Okay, so you may recall Justin Guarini as the runner-up to Kelly Clarkson in the first season of American Idol, and then, unfortunately for him, that horrid movie called, From Kelly to Justin. But did you recognize him in this Dr. Pepper commercial featuring him as "Li'l Sweet"?
I'll tell you who I thought of when I saw it, especially when you throw in the falsetto singing Li'l Sweet uses; I thought of His Royal Purpleness, Prince, and I wondered if this was Dr. Pepper's way to leverage Prince's appeal without having to pay the mega-star. Of course, Prince would never do anything as silly as the Li'l Sweet commercial. Silly, but cute, too, I add.
At least one Twitter commenter noted, "Twitter is making a really big deal about God being black in the Mophie commercial, as if Bruce Almighty didn't happen over a decade ago."
Actually, I didn't see anyone on Twitter really upset about God being represented as a black man, but I'll take the tweeters word for it. Twitter is a digital sea of humanity, so whatever stupidity you hear of in the brick and mortar world, you'll see it on Twitter.
I remember when Bruce Almighty came out. News and talk shows discussed God's representation in it a bit, but only the dumbest people back then were alarmed that God (Morgan Freeman) was black in that movie. The same thing goes for Dogma, which came out four years before Bruce Almighty. In Dogma, God was a woman (Alanis Morisette).
Mophie, a company I knew nothing about until tonight, may have "the best Super Bowl ad," writes The Verge, and Fast Company's talking about the ad, too, encouraging the Twitter crowd to flock to its site and see the mobile charger company's ad in widescreen. The company could definitely use the publicity because when I bought my adult children mobile chargers this Christmas, Mophie mobile chargers did not come up in my search or in reviews. I guess they will now.
Back to God being black, I do not think of God as a physical being, but anyone who is troubled by the notion that God may be anything other than a white male needs to do a lot more soul searching. Perhaps the same people who are troubled that God may be black are also the ones who think every man with flowing, dark blond hair, a beard, and blue eyes looks just like Jesus, who was unlikely to have blonde hair or blue eyes.
For me, the ad caught my attention just for its stunning special effects. The final reveal of what was causing all the commotion on Earth made me laugh. Yeah, great ad.
Today is the incomparable Michael Jackson's birthday. He would have been 56 years old. I must have known this subconsciously because I started writing this post about his 1984 Pepsi Generation commercial before I recalled that today is his birthday. And then I discovered that his brothers performed today at Tom Joyner's Family Reunion show in Orlando, Florida, in Michael's honor because it's his birthday.
Next I noticed that Janelle Monae has done what appears to be a Pepsi-associated video, which is also a street scene in which she surprises street musicians the way MJ "surprised" child dancers in his commercial for the soda giant. Pepsi posted the video to YouTube a few days ago. I've embedded it at the end of this blog post, but I'll have to investigate whether there's an intended connection between MJ's 1984 commercial and her recent video. Soul Bounce says the video is part of Pepsi's #RealBigSummer campaign. It's well-known that Monae counts MJ as one of her influences, and Pepsi owes a lot to Michael because his endorsement helped the company gain on Coca Cola in the cola wars.
True Confession: As much as I love Walt Whitman, as much as I love Robin Williams and the movie The Dead Poet's Society, as much as I love Apple's "Verse Anthem" commercial using Walt Whitman's poem "O Me! O Life!," and poetry itself, I confess that I have been brooding, disappointed with the razzle-dazzle-'em computer giant. Its first "Verse Anthem" commercial, while beautifully poetic, has no Black people in it.
For a while I thought about writing a post putting them on blast for that oversight, one that seemed particularly egregious given the #YesWeCode initiative and other programs that aim to bridge the digital divide between African-Americans, urban youth, and the nearly lily white slopes of Silicon Valley.
I mean, that commercial even appears to have people in it performing Hip Hop, but not one glimpse of the ethnic group that created Hip Hop. And, of course, wouldn't it have been nice of them to show African-Americans enjoying poetry and being technically savvy? Such visuals help break stereotypes.
