In the future you might say to your friend, "Wow, do you remember when this song came out?! It was the summer Nike's Titanium Air-Splint Max Torque Silicon Return Q Factor high tops came out! Those shoes were pretty comfortable but that commercial rocked!” – Doak Calloway
“Should I Stay Or Should I Go" is [a] Smirnoff Ice jingle (Jesus!). In a related topic, "Rudy, A Message To You" is also [a] Pampers jingle. What's next, The Replacements "Can't Hardly Wait" as the new E.P.T. stick pregnancy test? - G.R. Jones
…I'm sure Fogerty never envisioned his Vietnam-era protest song [“Fortunate Son”] to sell pants to kids that were born post-Vietnam… – Leo Susana
Like the "5" readers above, quite a few of you have, over the years, echoed our distaste for artists dealing with corporate sponsorship or doling out their songs to Madison Ave. Well, brace yourselves for this:
The Register:
Brand Sponsors - The Most Worrying Trend in MusicSmells like Doritos™
Sponsorship by corporate brands will replace the disappearing record label, Avril Lavigne's manager Terry McBride told us one soggy summer day last year.
"We'll have Dorito™-sponsored bands. They'll come to an artist with a $5m ad budget, and they will say will add x money to your business, but we want something for that." Recorded music would be "an upsell technique" to sell you something else - like a T-shirt.
A few months later, Avril Lavigne left to get a new manager. Perhaps it's a coincidence, or perhaps she wasn't inspired by Terry's Doritos™-centric vision of the future. Chris Castle calls the dependence on advertising and sponsorship the most worrying trend in music.
"I can't see this new music business producing another Bob Dylan - or anyone like that who openly defies corporatization," he told us gloomily last year.
Well, a music business dictated by a guy marketing deodorant gets nearer every day. Announcing its results last week, EMI said it was switching its focus away from the CD, where sales are falling, and focussing on brand advertising "partnerships" and sync licensing deals.
The days of The Black Crowes getting kicked off the opening slot of a beer-sponsored ZZ Top tour, over discomfort with corporate sponsorship, are long over, kids. Simple as that.
