A few posts ago I mentioned how much I hate hearing my favorite music used in commercials. However, I think I’ve found a compromise – remakes! The commercial gets their song, and the listener keeps the original untarnished in his mind. 
One of my favorite new (well, newish) bands is The Knife (links to original song, remade for ad) – very original sound, haunting vocals, great use of electronic elements to create some beautiful, chilling stuff. So you’re an ad guy – you really love this song, but it’s just not palatable for prime time. What to do? Give it to an acoustic guitarist so he can turn it into a James Blunt B-side! Have a look at this ad for a Sony Hi-Def television – you can barely recognize the song, so profoundly has the soul and innovation been sucked out of it. But, people that can afford hi-def TVs like to “scrapbook” and listen to pretty guitars, not tweaked out Swedish electronica. The boring, talentless version is waaay more appropriate for the ad than the original.
Win, win! And the “avant garde” artists themselves will be more willing to do a deal if they know their work will be butchered into something unrecognizable to their fans. Don’t take my word for it:
The Knife wrote Heartbeats, the song covered to achey-breaky affect by fellow Swede José Gonzales in the Sony Bravia ‘bouncing balls’ commercial. Yes, say The Knife, they had to think hard about allowing their music to be used to sell stuff. ‘It’s the first time we’ve said to yes to a thing like that,’ says Karin. ‘The only reason we thought it was OK was it wasn’t us performing.
