What the @#$% is wrong with these people??

"These people", of course, being the ones who keep taking some of our favorite songs from the 1960's and 1970's and using them to sell products. I'm not saying that there is anything terribly sacrosanct about these songs, as some might believe; I just think that someone who knows all the words should be called in to consult now and again.

It's always a little off-putting, I think, to use music that we thought of as sort of defining of our generation and our times to sell a product, but I'm generally put off by advertising anyway. This is much more interesting. Don't these people even listen to the lyrics? Or do they just remember the titles or the hook lines? Consider Fly Like an Eagle (Steve Miller) being used to hype the US postal service. Superficially it sounds like a good enough idea - hey, eagle = US bird, fly + fast service! But do you remember the actual lyrics?

Feed the babies who don't have enough to eat
Shoe the children with no shoes on their feet
House the people living in the street....

Is this really what any US Government office wants us to think about?

How about using the Violent Femmes "Blister in ther Sun" to sell Wendy's hamburgers? I like Wendy's, personally, but is:

When I'm out walking I strut my stuff, yeah
I'm so strung out, I'm high as a kite...
.....staining my sheets....etc

really the sort of thing they want people associating with their food? And speaking of fast food hamburgers, just because cheese melts doesn't make Modern English's classic "I Melt with You" an appropriate ad choice. Cheese melts, yeah, but...what in the hell does this have to do with cheese:

Moving forward using all my breath, making love to you was never second best
I saw the world thrashing all around your face, never really knowing it was always
mesh and lace

So many examples...Circuit City, praising the glories of casual sex (The Cars, "Just What I Needed"); Chevrolet, apparently deciding that the days of strong and well built trucks are a thing of the past and pointing this up using Bob Seger's "Like a Rock"; what an interesting choice for Fidelity Mutual! (Bowie, ..."well, well, well, would you carry a razor in case, just in case of depression..." - Young American); does Hewlett Packard really want "Teenage Wastelnd" as their theme?; does anybody really want to be associated with "Horse With No Name" or the dreadful "Baby I'm -a Want You"?

More? Sure, we can go on and on: X Box using a song about the glories of LSD (Jefferson Airplane, White Rabbit); Saab deciding that their perfect corporate image is a "deaf, dumb and blind kid" who plays pinball...huh? (The Who, Pinball Wizard.) Yeah, we can go on and on.

So is there some reason why no one writes their own jingles any more? Are we supposed to be so captivated by simply recognizing the song that we, the buyer, instantly identify with the product? Sorry, but just knowing that Robert Plant and Jimmy Page and raking in the ol' royalties doesn't make me turn to my husband and say, "gee, honey, let's buy a Cadillac! Those are our people!"

I propose we compromise and hire Barry Manilow. His music may bore me to tears and his hair annoy me, but at least he can write a nice jingle - State Farm, Stridex and Band-Aids all use Manilow jingles, and if I had any more laptop battery left, I'm sure there are many more - he spent a long time in the "jingle jungle."

If the ad folks can't do that, though, maybe they could just hire someone to Google the lyrics before committing to using a particular song. Please. We're tearing our hair out up here on the Hill.