Coke ad the unreal thing

New York Daily News ^ | Originally published on May 5, 2004 | David Hinckley

[weegee]

If you own a TV, you've seen the Coca-Cola ad in which Sharlene Hector from the band Basement Jaxx stands on a crowded street singing "I Wish I Knew" and handing Cokes to smiling passersby. In 1971, Coke ads sang, "I'd like to buy the world a Coke." Now, apparently, that's what Coke is doing.

This new campaign, like the earlier one, is happy. It's catchy.

It's also cynical and appalling.

"I Wish I Knew," for those who just tuned in, is a truncated version of "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free," which was written in 1954 by Dr. Billy Taylor.

It was most famously recorded by Nina Simone and widely sung as an anthem of the civil rights movement.

Dressing it up to sell a soft drink is like using "Peace in the Valley" to sell resort condos in the Poconos.

A Coke spokeswoman told Adweek the company chose the song because "the theme of optimism and connecting with people seems pretty universal."

Okay. But this ad makes "I Wish I Knew" sound like it's a song about not being afraid to greet people on the street, when the real song is far richer, darker and more complex.

The ad, for instance, does not use this couplet from the original song:

I wish you could know what it means to be me Then you'd see and agree that every man should be free

Those are the words of people who defied death threats to march through Montgomery, Ala., not the words of someone giving out complimentary soda.

Turning "I Wish I Knew" into an ad jingle strip-mines the song. It plays the song cheap.

Now, I realize we're supposed to have gotten past being upset over commercialized songs.

Sorry. We haven't.

Yes, Bob Dylan's "Love Sick" in a Victoria's Secret ad is hilarious, and Bob Seger's "Like a Rock" was long ago signed over to Chevy. But John Lennon's "Imagine" still wasn't meant to sell shoes, and "I Wish I Knew" isn't a vehicle for selling Coke.

The antidote is simple enough: Go back and listen to Nina Simone sing the song.

Her version is rhythmic and quite pretty, intriguingly understated with a hint of calypso. The iron fist in the velvet glove.

Simone, who died last spring at the age of 70, said she always remembered that when she was 10 years old in Tryon, N.C., giving her first public piano recital, her parents were ordered out of their front-row seats because white folks wanted them.

So songs about corrosive injustice meant something to her.

After she became successful, critics often called her songs jazz. She called them "black classical music."

No one called them Coke ads.

[weegee]

PING

[Larry Lucido]

I could go for a diet Coke right now.

[MACVSOG68]

The author's got too much time on his hands.

[pogo101]

The author's got too much time on his hands.

Not just that: he just couldn't quite make it all the way through his self-congratulatory little "see how caring I am?!" piece without analogizing Coke's ad to Jim Crow racism. Never mind that the featured singer in the ad is herself black.

My problem with the ad is that it shows Coke being handed out in 16oz bottles. Do they even MAKE those anymore? Here in the People's Rep. of LA, it's all 2-liters and 12-oz cans.

[Bogey78O]

Remember when the song "Revolution" was used to pitch MS Windows 95?

Now that was funny...especially when it got to the part about carrying pictures of Chairman Mao.

[Khurkris]

I like Led Zeppelin music in Cadillac ads...I drive Caddys and am not a geezer.

[proust]

"Sharlene Hector from the band Basement Jaxx stands on a crowded street singing "I Wish I Knew" and handing Cokes to smiling passersby"

I can't stand this ad. Since when does Coke condone handing out OPEN bottles of Coke to strangers? If a singing stranger on the street handed you an open bottle of Coke would you drink it?

[rogue yam]

Whine, whine, whine. The fact is, Blacks in America today have very different experiences than did Nina Simone's family when she was young. This lady who is singing in the Coke commercial never experienced having her parents told to give up their seats to white people at her first recital. So why shouldn't the song be adapted to changing circumstances?

The reason some folks want to wallow in the past is because they want to foster the lie that there is no progress under our system and that therefore we should embrace socialistic world government instead.

