There’s a really dreadful commercial on US telly at the moment for M&Ms. But it uses one of my favourite songs of all time – ‘This Is The Day’ by The The.

It didn’t make me want to buy any more sweets. Nor did it make me love the song any less.

In fact, I hope that Matt Johnston made a killing out of it, and if the outcome is also that few more hundred folk go out and buy some old The The CDs (in shops or on the net), its a double result.

Let’s not be snooty about it. Most ads use songs which are not well known and they do often result in some half decent stuff getting to a much wider audience. The increased exposure means increased sales which means more financial security for the musicians.

Nowt wrong with that in my book.

Oh, nor is there nowt wrong with Moby’s LP ‘Play’.

Some of them (hip-hop artists in the main, I think) are already name-dropping brands on a particularly regular basis and if groups I like start doing that I am going to get very sulky very quickly.

i suppose the deeper issue is that the artist cedes control over some/most/all of these decisions almost out of necessity. i mean, how involved can they be with the “business” end of their careers and still be creative artistes, performing their guts out every night? i would imagine once you get so wrapped up in the money aspect that it would lead you down the road to making all kinds of suspect choices (a la the dr. pepper bubble). so they have to leave some of these decisions to their managers, record labels, what have you. and we all know what matters most to them is the bottom line. it’s such a conundrum!

and i know exactly what you mean about the anti-popular reflex. it’s as though something gets lost when a band crosses a certain threshold of popularity, although i’m not sure if it’s something they lose or something i lose, if that makes sense.

But modern advertising is becoming much more ‘embedded’ if you like, which I think is going to lead to an awful lot of grey areas – look how compromised so many films are by this sort of advertising. At what point will the band have to step in and start to seriously critically evaluate the stuff they get involved with, instead of just leaving it to a marketing exec at their label?

And, btw, I don’t hate Grey’s Anatomy, Six Feet Under, or even Desperate Housewives (I do loathe The OC, though). What I get twitchy about is the worship of false idols that can happen when these sorts of programs attain cult status. It’s an anti-popular reflex I’ve always had and find difficult to control sometimes.

re: tv shows like grey’s anatomy–in g.a.’s defense, it was after hearing tegan and sara’s song “where does the good go” that i became obsessed with new music again. one thing led to another and now look at me! : ) my point being that in the case of that show (which i’m not ashamed to say i enjoy), the featuring of music not typically heard on regular radio is a great service to the artists, much to merz’s and oldsky’s points above.

Peddling your wares on the Home Shopping Network is pretty low. I know he’s facing a thorough fleecing from Hopalong, but surely this can’t be necessary.