This Brand is Your Brand (Daily Planet email #994)

At last! the story can be told! Emerging from a drug-addled sixties, seventies, and quite honestly, early-eighties, a world-famous band crashed their Airplane, fired their Jefferson, and climbed aboard a Reagonomics-fuelled Starship in 1985. In keeping with the can-do spirit of the times, their first big single would be “We Fixed This Toilet on Video,” a catchy and energetic celebration of self-reliance and functional indoor plumbing.

But then management stepped in. They said it was in poor taste. They said “Video how?” They claimed most of the band’s fans don’t even flush their toilets! So the label hired hack lyricist Bernie Taupin to change the words to be about, of all things, rock and roll. But the song didn’t rock. The words made no sense! It languished at number one for two weeks until the song was finally rescued from obscurity and re-recorded with the original lyrics that we hear and love today.

This is not the first time that commerce had been corrupted by art. As early as 1741 Handel’s Messiah had its breakout hit, “Change Your Sausage” bowdlerized into an anodyne and predictable, “Hallelujah,” at the behest of The Bishop of London, who was incidentally no fan of pork products. More recently, know-nothing label heads convinced Buddy Holly that “It’s so easy to fall in love” was somehow more universal and interesting than “It’s so easy to own Tercel.” Well, the rest is history.

And when a singer just wants to sing about something everybody can understand, like “When a Man Loves a Pizza,” the suits step in and change it to “When a Man Loves a Woman.” Who’s that for, like, probably less than fifty percent of the population?! “I wish they all could have Herbal Essence hair” turned into “California Girls?” Twelve percent, at most! And why oh why would they make Michael Jackson change “You’re the Pepsi Generation” into the creepy, paternity-denying, and obviously true “Billie Jean is not my lover?” Who wants to relate to that?

The music industry would have you believe that all anybody wants to hear about is love, relationships, and the problems therein, when there are so many more tangible topics much closer to home! I tell you, they will never take away the pleasure I have in hearing “Freddie Mac when are you comin’ back?” “I can Zima miles and miles,” and “Turn Down for Mott’s.” And the minute they try to change the words to “C’mon babe, Bud Light my fire,” “”I don’t need Colace when I’m with you,” or “Amazon Fresh, how sweet the sound,” I swear, I’m going to cancel my subscription to the Zune Marketplace!