been too hard-edged for children on her own. However, the actual content of said lyrics is almost entirely unchanged, resulting in songs about sex, drugs, suicide, and misogyny (among other things) being marketed toward kids. Chris Rywalt has pointed this out.
  • The Dandy Warhol's song Bohemian Like You was used for a Pontiac car commercial. The first line makes sense, "you got a great car", but fans of the group were singing the next line, "yeah, what's wrong with it today".
  • For years, Chevrolet used Bob Seger's "Like A Rock" for its line of trucks. It recently switched to ridiculously Eagleland-ish commercials with John Mellencamp's "Our Country" (despite Mellencamp's criticism of Seger for "selling out"). And, after years of it seeming a natural fit, Chevy has picked up "American Pie" — or part of the chorus, at least — for its car ads. Something about that Chevy at the levee...
    • A competing pickup truck ad called GM on the carpet for that. Its ad was a ballad about their truck coming across a broken-down Chevrolet truck and rescuing it. The end of the ballad is "It's some kinda rock, all right."
  • A positively painful Broken Aesop from years ago: "The City of New Orleans", about the death of the railroad industry, being used as a car commercial.
    • As a railroad fan, this troper doesn't know whether to laugh or cry.
  • "Lust for Life" by Iggy Pop is a rather harsh, cynical song about drug abuse and selling ones' soul to the music industry. So naturally, it's been used as a jingle by everything from cruise lines to banks. Do the advertisers even listen to these songs before using them?
  • According to an Urban Legend that circulated in the mid to late 1980s, the re-election campaign for Ronald Reagan had originally wanted John Cougar Mellencamp's 'Pink Houses' as a campaign theme, apparently unaware of the actual meaning of the song. The response from Mellencamp — who is known for his radical politics (some versions of the legend even claim he is a Wobblie) — was supposedly rather colorful. Regardless of how much or how little truth there is to the UL, it reflects the way advertising campaigns often pick theme songs based on the tone and a few well-known lines without considering the actual message of the song as a whole. Another legend reputes that Reagan had also considered using Robert Johnson's "Crossroads" — a song about selling your soul to the Devil.
    • According to yet another legend, the Reagan campaign wanted to use Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A.", despite it having a line that says "Sent me off to Vietnam | To go and kill the yellow man".
  • In 2006 Garnier Fructis began using "Diamonds and Guns" by the Transplants in their ads. Because a song with the lyrics "Heroin, heroin, its all gone, Smoked it all up, and now you got none" immediately makes one think "shampoo!"
    • Not to mention that the main theme of the song is about the selling of blood diamonds, as the title clearly indicates. Did Garnier's ad agency even look at the title?
  • Similar to the Reagan examples, the YMCA and U.S. Navy considered using the Village People's "Y.M.C.A." and "In The Navy", respectively, but caught on to the fact that the songs celebrated homosexuality before they actually started using them.
    • This whole business continues today; this troper has heard oh so many people who are convinced that "the gays stole "Y.M.C.A.". Also an example of Idiot Ball, suppose.
    • The song was actually used in promotional advertising for the United States Navy for a short time — as part of the deal, the music video was shot on a Navy frigate. The song was dropped from advertising because of protests over using taxpayer money to assist in the production of a then-controversial video.
  • General Electric's short-lived ad campaign promoting coal usage used "Sixteen Tons" by Tennessee Ernie Ford, apparently oblivious to the fact that the song is about wage slavery.
  • Viagra's rework of Elvis Presley's "Viva Las Vegas" into "Viva Viagra". Elvis Presley and Viagra.
    • "Viva Las Vegas" means "Long Live Las Vegas" (though it likely could be translated further). So "Viva Viagra" means "long live Viagra." Pfizer knows what it's doing.
    • No, actually, "viva" doesn't mean "long live"; it just means "live". Live, Viagra. LIVE!
  • A current Pontiac ad campaign uses a cover version of Badfinger's "Come and Get It" — a parody of materialism written for the film The Magic Christian — to sell luxury sports cars.
    • That alone would be bad enough, but this troper's seen the movie, and one of the early scenes has the Eccentric Millionaire protagonist presenting to his car company's board of directors the concept for an absurdly huge luxury car. Its reason for being is essentially to show off how wealthy, powerful, and British its owner is.
  • Craig David's "What's Your Flava" — a booty-call referring to the ladies as candy and ice-cream flavors — used to sell Popeye's fried chicken, of all things.
  • Didijin and Minelli, two Venezuelan jeans companies, used a lot of covers of popular songs for their TV commercials, with lyrics changed to talk about how good their jeans looked.
