Late hip-hop legend Adam “MCA” Yauch was so protective of his musical and artistic output, and the appropriation thereof, that he even took great lengths to make sure his legacy would be protected after he passed on. It was recently revealed that MCA’s will ensures that “in no event may my image or name or any music or any artistic property created by me be used for advertising purposes,” meaning that in death as in life, the Beastie Boys’ music will be safe from random McDonalds and Verizon commercials.
Still, we think that maybe MCA just wasn’t looking at this the right way. There’s plenty of ways the Beastie Boys’ music could be used in appropriate cute, marginally creative marketing situations that would allow the Beasties to keep their dignity, while also allowing them and their loved ones to pad their wallets a little bit. Come on, guys—life is a big commercial. No reason to keep fighting it from the great beyond.
- “Sure Shot” for Energizer Batteries. “Coz you can’t, you won’t, and you don’t….STOP!!” “Still going…nothing outlasts the Energizer Bunny. He keeps going and going and going…” If there was ever a natural pairing of hip-hop hook and advertising tagline/ethos, this was certainly it. (Could ostensibly work with Duracell as well—we already know that Jay-Z’s a fan.)
- “Finger Lickin’ Good” for KFC. “It’s finger lickin’ / Finger lickin’ good y’all!” A perfect sell for any chicken fast-food chain, especially if they’re currently selling fingers. They even say the phrase about 500 times in the Check Your Head cut, so you don’t have to loop it awkwardly or anything.
- “Body Movin‘” for Bally’s Fitness. “Body movin’, body movin’, we be body movin’.” Hey, at Bally’s gyms, bodies don’t know how to do anything but move—in endlessly repetitive motion without actually getting anywhere, just like dancing. Beautiful.
- “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” for Brooklyn Nets Season Tickets Packages. Hey, they’re already using “Hello Brooklyn” for t-shirts and such. They’ll inevitably end up using “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” for their intro music—the Beastie Boys can’t stop them from doing that, can they?—so may as well use them to move some tickets as well.
- Pretty much any song off Licenesed to Ill for White Castle. Five different tracks! Over a third of the songs on the Beasties’ debut album prominently reference the trio’s then-favorite dining establishment, likely giving White Castle its best-ever free product placement—at least until those two stoners picked it as the destination of their titular 2004 film voyage. Just kinda cut them together into one long stream of White Castle namedrops in a WC ad, and the company’s popularity and cultural cachet will invariably skyrocket.
Actually, maybe the memory of MCA is better off without some of these. We wouldn’t have begrudged him, though.
The post Five Solid, Respectable Ideas for Beastie Boys Music in Commercials appeared first on Popdust.
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