It has become not just an advertising jingle but an integral part of Muller's brand identity. In the process, it has been stripped of context and of meaning, rendered whiter than white. In the case of Nina Simone's 'Ain't Got No/I Got Life', the song has been remixed by dance producers Groovefinder in a way that suits the happy-clappy message of Muller dairy products. It's not just the issue of selling-out that concerns me, it's the strange things that happen to a song when it is used to sell a product.
BIG SEAN BEWARE GIRL SINGING TV
Nearly 40 years on, that song is being used in a TV ad to sell yoghurt.Ĭall me old-fashioned, but I have always had a problem with pop songs and advertising. A time, too, when a singer could echo the activism of the streets, could galvanise the consciousness-raising radicalism of an era. It is one of those heartstopping moments that YouTube was made for, a slice of musical history, but, more important, a glimpse of a time when a song could really mean something, could carry the weight of a people's hopes and dreams, its aspirations and anger. If you doubt this, click on YouTube and witness her performance at the Harlem Music Festival in 1969.
The latter song was not strictly hers, but as soon as she sang it, she claimed it. She sang the stirring 'Backlash Blues', written by her friend, author Langston Hughes, and turned another song, 'Ain't Got No/I Got Life', originally written for Hair, into a stirring celebration of black pride and defiance. In the late Sixties, she wrote the anthemic 'Young, Gifted and Black' and the angry 'Mississippi Goddam'. It concerns the provenance - and the meaning - of one of her best-known and stirring songs, a song from that troubled time when she, like many black artists, embraced the cause of civil rights. A problem that has nothing to do with Nina per se. That's when I realised I have one problem with Nina Simone right now, a problem I would not have had, say, five years ago. I went home and dug out all her old records and I've been immersed ever since.
I had not heard the song in a while and it's drowsy, jazzy swirl took me by surprise all over again. Last week, while visiting a friend whose iPod is permanently set to 'shuffle', I was caught unawares by her version of Dylan's 'Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues'.
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