This is an open letter to Darby Wheeler, Segment Producer on The New Music. Because we all know he's riveted to the rantings of a mad, music-loving, cool-obsessed lunatic. ;)

Anyways, if you don't know, The New Music is a show on Much Music that promotes/discusses/examines pop culture and the music it creates. On their website, in their archives, Wheeler wrote the following commentary. I don't really have a problem with the commentary... at least not overly.. It did however prompt me to think about my "favourite" songs over the past few years. It started with Apollo 440 - Can't Stop The Rock, and has progressed to Denizen Kane. In between those two songs, I've heard a multitude of artists that I already knew of being used in car commercials - Barenaked Ladies, Telepopmusik, Zero 7, Steppenwolf.

I'm torn between thinking that the use of these artists songs in commercials is a "sellout", or if an unforseeable outcome of using these songs is introducing music to people that normally would never listen to these artists because of pop culture stereotypes. For myself, there was a time that I refused to listen to dance music because it held no beat, and the lyrics never held much meaning. Then I saw the Mitsubishi car commercial playing Dirty Vegas' - Days Go By song. I had to have it. So I scoured the internet looking for information about the ad and the music that had been used. It turned out that Dirty Vegas had made two versions of the song, the mix and the acoustic. Very rarely can a techno song be sung acoustically and sound better than the regular version. I started watching commercials like mad, listening to all the music used to see if I could find the next Dirty Vegas, or Steppenwolf remix.

When I heard Telepopmusik's song Breathe being used in another car commercial, the minute I saw it my jaw dropped. It felt like some private part of me was now being exposed on television, and another part of me was happy that someone else recognized the talent that was in that song. It wasn't an especially prophetic song, but whenever I listened to it it put me into a nice mellow groove. And now I had to share it with the rest of the car commercial watching world. It was like that time in highschool I saw a bunch of grade 8's traipsing around school belting out Oasis' Wonderwall at the top of their lungs. I could never look at Oasis the same way again.

I would never have heard about Denizen Kane had it not been for a Honda commercial. I do have nagging thoughts though about the current state of music. Are people making music for the love of it, or are they looking for a hit that will make them some quick cash? Maybe that falls under the category of questions that will never have answers, I do know that I've stopped looking for messages in the music that I listen to. I've stopped hoping that some artist, any artist will have a relevant message that they are trying to get across in their songs. Was music only supposed to be entertainment? Is that all it will and should ever amount to? A catchy beat for 15 minutes, and then you move on? All I know is that there are tons of good bands out there. And a lot of them don't get the exposure that they deserve, and if by a slim chance they get a commercial deal, what's stopping them from taking it? Exposure opportunities are few and far between, as Wheeler indicates, maybe these artists are just trying to get their name out there. If you like a band enough, who cares how you heard of them? Unless you really do think that you'll be cooler for listening to them because of an ad. In that case, go out and buy a case of Milk Bone and Labatts while you're out, you'll need it, for all the good it'll do you. Milking a song for all it's worth in a commercial is pretty much akin to sucking the lifeblood out of Music, industry, artist, et al.

I know I get ranty, but I don't care :P

|

then / after