Stories like this one remind me how lucky I am that my DVR automatically skips commercials.

I'm so glad I decided not to get cable TV and have no rabbit ears, I get to dodge this bullet.

One thing that strikes me is a kind of transformation among music artists. At one time, it was considered bad, "selling out" to have your song used in a commercial. Like you couldn't get your music heard any other way. Now, it's considered nothing special. Just another way for the musician to make money. I prefer the former, where musicians serious about their craft don't want their work cheapened by someone using it to sell a product. I'd rather have my musical heroes dedicated to the music, not the money.
ER

I fucking hate that song.

If it's done anything, it's made me never, ever want to buy a Chevy. EVER. (well, their crap quality has done that, but still. Even if they didn't suck, I wouldn't want one because of that commercial)

@CarlR: Yea, do people still watch commercials?

Is GM trying to tank?!?

I think the only evidence to the contrary is all the noise that they are making about the Volt, and if I were a gambler, I'd put money down that the Volt will turn out to be pure vapourware.

@endicottroad: The musician has no choice. The practice is called compulsory licensing. The artist must allow use of their music with a nondiscriminatory pricing scheme.

It's not that the song is horrible, as jingles go, but the symbolism is just so blatant that it feels dirty. They could stand to be a little more subtle about what appeals they're trying to use to manipulate you. Watching it makes me feel like I just came back from a Republican candidate rally.

Music is my boyfriend
Music is my girlfriend
Music is my dead end
Music is my imaginary friend

I will never buy another Ipod as long as I live...

@CarlR: Really? Where do you get one of those?

the reason this campaign is terrible is because there is at least one commercial on during every break and sometimes you get 2 back-to-back during the break. not only that i feel like whenever i watch this campaign, i should have some beer cans in my hand and a nascar cap on my head. i mean has anyone else ever appeared in this campaign besides rustic white males? i thought the nissan truck commercial spoofing dvr would be the worst until this campaign started.

@Crashman06: i'd like to know too. it would be great to watch sporting events that automatically skipped forward in time.

I hate it, and I feel a little less alone in this world knowing that I'm not the only one.

Being in the habit of talking back to my TV, I sometimes make faces and sing the jingle in an inappropriate way when this commercial comes on. I don't that with this one exclusively, but it's on my list.

i don't have cable, just local channels. when i want to watch something, i hit the internet, which (for the most part) doesn't have commercials.

There is no POINT to this commercial. I'm supposed to want to buy a truck because it's got heritage? The song sucks to begin with, I hate Mellencamp's music. But they're trying to use patriotism (which is not inherantly a bad thing) to sell cars and convince people they're doing a great monumentous deed when they buy a Chevy. I'll buy a Corvette, but not a truck. They don't advertise Corvettes.

I think the article in Newsweek compares the campaign to Ford's 'Like A Rock' which overstayed its welcome by about two decades, but Ford insists on using it. You can't blame Chevy for copying a model which has done so well for Ford... I mean, look where they are now.

I loathe it because it is so obnoxiously manipulative. Well the song gets annoying after hearing it the second time a max commercial level volume too.

I don't see trucks I want to buy, I see a blatant disregard for national resources, national security and the environment. This was before I finally watched "who killed the electric car". I am sick of seeing patriotism defined as ignorant excess.

As for the Volt - you will never see it in mass production for the consumer.

@DrGirlfriend: This commercial has been through a bunch of iterations, and I seem to recall one of them showing the truck, interspersed with shots of civil rights protesters in the 60s. I remember that making me feel nauseated.

Having a Tivo means never having to hear it.

That song is not obnoxious at all.
I just listened to it on youtube and it was easy listening and not annoying at all.
Why are people annoyed by nothing?
This is the first I ever heard anyone complain about that song.

Anyways John Mellencamp might be a good singer, but he is a racist against white people by defending the criminals with his jena 6 song.

its marketing. whether you love it or hate it, its in your head, which is the whole point.

This song drives me up the f'ing wall. Whenever I hear it, I change the channel, and I've even heard it in the background of some good football games. Chevy cheapens his song, and they cheapen the events they have playing in their commercials as well.

This reminds me of the 1-2-3-4 song by Feist that Apple absolutely BLITZED onto the television air waves. My friends don't understand why I can't STAND the song since the very first day I heard it... three hundred twelve times.

I think artists should be a little more wary about how they're letting their songs be used by their labels. It does get them more exposure, maybe at the cost of people like me who just can't stand having things thrown at them a million times.

1)thanks, tivo

2)i am SO glad i do not have stock in GM

3)screw it, im buying a tundra.

@ry81984: wow, i thought i went off topic

@ry81984: It's just because of the overexposure...especially during football/baseball games. But overexposure can happen with anything.

Listen to it 30 times in a row and then get back to us...

@Skiffer: I too hate that song so much.
I wish it would stop.

