Street Life
     (August, 2000)

     This summer I noticed that there were at least two ad campaigns featuring theme songs about prostitutes. Verizon (the result of a merger between Bell Atlantic and GTE) chose "Street Life" by the Crusaders (with guest vocalist Randy Crawford) as the musical score and theme for its massive new branding campaign. Let's take a look at some lyrics shall we?

I play the street life Because there's no place I can go
Street life
It's the only life I know
Street life
And there's a thousand cards to play
Street life
Until you play your life away...

...There's always love for sale
A grown up fairy tale
Prince charming always smiles
Behind a silver spoon
And if you keep it young
Your song is always sung
Your love will pay your way beneath the silver moon...

     Okay, so, Verizon seemed to have no qualms with associating its brand with poverty, urban despair, and prostitution.  Perhaps this is fitting, since most of the company's labor force went on strike immediately after the merger, and New York City's own "street life" soon featured sabotage by some of those strikers in the form of cut phone lines.  Well, as Verizon property James Earl Jones would say: "Never underestimate the power of the Dark Side."

     I'd seen the Verizon thing for a few weeks and, while I found it comical, had just filed it away in my mind as yet another, hardly remarkable, television event.  Then I saw hooker-theme-song ad campaign number two and began wondering just what the hell was going on.

     Nabisco's Snackwells ads began using the Donna Summer favorite, "Bad Girls", to peddle its reduced fat cookie line to women between the ages of 25 and 55.  Again, lets cut to some lyrics for a reality check:

Bad girls. Talkin' about the sad girls.
See them out on the street at night,
Picking up all kinds of strangers if the Price is Right.
You can score if your pocket's nice.
But you want a good time,
You ask yourself, who they are.
Like everybody else they come from near and far.

Bad Girls.
Talkin' about the sad girls.
Sad Girls.
Talkin' about the bad girls.
Friday night and the strip is hot,
Sun's gone down and they're about to trot.
Spirit is high and legs look hot.
Do you want to get down?
Now don't you ask yourself who they are.
Just like everybody else they just want to feel soooo ooh ooh...

     Rock on.  The visual in this ad is a montage of cookies rotating on plates and such.  Dissolving in and out of the picture were various imperative phrases suggesting 'bad' things a woman can do: "Hang up on your sister", "Ignore the dust bunnies", "Hide the remote" etc.  Noticeably absent, however, was the more appropriate "bitch slap that popcorn pimp and square up" or "jack up that Yo-Ho wit'cho daddy's pimp stick."  What gives?

     The question I have for Verizon and Nabisco is, do you really want to associate your brands with hookers?  What the hell are you thinking?"  Then again, I suppose the context of any song is pretty much eliminated when it goes to commercial. For instance, there was the Buzzcocks' song about teenage love angst, What Do I Get?, which found its way into a car ad:  I only want a friend who will stay to the end, what do I get?...  Well, thanks to a licensing deal, what do you get? You get a Toyota! (Who could ask for anything more?)

     Similarly, my pal Big'Un pointed out some time ago that an ad campaign for an SUV (or some god awful vehicle) featured the 1972 song I'll Take You There, by The Staple Singers: The theme of the song addressed a black person's fantasy of a better world:

I know a place...
...ain't no smiling faces...
...lying to the races...
Ain't no need to worry...
... I'll take you there...

    Big'Un said, " I thought it odd that they just ignored that part just so they could use a familiar song that says 'I'll take you there.' "

     Now, someone out there in TV land, or wherever you think you are is thinking "yeah, it's the same thing with that "I Want to Get Away" song by Lenny Kravitz being used for that SUV commercial."   Well, actually that one makes perfect sense to me.  Lenny Kravitz going 'straight to commercial'?  Oh yeah.  That works just fine.  

Reader Feedback:

     You're 100% right about the Randy Crawford song (of utter depravity and despair). But she sang well and the Crusaders (originally the Jazz Crusaders) are fine. Much of my revulsion about the Verizon ads is that (1) they depict truly unappetizing people and (2) the announcer (also used by Dell and Northern Telcom) has the affect of road kill — an appallingly bad performer. But what do we know? Write on!

J Joss