  • Target is using "Hello Goodbye" in its ads — and they carefully changed the spelling to put on the screen "Hello Goodbuy."
    • Only the chorus and the "hey la"s. Any more, and we would still get hints of what this song is really about: the failure to connect. Target isn't trying to be touchy-feely, but you can only go so far...
  • There are the infamous Nike ads using "Revolution."
  • And there are the "All You Need Is Luvs" ads, which ought to be infamous Killed With Fire.
  • This.
  • The Buzzcocks' "What Do I Get?" was, weirdly enough, used in a Toyota SUV commercial. By reducing the song to its chorus of "what do I get/oh oh, what do I get" (the answer presumably being extra cup holders and plenty of cargo space), it omitted the song's whole unrequited-love theme, not to mention the fatalistic closing lyrics:
    What do I get
    Nothing that's nice
    What do I get
    nothing at all at all at all at all at all at all at all
    'cos I don't get you.
  • Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Fortunate Son" being used to sell Wrangler jeans. They only used the first two lyrics (about waving the flag, being red white and blue), ignoring the rest of the song, which is about how politicians got their children out of Vietnam. Intentional in this case; Saul Zaentz, the producer who owns most of CCR's catalogue and who has been engaged in a feud with John Fogarty for some years (he once — unsuccessfully — sued Fogarty for plagiarizing himself, in that his solo songs sounded too much like Creedence tunes,) sold the song to Wrangler to get Fogarty's goat.
  • The NFL advertised the competitive nature of their sport by using Edwin Starr's "War" to promote the league. However, they were careful about it in that they simply repeated the "War" portion of the song while stopping short of the "What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!" portion.
  • A recent cell phone commercial has Meat Loaf singing Paradise by the Dashboard Light with different, cell-phone related, lyrics. This on its own is peculiar, considering the Anti Love Song nature of the song itself. The fact that he's singing it to his son...
    • Wait, what?!
      • It's okay, AT&T didn't use the "waiting till the end of time" part, only the negotiation. This time it's over cell phones, not sex...
  • A more recent Meat Loaf single, I'd do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That) was used humorously for a Dr. Pepper commercial in which a man does increasingly unmanly things to please his girlfriend as the lyrics play. She tries to take a drink of his Dr. Pepper just as the chorus begins. And he leaves her.
  • Most shocking example, for this troper: Hearing the hook for Of Montreal's "Wraith Pinned to the Mist (and Other Games)" rewritten for an Outback Steakhouse commercial ("Let's get Outback tonight"). Convincingly, too — it made it sound like their quirky indie hit had always been a commercial jingle.
    • You mean, that song isn't called "Let's Go Outback Tonight"?
  • In this strip from Dinosaur Comics, T-rex opines on product-specific lyrics.
  • In a weird example, Venezuelan folk singer and composer Simón Díaz (the old man who composed Caballo Viejo) is openly opposed to the use of his famous songs (not even in covers) in commercials. Instead, he offers to compose and sing songs specially suited for the campaign or the product. Not your typical jingle, I can assure you.
  • They Might Be Giants sort of took this route when they produced several short jingles for Dunkin Donuts. This troper doesn't recall if they ever actually mentioned what was being advertised (the announcer — John Goodman — would fill that in after the little song). But the songs were pretty funny, so it at least fit their style.
    • In a more straight use of this trope, commercials for the second Geometry Wars game used a cover version of "Particle Man" to promote it.
  • If ever there was a song begging to be used in a cell phone commercial, it's the Who's Goin' Mobile. To this editor's knowledge it has not in fact been used in one yet, but it's only a matter of time. A 2008 ad for Fox's Seattle affiliate uses it to promote a service that sends you news headlines by text message, which is pretty close.
  • In 1968, Jim Morrison vetoed a request from Buick, which the other members of the Doors approved of, to use the song "Light My Fire" in a commercial. In a bit of self-parody over the affray, when Robbie Krieger penned the song "Touch Me" later that year, he ended it with the four-note Sting from an Ajax commercial popular at the time, and the final lyrics are Ajax's then-slogan, "Stronger Than Dirt".
  • Samsung recently used the song "Signal in the Sky" in an ad for one of their phones. This makes the ad painfully hard to take seriously if you know the song, as it's about The Powerpuff Girls.
  • Toyota rewrote "Mambo No.5" to describe all the improvements to the new Corolla. Personally think the song's better this way.
    • "Mambo No.5" was also used as bumper music at the 2000 Democratic National Convention, the same night as then-outgoing President Clinton's speech. "A little bit of Monica..." is probably not what they wanted voters thinking about that fall.
  • Applebee's once rewrote "Bread and Butter" to feature products it had on special. This was shortly before the chain changed hands...