These commercials have never bothered me. But then again, I do skip over commercials as often as I can.

The one that drives me insane is the National Floors Direct commercial (might be regional- Boston). It doesn't even have a jingle, just some obnoxious blonde bitch telling me how much she saved by using National Floors Direct. I just want to reach through the screen and choke her.

@homerjay: Off topic...
I had an idea a while back to deal with annoying commercials:
Imagine a duck hunt / nintendo style gun that, while you were watching regular tv, it could overlay graphics, decals, effects, etc over the tv...

It was inspired by me wanting to shoot Ms. Cleo in the face... (remember her psychic hotline?)

If anyone develops it, I want halfsies...

@CaffeinatedSquint: Chevy was to blame for that one, not Ford. I hated that one too!

I thought it was funny how this song first attacked us as illegal immigration became such a sudden hot-button topic. Almost like it was intended as an anti-immigrant anthem, i.e. "This is our country, not yours!" I honestly thought Chevy and Cougar would catch flack for this subtext I percieved/imagined. Now I wish they had so I wouldn't have had to hear it so damn much.

Mellencougar sucks period. And that song especially sucks hard. The one thing that maybe doesn't suck is Jack & Diane but that was like 25 years ago.

@yg17: Yeah, that's what I don't get. You would think that if you're angering potential customers, you would do something about that. It's like they WANT to go out of business.

Chevy doesn't give a crap what people who frequent sites like this think. They're going for a totally different demographic: the fools who bought so many copies of that jackass who sang about putting a boot up your ass if you didn't love America with unreasoning intensity.

@ry81984: Different people have different tastes. My friends like to give me crap for the artist I like (why? I don't know, it's not like I force them to listen) but there's nothing wrong with different tastes.

If you hate those ads, you hate America! :-P

In all seriousness: To me it's not the song itself, but the fact that it's being used in these particular ads that I find inappropriate. Sure, it's a lame song about how awesome America is, but the fact that owning a Chevy truck is surreptitiously injected into this vignette of America along with images of 9/11, Katrina, Rosa Parks, and MLK (and then Richard Nixon's victory salute thing? What in the hell?!) is what really pushes my buttons. The song is the least offensive part of it - just another shitty Mellencamp song.

We had channel 1 in high school. My teacher was so disgusted by it he muted the commercials (well the whole thing's a commercial,) whenever they came on.

Since then I've been instinctively hitting MUTE at every commercial break. It's become habit, my friends think it's weird, but it keeps some peace and lets me be selective about what enters my mind.

Chevy has nothing to do with America. Chevrolet was a company founded by a Swiss immigrant. Its more American at this point to buy Toyota or Honda (both of which are manufactured in America anyways) because you're saving money on gas, and buying a much better product. That's capitalism, baby. Reward the good companies, and hate on the bad ones.

Im glad so many people hate this song; I thought I was alone :)

@omerhi: off topic, but your icon is rad

@Skiffer: (I saw that iPod ad for the first time last night and had this wtf moment. Like, is Apple trying to make fun of consumers now?)

Back to the actual topic now...

@kc2idf: AFAIK you can't use compulsory licensing rules to get permission to use a song in a commercial. And even if you can, the rules apply only to the song itself: you can use compulsory licensing to get permission to release your own performance of Mellencamp's song, but not to release Mellencamp's performance of it.

@mbgrabbe: The whole country was founded by IMMIGRANTS!!!

And like the old Beatles songs, the performance itself may not even be owned by the performer.
Compulsory license does apply as LazloNibble says above, you can perform someone else's song but you must pay the writer(s) (or owner) a set fee for each record sold.
Don't know how it works for commercials.

And Mellencamp sold out just by writing that feel-good-about-America bullshit in the first place, so it's not like he's losing my respect selling it to Chevy.

What's most amusing is they run the same commercials in Canada, except replace some US imagery with Canadian imagery. I wonder if it is run in any other countries...

@bladefist: But you don't want your customers to have it in their head associated with "THAT annoying BS? I think I'm not going to buy that piece of junk". You want positive associations with your advertising.

It sucks just as bad as the "Like a Rock" mantra. I will never by a Chevy because of that.

The first time I saw one of those commercials I thought to myself, "that's a nice xenophobic ad." But then in the same commercial break they had an ad that was entirely in Spanish. GM can't even figure out who they want to appeal to.

Thanks for reminding me to buy Japanese, Chevrolet. Your POS car that I had in 1993 wasn't lesson enough.

@Skiffer: that song is good...and so is the commercial considering it was made by some college kid.

@Buran: As a consumer, I agree with you. But I have marketing friends that say its better for you to remember and hate, then not remember. Who knows. I typically refuse to purchase products that annoy me. Most of the people here are smart consumers, out to protect consumers. The rest of the dim wits in the world this marketing works on.