Really, my disdain had grown to the point where its Parenthood commercial with that folksy and monotonous "Living the Life of Dreams" tune aggravated me. How many Black parents can you find in that commercial? Don't we need more images of Black people being good parents?
I tell you, I was about to switch over to an Android phone.
So, I was pleased to see and hear Apple's latest "Verse" commercial featuring Jason Hall's Slow Roll Detroit project. Immediately I recognized Marvin Gaye's "Chained" had been sampled in a remix of Mos Def's "Undeniable." The composite is called "You Are Undeniable (Amerigo Remix)." You can hear it and see the commercial after this paragraph, and below that I've posted Marvin Gaye's "Chained" and Mos Def's original "Undeniable" separately. If you want the remix, you can buy it from iTunes, of course, but also Amazon.com.
Apple describes the commercial this way:
Jason Hall inspires thousands of people to witness the revitalization of Detroit from two wheels. As the cofounder of the Slow Roll city bike ride, Hall taps into his community spirit and his iPad to turn an idea into a movement.
"Chained" by Marvin Gaye
"Undeniable" by Mos Def
I'm pretty sure that there's an Apple fan out there who thinks this kind of stuff is not important, but companies that want to sell to everybody need to show everybody using their stuff.
I don't know how, but it seems I've landed in the middle of Throwback Thursday without intending to.
Have you seen the commercial for the Expedia mobile app that uses "Waves" by Electric Guest as its soundtrack? Until I checked, I couldn't remember what the commercial advertised, so I looked up the only thing I remembered, this lyric: "They say that love is easy, but they must have forgot you." That's what stuck in my head. I won't bother with the app, but I've bought that crazy song.
"Waves" felt familiar like an old-school song, a Motown song, and then it hit me: Diana Ross and the Supremes! "You Can't Hurry Love." I've added that classic at the end of this post for anyone who's too young to know it or who may want to compare "Waves" to the song. No, "Waves" is not a rip-off of "You Can't Hurry Love." What I'm picking up is the bass line similarity. "Waves" is faster in tempo, but its bass line is pretty much the same notes and transitions as the Motown hit.
What Electric Guest has done is borrow one element of a style of music produced by a specific recording company. In a way, the bass line and beat of "You Can't Hurry Love," which was another fresh sound from Motown when it came out, has become similar to a form. It's sort of reliable backbone that can be used for a certain type of popular song . Generally, it works for upbeat, happy songs. A musicologist out there may disagree with me, but that's okay. I don't profess to be a music expert but a music lover.
The group Katrina & the Waves borrowed that same bass line for "I'm Walking On Sunshine" (The video's at the end of the post as well.) Also, as this article at SidGriffin.com points out, "Hitsville, UK" by the Clash also borrowed the same bass line. The band even named the song "Hitsville, UK" as a nod to Motown, says Wikipedia. But you don't need them to tell you that Hitsville is the alternate name for Motown Records, right?
Now that my mind's on "borrowing" pieces of music, I can't help but think of the "Blurred Lines" copyright infringement case. The kind of borrowing observed in Electric Guest's "Waves" is not the same as the borrowing in Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines." Thicke's hit is too close to Marvin Gaye's "Got To Give It Up." He echoed Marvin's falsetto in parts, the song's rhythms, bass, and percussion with minor variation. Yes, it has some things in it that are quite different, the lyrics and use of some other instruments, but too many of its elements are too close to "Got to Give It Up." Jim Beviglia explains the problem well at American Songwriter.
Thicke has been claiming that all he did was use "a style," but he's wrong and he may even know that he's wrong. When he talked to GQ magazine, he nearly admitted that he over-borrowed.