  • Tom Waits, who was notoriously anti-commercial in his early years, was saddled with a combination of the second and third variety of Repurposed Pop Song when a company completely rewrote the lyrics to his song "Step Right Up" (itself a parody of hucksterish commercialism) to sell their product. Waits refused to endorse the (re-written) song, the product, or consent to the use of the melody. So the company hired a convincing sound-a-like to sing the repurposed lyrics. Waits heard the jingle on the radio and spent some time calling everyone he knew in order to refute he had anything to do with it. All this to sell...Cheetos.
    • A later use of a Waits song (in a Levi's ad) was made even more painful because the sound alike hired was Screamin' Jay Hawkins, one of Waits's biggest influences.
    • He still is notoriously anti-commercial. He sued both these companies. And WON. That's why you don't mess with Tom motherfuckin Waits.
  • German internet service provider T-Online has set a huge TV commercial campaign to the tune of the Rolling Stones' "Paint it Black". The commercials highlight the wonderful advantages of having the world at your fingertips via broadband internet. The song highlights.. a horrible case of severe depression.
  • A Pringles commercial which ran up until just a few years ago had a repurposed version of "I Want Candy", replacing "Candy" with "Pringles".
  • Repurposed Country of 1 & 3 variety: Alan Jackson rewrote "The Mercury Blues" about buying, instead, a Ford Truck. Ironies abound.
  • GM used Smash Mouth's Walkin' on the Sun to advertise summer sales on some of their models from 2001 to about 2004/05. Because that song is well known for its relevance to car salesmen.
    • Not to mention that the song is supposedly about Generation X's disillusionment with the hippie movement becoming commercialized. So Yeah.
  • Crystal Light single-serving packets used a rather poor remake of "Shake Your Booty," which instead sung "Shake Your Bottle."
  • In Australia, Kellogg's Sultana Bran repurposed Heard It On The Grape Vine to It's sultanas from the grape vine/That makes Sultana Bran taste so fine!
  • Apparently a hemorrhoid treatment product (troper thinks it's Preparation H) pulled a Too Soon by trying to buy the rights to Johnny Cash's "Ring Of Fire" shortly after he died. Naturally, no one was amused.
    • What do you mean Too Soon? The song had been used for hemorrhoid commercials for years. Heck, people thought the original meaning of the song was about hemorrhoids — talk about The Cover Changes The Meaning (or Completely Missing The Point, perhaps?) Although it did fall out of use in hemorrhoid commercials for years (perhaps because of Johnny Cash, who understandably hated the association), so Preparation H either was using it Too Soon, or just wanted to snub Cash before his body even went cold.
  • George Harrison's (or, for more casual fans, The Beatles') "Taxman" was used by H&R Block despite being because it's a virulent anti-tax song. (H&R Block is the biggest tax preparing corp. in America, and it's supposed to help its customers pay less to the IRS.)
  • Kahlua? Nice stuff, but "Brown Sugar" did not help in selling it, since the song was about white slave owners having sex with black slave women. Classy.
    • Pepsi used "Brown Sugar" at some point in the 90's as well. In this case, it was sung by a CGI ant (or was it a fly?)
  • This troper knows couples who've played "My Happiness" by Powderfinger at their weddings.
    • This troper once went to a wedding where the bridal dance was "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling." (The couple lived happily ever after, though.)
  • Don't even remember what the commercial was for, but it involved coffee and The Eye of the Tiger: "He knows that one day he just may beCOOOOOOME — supervisor!"
  • In Australia, "Bend Me, Shake Me" by Amen Corner is used to advertise — of all things — Bega cheese sticks.
  • The Six Flags commercials featuring "Mr. Six" used the instrumental (though not the lyrics, since they couldn't get the rights) from "We Like to Party" by the Vengaboys.
  • Hampton Inn has a new commercial featuring part of "With a Little Help From My Friends" — The line "get high with a little help from my friends" is not included.
    • It had previously been repurposed with the same altered lyrics by either K-Mart or Target for store-brand children's summer clothing and poolwear. At least they had the "decency" to hack it to bits in order to remove any references to drugs or relationships.
  • Kids from the 80's remember the song "So Happy Together" less by the Turtles and more by whoever was trying to sell us Golden Grahams.
  • Velveeta, advertising specifically their "shells and cheese" recipe repurposed The Four Tops' "It's the Same Old Song" into "It's Not the Same Old Side." Their jingles often repurpose other well known tunes.
    • They went a little further than usual, though, by getting a reasonable facsimile of The Four Tops to appear and perform the jingle onscreen.
