I Think I Need A New Dog Food

When you hear I Think I Need A New Heart (by Magnetic Fields on 69 Love Songs) do you think of moist molded (as in a form, not old and green) dog food?

In what I think is a product of both getting older and marketing gone wild I hear more and more songs that I like from the past and not so distant past trying to get me to buy a trendy car, fast food, clothes, printers, M&M’s and stuff from Target.

I buy plenty from Target and it has nothing to do with the music, I don’t get the use of Iron & Wine's cover of Such Great Heights for M&M’s, but I like Iron & Wine, I like The Postal Service (who did Such Great Heights first) and I like M&M’s so I don’t try and figure it out. I’m not buying a vehicle anytime soon so I don’t even think about the cars and fast food commercials usually scare me regardless of the music and I change the channel and I do use printers everyday and franky some of those commercials have been really well done.

I don’t really mind all that much if a band gets cash for a song that is used in a commercial. I suppose I would too if the price was right and it wasn't for use in something gross. I suppose I would change my tune (ha! get it?) if it was a song and band I really liked and then heard it on a commercial for something awful or for something evil.

Anyway...tonight I was on the couch, just settling in to eat a late dinner and I hear a tune I know very well. I look up, and much to my surprise there are fluffy little dogs eating dog food, dog food from little tins that are tiny molded piles and they look like pate. In fact I recall an old commercial that plays with the fact that it looks like people food.

What marketing person sat there and thought “you know what would really sell this moist meat for puppies? Magnetic Fields!” Yes, now that I think about it, it is perfect! Nothing says moist meat molded for puppy consumption more than a sarcastic ditty about love and how someone will never be what you want them to be and you wont be what they want either so why bother, yet you just can’t quite get those words out, sung by a witty gay singer/song writter.

Or maybe they were listening to their ipod on the way to work and while tapping their foot with their eyes closed they hear I Think I Need A New Heart and suddenly the fact that they were out of dog food popped into their head.

In any case, they don’t actually play any of the song with the lyrics, best as I can tell it is the original but it is just the lead in music.

To view the add click here and click on the turquoise one, with the dog in the bag that says "I Promise". It looks like this....