Better they should sod off.

[anonymous_user]

You mean advertising is emotional and misleading? Musicians are sellouts!? Stop the presses, Mr. Hinkley!

[Darksheare]

Only if she was cute.
After the lights went out, I'd wonder what happened.
And upon waking up handcuffed to a bedframe in my underwear, I'd write a magazine article about how I was mauled by mountain lions and describe it as the most cosmic experience of my life.

In short: NO, I would not drink it.

(Sorry about the rambling surreal intro, my sense of humor is getting the better of me today.)

[VisualizeSmallerGovernment]

What a silly rant. A few years back, thousands of people got into swing music because a cover version of a Louie Prima song was used to sell jeans. All sorts of historically important songs are used for frivolous purposes. People fought and died for the right to sing Yankee Doodle, Dixie, Waltzing Mathilda and the Star Spangled Banner, all of which are routinely morphed into jingles for all sorts of silly things.

How are kids today supposed to know to listen to Nina Simone songs? Maybe some of them will because of the Coke commercial, dig up the source, and start listening.

Certainly none of Nina Simone's current fans are going to burn their records out of disgust for the Coke commercial. So the commercial has some upside and zero downside for Simone's fan base.

The part I don't like about the commercial is it's creepy. The lady singing just stares into the camera and hands out open bottles of Coke to people she doesn't even look in the eye. I keep thinking "if terrorists were to launch a bioterror attack, that would be a great way to do it." At the end of the commercial, I keep expecting the singer to turn around and have the camera pan back to see that everyone she handed a Coke bottle to just died of bubonic plague.

[LS]

Some people will whine about anything.

[weegee]

The part I don't like about the commercial is it's creepy. The lady singing just stares into the camera and hands out open bottles of Coke to people she doesn't even look in the eye. I keep thinking "if terrorists were to launch a bioterror attack, that would be a great way to do it." At the end of the commercial, I keep expecting the singer to turn around and have the camera pan back to see that everyone she handed a Coke bottle to just died of bubonic plague.

Your own "ad" reminds me of a song parody I heard from Eugene Chadbourne recently (surprising since he also performed some leftist indictments of American military actions through the years). He played a song called "The Girl From Al-Qaida" (to the tune of "The Girl From Ipanema").

The refrain being "...everytime she passes, she goes 'K-E-R-B-M-SHHHHHHHH'"

[weegee]

If a singing stranger on the street handed you an open bottle of Coke would you drink it?

The mob guy with his goon squad are handing out Vanilla Cokes in those tv ads. "You'd better reconsider if you don't drink da soda."

[mudblood]

I think I'm one of the few who agree with you. Mainly because I can't stand hearing good songs used to sell products. Also, it is a little cheapening of the song, I agree. I'm not missing work over it, or seeing a therapist - and I'm sure you aren't either.

That said, all I could think of - ALL I COULD THINK OF - when she was handing those cokes out was "ANTHRAX!!!! ANTHRAX!!!!! WHAT THE HELL IS THAT GUY TAKING THAT COKE FOR!!!! OH MY GOD!!!! OH MY GOD!!! AREST HER!!!!!"

[P-Marlowe]

A black day in advertising history was when the Beach Boys music started appearing in TV commercials.

[Larry Lucido]

Hate when that happens.

[Physicist]

I agree with the author in one respect: to equate handouts (in this case, bottled cola) with civil rights is cynical, appalling and corrosive.

Unfortunately, it's the poverty pimps of the civil rights establishment, and not the Coca-Cola Corporation or its PR firm, who created that equation.

The author needs to come to terms with that.

[FoxInSocks]

I concur with the other comments regarding the open bottles. Not only were they open, I also noticed that she put her hands all over the actual opening while handing them out. And then the "lucky recipients" drank from it. Gross!

As far as the author's main point, I think it's pretty silly. Maybe he had too much coke -- I mean Coke.