  • This troper recently saw a car ad — no idea what for, she got Distracted By The Shiny — that took the countdown sequence from Space Oddity, which is often taken to be about drugs or how tech isn't what it was promised, to illustrate the thrilling technology involved with starting the car up.
    • That should be Infiniti. They stop right after "you've really made the grade" — right before the song would've gotten going.
      • Apparently the song's also taken to be about astronaut suicide... yikes. Apparently (I actually found it this time) it's for Ford. Kind of a pity, I think I like this cover. Even more melancholy than the original!
      • I always took the song to be about equipment failure (you know, like with Apollo 13? Only more fatal?), which is really not something you'd want to use to advertise a car.
  • "No Milk Today" by Herman's Hermits has been used for a widely-spread ad for the main dairy company in Norway, Tine Melk. Very funny, actually.
  • The Obama campaign used "The Rising" by Bruce Springsteen as a victory/rally commencement song. It's a rather depressing song about a firefighter climbing the doomed Twin Towers, and just happens to have a an upbeat chorus contrasting increasingly dire verses. Oddly enough, Springsteen endorsed Obama and played the song live a few times for his events.
    • You have to be joking. What could possibly be more patriotic, more American, more Type One Eagleland, than risking your life to save the victims of 9/11? If anything, more politicians should use it.
    • Not to be outdone, the McCain/Palin campaign got Hank Williams Jr. to re-do his song "Family Tradition" into "McCain/Palin Tradition". Wait, guess they actually were outdone there.
      • Says you. I'd take Bocephus over that preachy, overrated sucker any day, politics be damned.
  • Skyline Chili aired a long-running radio commercial using a rewritten version of "Twilight Time." "It's Skyline time" remained a catchphrase even after the advertisements switched to another song.
  • A denture adhesive (Sea Bond?) advertises with an upbeat version of "Bye Bye Love," sung gleefully (and painfully out of key) by three older women as "Bye bye paste!" This troper fell in love with the original song (about sadness at a breakup) at first hearing, and so has been disgusted with this ad since realizing the connection.
  • There is a Benylin cough-medicine ad featuring the chorus of the Clash's "Should I Stay Or Should I Go". Its context? Should the woman stay at home, or go to work?
  • The Goodies` theme song Goody Goody Yum Yum was used to advertise wine gums, the lyrics altered to Goody Goody Yum Gums.
  • Nena's "99 Red Balloons" appeared in a jewelry commercial a few years ago. Nothing makes me want to buy fake diamonds like the threat of nuclear holocaust.
  • In another example of Completely Missing The Point, Apple's latest iPhone commercials feature The Submarines' ''You, Me, and the Bourgeoise''. The song is about the emptiness of commercialism and how we should focus more on love and less on stuff. Of course, Apple may be fully aware and just thumbing its nose at us.
  • Devo re-recorded their own "Whip It" with product-specific lyrics for a Swiffer ad. Member Gerald Casale later expressed regret about having done so, but this was less because of any sense of cheapening the song and more because he found the ad itself "aesthetically offensive".
  • Disney caused a controversy by using Third Eye Blind's "Semi-Charmed Life" in a trailer for The Tigger Movie, despite not actually using the lyrics about drugs and sex.
  • The trailers for Flubber used the song KC And The Sunshine Band's "Get Down Tonight" with the lyrics changed to "Goo a little dance/make a little flub/get down tonight". So Yeah...
  • The TV spots for Bicentennial Man used Hot Chocolate's "You Sexy Thing". Or at least the "I believe in miracles" part. Did I mention the film was being marketed as a comedy?
    • The same song was used for either a Pantene or Garnier commercial some years ago.
  • A 1982 7Up commercial used the last example in basically reworking Kim Carnes' "Bette Davis Eyes" for the soft drink (which also worked in a Pacman parody)
  • Frank Mills' Easy Listening hit, "Music Box Dancer" has been used in many a ice cream truck ever since it hit the billboard charts in the late 1970's
  • One car company chose to advertise its work with the New Radicals' You Get What You Give, which is predominantly about refusing to surrender (and also states a willingness to kick celebrities' asses...really). How this is related to cars, Vecna only knows.
  • Visa Check Card commercials are particular offenders, using Raymond Scott's Powerhouse to invoke a factory floor, and (horrifyingly) using the theme from Brazil to remind us of a dystopian paperwork-filled nightmare, apparently. It seems so apt that it's almost impossible to chalk up to coincidence.
  • The NFL briefly used Morrissey's "Every Day is Like Sunday" in an advert -a song about how living in a resort town out of season can be so borring you'd welcome an atomic explosion just for a change of pace.
