Mis-use of Music - Grrrrrrr!

[K12beano]

I've always been "fairly grumpy" where classical music which has one sort of meaning in its rightful context gets wheeled out for someone's whim. Let's all have a sing song about how great bullfighting is!!

Televisual Advertising takes the biscuit though!

The sign of the black horse bank seems to have forgotten the use of the music for Donnie Darko - just makes it creepy.

And then there's a holiday advert using the Who's Seeker....

...they cut off just before the line "I won't get to get what I'm after 'til the day I die" .... sell me something that if I get it I'm gonna die .....


Sad or funny?

Any other stupid examples?

[anonymous-user]

Thomson/first choice holidays use a lot of unexpected tracks like the who mentioned above. They used the pixies a few years ago. They are usually acoustic or cover versions though.

Angry young people songs used by big business companies always seems like a sell out.

[Billsnemesis]

The biggest molar grinder for me is using a song that does not actually fit the length of the advert so a few random bars get chopped out to squeeze the lyrics in to the time available. The song ends up sounding like it is switching between 7/9 and 5/8. For someone with a hypersensitive inbuilt metronome it is worse than fingernails down a blackboard.

[MitchT]

Billsnemesis said:

The biggest molar grinder for me is using a song that does not actually fit the length of the advert so a few random bars get chopped out to squeeze the lyrics in to the time available. The song ends up sounding like it is switching between 7/9 and 5/8. For someone with a hypersensitive inbuilt metronome it is worse than fingernails down a blackboard.

Just reading this post has made my teeth itch!

[MitchT]

DELETED: Comment made by a member who's account has been deleted.

To be fair to the singers, that's probably due to the producer tapping at their watch, ever conscious of the need to get the performance done before the next all-important ad break is due. It does sound crap though.

[GetCarter]

Watched an ad yesterday where they edited the music to put the 'end' in. Happens all the time of course, but this time nobody had enough hearing to realise that there had been a modulation in the middle of the track, so SUDDENLY we are up a tone for the last chord.

It was a coffee / keyboard moment.

ETA I'm very, very happy for the BBC to use my music, it pays the mortgage - but if it's in 4/4, don't edit out one single beat making a 3/4 bar ... please!

Edited by GetCarter on Thursday 22 December 14:59

[MitchT]

Some of the best lines from "Love is a Bourgeois Construct" by Pet Shop Boys were chopped out for the radio edit. As an artist I wouldn't have allowed it, but I don't know how much control the writers of a song have over these things in the real world.

[GetCarter]

MitchT said:

Some of the best lines from "Love is a Bourgeois Construct" by Pet Shop Boys were chopped out for the radio edit. As an artist I wouldn't have allowed it, but I don't know how much control the writers of a song have over these things in the real world.

I have no control whatsoever, but as long as they pay me....

(It's just a bit of a pain when you've spent so much time recording something to have it butchered by a 20 year old on work experience).

[vx220]

IANAM (I Am Not A Musician) but does this timing stuff apply to Ed Sheeran? Just about every song of his I've heard, he seems to speed up and slow down his singing. OT I know, but it really annoys me...

[K12beano]

GetCarter said:

I'm very, very happy for the BBC to use my music, it pays the mortgage - but if it's in 4/4, don't edit out one single beat making a 3/4 bar ... please!

...write in 5/4, then when they lose one it won't matter?...

[droopsnoot]

I think I've mentioned before a short clip on a BBC Children in Need-style programme, where John Bishop was visiting some hell-hole with starving kids, flowing effluent and so on. Background music as he walked around the orphanage was the Birdy track "Skinny Love", which I figured was a bit inappropriate.

[Mastodon2]

Pretty sure I heard Papa Roach's "Last Resort" on something utterly inappropriate like Gardner's World many years ago. I'm not sure what a song about suicide has to do with cultivating begonias.

[Loyly]

I was always disappointed that the radio edit of 'Master and Servant' cuts out the bars of pulsing synth at the start of the song before the main theme. That's the best bit. It sets the hook up perfectly!

[davepoth]

One particularly egregious example I can remember was in the USA, when Wrangler used CCR's Fortunate Son in a patriotic advert. Just the "Some folks are born, made to wear the flag, ooh that red white and blue" bit.

[robbocop33]

Billsnemesis said:

The biggest molar grinder for me is using a song that does not actually fit the length of the advert so a few random bars get chopped out to squeeze the lyrics in to the time available. The song ends up sounding like it is switching between 7/9 and 5/8. For someone with a hypersensitive inbuilt metronome it is worse than fingernails down a blackboard.

My god!Thought it was just me! ;-)You're mind is conditioned to timings,aaahhh!!