But do Will Champion’s “Viva” chant (featured in this commercial and prominently at their live shows) and Davide Rossi’s string arrangements still make me smile like an idiot and give me goosebumps? Absolutely. Are Chris Martin’s twisting, messianic arm movements a bit much? Possibly. Was the title track played to death back then? Sure. It can be hard to pinpoint the moment you got into one of your favorite bands, but Coldplay’s massive Apple campaign for their 2008 album Viva La Vida or Death And All His Friends was what first hooked me. Maybe even in a Volkswagen, the brand with which it became inextricably linked. It was romantic and beautiful, successfully selling a sense of aspirational peace and freedom that made you want to set out on your own Drake-scored adventure. It’s no wonder it was so beloved, and is still a touchstone for those who experienced it during its initial run. The lame house party was not the real destination it was the journey there and back, the time spent in a contemplative reverie, that mattered. I remember being completely taken by the world the commercial presents: the dreamy freedom of driving around with your friends, enjoying beautiful music on a gorgeous night, admiring the quiet starry sky. It introduced me, and many others, to Nick Drake (the track’s use led to record sales for Drake topping those from the previous 30 years), but it also set a standard for a marriage of commercial aesthetic and sonic harmony that would come to influence ad spots throughout the following two decades. There are perhaps few song and commercial pairings as iconic-and important for both the artist and advertising-as Volkswagen’s use of Nick Drake’s “Pink Moon” for its 1999 Cabrio commercial (directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris and filmed by Lance Acord). Don’t worry-we won’t try to sell you anything. Read on for the Paste Staff’s favorite song/advertisement moments from the last 20 years. Throughout most of the 2000s, however, we discovered commercial songs the good ol’ fashioned way. Now we have Shazam, and if we hear a cool tune we don’t have to quickly memorize lyrics so we can later plug them into Google and find the song at hand. For many people in the MP3 generation, brands like Apple and Volkswagen introduced us to hip new songs by artists who would later blow up-or even become our favorites. Point being: commercials, they’re a dying breed! While we’re not going to cry over a loss of distracting advertisements, it is worth looking back through the history of commercials-the last two decades in particular-and thinking about which ones felt culturally significant. These days, more and more of us are cutting cable and switching over to streaming-only when it comes to our entertainment avenues-and if a particular streaming outlet has ads, more often than not we’re inclined to pay the extra few dollars a month not to have to endure them. However, they’re becoming a scarcity in many people’s lives. Typically, they’re just an annoyance-a distraction from whatever it is you’re actually trying to consume.
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