  • Toyota advertised 0% financing with a particularly terrible cover of The Fixx's "Saved by Zero", ignoring the song's "you can't fall from the floor" message.
  • In 1971, Melanie Safka wrote the song "Look What They Done to My Song, Ma", about this very trope and how much it sucks to write a song that mean something to you, and then, having someone taking that song and turning it into something completely unrelated. So, obviously, in the 1980s the Quaker Oats Company used a version of that song in their commercials for Instant Oatmeal, with the revised lyrics "Look what they've done to my oatmeal".
  • Little Eva's "The Locomotion" was rewritten for a 1980s UK ad for petrol (gas).... the "Shell promotion", obviously. Sadly, that was this troper's first exposure to the song.
    • In a similar "60s songs bastardised for 80s tat" vein, a KP Choc Dips ad turned "Cool Jerk" into "Do the Dip", complete with mid-60s-style studio. Again, first time this troper had heard the song.
      • And Cool Whip used the very same song in the US, turning it into "Do the Cool Whip." Still uses it, in fact.
  • Does it count if the band in question was in on the deal, and shot the commercial (complete with matchy crew member uniforms)? If so, then the 2000 Burger King commercial featuring the Backstreet Boys singing a rehashed version of their hit "I Want It That Way" (which ended with Burger King's "Have it your way" slogan) should totally be here. (Though, granted, Burger King was sponsoring the band's 2000 tour...)
    • Sir Mix-a-Lot did a jaw-dropping remake of "Baby Got Back"— with a Spongebob Squarepants (!!) theme— for BK in early 2009. The long version of the commercial is here.
  • Home Quarters Warehouse used a (slightly) product-specific reworking of "Rescue Me" by Fontella Bass. It worked well enough that this troper can't help mentally adding "HQ to the rescue" to the refrain whenever he hears the song, despite the fact that the chain went out of business in 1999.
  • A 2004 ad campaign for Coke's short-lived "C2" used Queen's I Want To Break Free, a song about coming out of the closet to one's family, as its jingle.
    • I thought the song was about leaving an unfaithful lover, but still, the song is inappropriate.
  • A year or two ago, GE used Donovan's "Catch the Wind" in a commercial describing their use of wind power — a bit ironic considering that the singer uses the phrase "I may as well try and catch the wind" to describe how useless his efforts to woo someone are.
  • Sometime in the early 1990s, Domino's Pizza ran ads for their buffalo wings which turned the chorus of "We Will Rock You" into "Gotta be, gotta be Domino's (Buffalo Wings)".
  • A cruise company whose name This Troper cannot remember ran some ads using "Ain't we got fun?" The cruise changed some lyrics so it said "Look how much fun we're having!" instead of "Life sucks but we can still have fun."
  • "Look what they've done to my oat bran." The original words were "look what they've done to my song." Ironic.
  • The first several times this troper heard "I Got You" by James Brown was in the early 90s commercials for Senokot (a laxative). It wasn't until Brown's guest appearance on The Simpsons when I realized the song wasn't just written for the commercial.
  • The Michael Jackson Pepsi commercial with "Billie Jean."
  • The Discovery Channel's "The World is Just Awesome" ads are built on a Repurposed Traditional Song.
  • Recent Cialis ads have been using a cover version of "Be My Baby".
  • A current commercial for the 2010 Lincoln MKS features a techno cover of Burnin' For You, by Blue Oyster Cult, with a female vocalist, and I think I just died a little inside from typing that.
  • Parodied by The Onion in the article 'song about heroin used to advertise bank'.
  • "I Melt With You" in any commercial involving melted food products.
  • This troper couldn't help but cringe when Boston Pizza recently began running a series of TV ads featuring repurposed versions of Yello's "Oh Yeah". As if the original song wasn't goofy enough already...
  • Chrysler used the (very recognizable) hook from Hum's "Stars," a song about a nervous breakdown (best I can tell).
  • Some years back, an ad for feminine products used "There She Goes" by the La's. Nice peppy little tune, superficially sounding in favor of an active woman. Except the next line is "racing through my brain", and the song is purported to be about heroin.
  • In 2006, Kraft used EMF's "You're Unbelievable" in a series of ads where the lyrics had been changed to be all about... Kraft Cheese Crumbles. (seriously). This silliness of this was later lampooned on The Colbert Report with a special report called American Pop Culture: It's Crumbelievable.
  • Not only is this phenomenon not limited to America, but even video game music isn't safe from this trope, as proved by this commercial which uses the Bubble Bobble of all things to advertise for Samyang Ramen. Here's proof that Taito liscensed the song. At least the song never had lyrics to begin with.
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