Is Mellencamp’s new Chevy ad a sellout?
Let’s kick off this week-in-rewind column with a new game — call it “Is This a Sellout?”
Subject No. 1: John Mellencamp.
This spring the Indiana rocker, an outspoken opponent of the Iraq war and Bush administration, unveiled a new song in concert called “Our Country.” This anthem is trademark Mellencamp — acoustic strumming, stomping beat, heartland twang, sing-along chorus — and the lyrics (reprinted from a Savannah, Ga., TV station’s Web site) find him in demanding-tolerance, would-be Woody Guthrie mode.
Sample verse:
“There’s room enough here
For science to live
And there’s room enough here
For religion to forgive
try to understand
All the people of this land
This is our country.”
The song and album on which it’ll appear have yet to be released. But last weekend, footage of him performing it was all over TV — you no doubt knew it by the end of the Bears-Seahawks game.
That’s because “Our Country” is the theme song for Chevrolet’s new 2007 Silverado pickup. He sings the song, and then comes the tagline: “Our Country. Our Truck.”
This isn’t the first Bush critic’s politically charged fist-pumper that Chevy has co-opted for a truck ad. Last year the car company built a similar campaign around Steve Earle’s even more piercing “The Revolution Starts Now.”
“Like a Rock” seems a long way away.
With Earle you could say, almost literally, that yesterday’s protest songs had become today’s commercials. With Mellencamp, the commercial actually serves as the rallying cry’s public introduction.
OK, folks:
Is this a sellout?
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The Pop (Machine) Quiz
1. Who said this: “If you’re violating your standards faster than you can lower them, time to go away.”
a. Mel Gibson
b. Janet Jackson
c. George Michael
d. Robin Williams
2. Elton John announced a new product line to benefit his AIDS Foundation, with sales of $10 million expected in the first year. What is it?
a. Scented candles and crystal rock potpourri
b. Sunglasses
c. A renamed bathroom cleaner, Captain Fantastik
d. LifeSavers
3. A November release date was set for the soundtrack to the Cirque du Soleil’s Las Vegas Beatles show, “Love.” In what way is this a “new” Beatles album?
a. Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr added vocals and instrumental parts to John Lennon and George Harrison demos.
b. The songs have been entirely re-recorded “as if the Beatles existed in 2006.”
c. The tracks are mash-ups of Beatles songs, such as “Within You Without You” set to the drum pattern of “Tomorrow Never Knows.”
d. The soundtrack is comprised of previously unissued Beatles recordings, including the band’s rendition of Harrison’s “All Things Must Pass.”
ANSWERS 1. e. Williams, talking to “Access Hollywood” about his recent rehab stint for alcoholism; 2. a.; 3. c
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Can all the king’s horses, etc., put this career back together again?
“I feel like Huey Long must have felt — you try to do good and they shoot you for it.” — Steve Zaillian, writer-director of the critically drubbed box-office flop “All the King’s Men,” as quoted in the Los Angeles Times.
Um, OK, but for this comparison truly to work (aside from the getting shot part), someone now has to make a failed fictionalized movie about Zaillian’s life.
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So this is what tap-dancing penguins sing …
I’ve had my fill of cute, computer-generated critters, but I’m still looking forward to “Happy Feet,” due out Nov. 17, because this animated penguin musical comes from the consistently surprising filmmaker George Miller (“Babe: Pig in the City,” “Lorenzo’s Oil,” the “Mad Max” movies).
As reported in Billboard, it also promises to have a particularly weird, eclectic soundtrack.
Aside from a new Prince tune, “The Song of the Heart,” the soundtrack will feature cast members Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman duetting on Prince’s “Kiss” (mashed up with Jackman’s take on Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel”), Robin Williams singing “My Way” in Spanish (“A Mi Manera”) and the perpetually dizzy Brittany Murphy applying her pipes to Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Boogie Wonderland” as well as Queen’s gospel rave-up “Somebody To Love.”
That all sounds wiggy enough — now imagine those songs coming from the mouths of tap-dancing penguins.
Should be somethin’.
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mcaro@tribune.com