GQ: What's the origin story behind your new single "Blurred Lines"? Robin Thicke: Pharrell and I were in the studio and I told him that one of my favorite songs of all time was Marvin Gaye's "Got to Give It Up." I was like, "Damn, we should make something like that, something with that groove." Then he started playing a little something and we literally wrote the song in about a half hour and recorded it. (GQ)
Thicke admitted that he wanted "that [specific] groove" from that specific song. Anyone who's old enough to remember Marvin Gaye's musical evolution knows that the Motown singer later veered away from the standard Motown beat to do his own thing. As one of his later releases, "Got to Give It Up" was very different from other songs we listened to on the radio in the late 1970s, and even though it was the disco era, "Got to Give It Up" didn't feel like common disco.
All Thicke had to do was pay the copyright holders of "Got to Give It Up" for sampling Marvin's "groove" before he released the song, and he would have been legally covered, but he didn't. Can you tell that I'm not sympathetic to him? Perhaps he can use the Age of the Simulacra defense. [While his role's often glossed over in news stories, Pharrell Williams is also named in the lawsuit Marvin Gaye's family filed over "Blurred Lines."]
I didn't mean to go off on a Thicke tangent. But I get tired of the Thicke protectors saying that "Blurred Lines" and "Got to Give It Up" sound nothing alike.
So, here's the video for "Waves" and the lyrics follow.
Lyrics to Waves by Electric Guest
Go.
I know I, I won't make it don't know what to do
They say that love is easy but they must have forgot you
Oh she's a talking thing so full of glee
But twenty-one months will not agree
A second hand girl, I guarantee
Will make a life hard for you and me
Oh I, love to hate you cause you know that I don't
But treat me like you do I think it's time for you to go
And always such a pretty thing,
Depending on what the day's will bring
I can't escape love
Dah do dah do
A la la la lo yeah
(Chorus)
Oh, my mind, is all
Washed away, all away
We keep holding on
To the everlasting waves
They say it's never easy when you're 23
And maybe that's a lie and it's just hard as fuck for me
Oh and I know someone to ripples day
I couldn't explain why I loved that way
I waited round all day duh dah dee
Waiting on you to make me free, and the
And the smile it just, floats away
As is the world is satisfied when night turns into day.
Oh it's a never ending up and down.
Another hot shot when you're around.
I'm sick of the thing that took her down.
I paint a new face with just a frown.
(Chorus)
Oh, my mind, is all
Washed away, all away
We keep holding on
To the everlasting waves
Oh lovely, with you
No, I can't keep from falling in love
I can't keep from falling in love
Oh lovely
"You Can't Hurry Love" by Diana Ross and the Supremes
Apple's New iPad Air commercial, "Your Verse Anthem," makes much of poetry, quoting the great Walt Whitman's "O Me! O Life!" As Fast Company notes, the speech that opens the commercial and continues with Whitman's poem comes from the 1990 movie Dead Poet's Society. The character John Keating (played by Robin Williams) says the following:
We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering--these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love--these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman:
Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring, / Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish, / Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?) / Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d, / Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me, / Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined, / The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life? // Answer. / That you are here—that life exists and identity, / That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
This beautifully done, 90-second commercial makes me curious about the person at Apple's ad agency who developed it. Is that person a poet? Poets have sometimes ventured into the ad business. Jane Friedman, for instance, mentions in the Whidbey MFA Panel podcast (audio) at Author MBA that poet Todd Boss of MotionPoems.com wrote ad copy for a while.
One thing I'm sure of is that Apple did not broadcast this ad to suck up to poets. Poets are a very small demographic and the genre itself is not as highly esteemed in popular culture as it once was.
Forbes Magazine also discusses the "Your Verse Antehm" commercial and its use of the movie. In addition, it points out that in ten days the Macintosh computer will be thirty years old. The writer connects the iPad Air ad to the iconic 1984 ad that introduced the Macintosh. You know, it's the one with the Big Brother figure on a screen speaking to the gray masses. The commercial ends with "And you'll see why 1984 will not be like 1984." The writer asserts that Apple's strategy is to remind consumers that when you purchase an Apple product you're not merely purchasing machinery; "you're buying an experience."
Lagniappe: I've posted video of the William's delivery of the speech in the Dead Poet's Society below.
