Weird And Creepy Or Truth In Advertising ......

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsgQw5EToE4

Using a Lou Reed song about heroin to sell a video game console? Kind of odd.

Or:

Video games are designed to be addictive and work on the same parts of the brain that substances like heroin or crack. Let's just be obvious and tell the truth about it.

C/S.
Rev J

 

While hiding it right in front of your eyes...

 

I know right? It's just kind of weird to me that they are using a song about heroin to sell video games. I guess in it's own way the commercial is kind of subversive.

C/S,
Rev J

 

I want heroin

 

video games and heroin are also a good combo

 

songs are art though


open to interpretation


they dont just hold value for the original artists meaning

 

They do. Its the reward loop that keeps you engaged.

 

Yeah it's called 'fun'. Fun is addictive. If I could do fun all day I would do nothing else. Video games wear off after a while though, lol

The advertising industry and others have been perverting and corrupting songs to their own purpose for a long time.

Look what they did to the Guthry tune "This land is your land" they left out the anti-property ownership lines.

And CCR's "Prodigal son" all chopped up to make it sound patriotic.

I don't like Lou Reed and I'm not familiar with the song but they probably chopped it up too.

 

i never realized that song was about heroin. it seems quite possible that the marketing company didn't realize it either.

 

That's the thing. It would seem to me that someone at the ad company would be young and hip enough to realize it. It's kind of funny to me hearing "Lust For Life" by Iggy Pop which was about going to score dope used to advertise Carnival Cruise Lines (although I'm sure Iggy is laughing all the way to the bank) or Sixpense None The Richer's cover of "There She Goes Again" by The Las (another heroin tune) used to advertise shit. If not the artist you'd imagine some parents watchdog group would say something. It's also funny to me that the rift between Jello Biafra and the rest of the Dead Kennedys was about Levis wanting to use "Holiday in Cambodia" in an ad. I'm not morally outraged just mildly amused.

C/S,
Rev J

 

Oop's! correction; CCR's "Fortunate son" not prodigal son, lol

 

"XXX is addictive!" scaremongering seems to be based around snobbery to a certain extent.

Things that are fun release endorphins in the brain which are pleasurable and can become something we feel really compelled to do. But you only ever hear them being described as "addicitive" if they're viewed as being kind of culturally illegitimate.

You tend not to hear: "he's addicted to literature" or "he's addicted to athletics" with anything like the same regularity. If its high-brow it's a legitimate and noble pursuit, if it's low-brow it's "addictive" and implicitly unhealthy.

I think they probably just chose the song because it of the way it sounds, having violent/action/war scenes juxtaposed with a kind of smooth, melancholy song produces an interesting effect. It' not the first time they've done it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wy8LRlS1SCc

Plus its ironic and subversive and all the other words advertising agencies have circled on whiteboards when pitching ideas.

 

^
Well put

Also true, and they don't have to. Especially not 2 or more decades after release/being a hit song. I recall a time when I nagged on such 'abuse' but really, isn't it great that an old song gets a new meaning or even when it blatantly gets recycled? Sure often it sucks ass in the ears of the people who listened to the original first or recall and mind the particular context of it, but we don't HAVE to like, listen or watch it right. The new(er) generations often listen to and use things differently, incl. older stuff. It's all up to the listener and it's all for the taking. Both consumers and the marketing business act on that. Is it atrocious? I'm not sure why.

In regards to the thread title and videogames

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZP8VRtFCxbc

I think it is just plain awesome!

 

As long as the rights to the intellectual property are obtained legally, people can do whatever they want with an artists creation. I might be disappointing if an original song I hold dear is used for some crass advertising or another, but it's not my business to hold it against anyone.

There is still some question of stuff thats in public domain here in the US that is not in some other European countrys though. Bartok's catalogue, to name one.

 

Here's a good example of a song being covered that has the meaning of some lyrics changed simply by the person who is singing it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_alGWFwxSiQ

All of a sudden the lyric "Cut me loose/From the noose" has a different connotation when sung by a black man.

The last time I checked the US Copyright Law extended 50 years after the original composer died. The interesting thing about this is that it makes the works of Charlie Parker public domain since he died in 1955 but leaves the works of Stravinsky protected since he died in 1975.

There was an interesting case about an Emerson, Lake, and Palmer tune that they called "The Barbarian" that was a piece by Bela Bartok. They recorded it and put it on an album. After the album came out Bartoks widow called them and worked out the details of their cover.

C/S,
Rev J

 

Well thats about all she could do, in hopes some justice would be done to her hubbys composition.
For all his greatness, Bela Bartok died penny-less and in poverty.
ELP should have given her some money anyway , just out of pure posterity

 

The demographic buying the game, how many of them you think give a shit about Lou Reed?

 

what's the demographic for the ps4? males?

 

They gave her the money. They just thought at the time that since Bartok was a classical composer that he was long dead. I read an interview where one of them said they thought it was like getting a call from Mrs. Beethoven.

C/S,
Rev J

 

On yeah. A whole marketing didn't realize it but we did..genius..NO...this is all planned, corrupting our minds.