Madonna & Missy Elliot's GAP commercial.....

Ugly and slutty aren't words I would apply to it, though.

Missy can survive this with integrity intact....hell, credibility enhanced even. Madonna, however, has crossed the Rubicon.

So do I, but this version of "Into the Groove" is trying to be too winsome and sunny -- it strips the song of the darkness and glamour of the original version.

Rapper Missy Elliott reportedly snubbed pop superstar Madonna on the set of the commercial they shot together for clothes company Gap. According to American magazine, the New York Metro, the Work It star kept the singer waiting while she sat in her car chatting - and then refused an invitation to spend time with the Material Girl at her Los Angeles home. Elliott had told television reporters in America this week how honored she felt to appear alongside Madonna in the advertisement. She gushed, "I always dreamed of working with Madonna because I always thought that if I had any kind of connection with another artist it would be Madonna." However, according to the Metro, Missy kept Madonna waiting for 45 minutes while she spoke on the phone, and then when the singer tapped on the window to encourage her to hurry up - Elliott reportedly dismissed her with a flick of the hand. Missy then snubbed Madonna's attempts to get the pair to bond, by turning down an invitation to her swanky LA pad. The magazine claims Elliott only cooperated with Madonna - who has been paid $10 million to promote Gap - when handlers advised her it was in her best interests. (IMDb 'Celebrity News')

She's waaay beyond the Rubicon and well on her way to Rome now.

obviously madonna can take care of herself just fine, mr. blount.

Madonna doesn't like revisiting the past (recent concerts, for example, concentrate almost entirely on her last couple of albums), so to hear her sing a bit of "Hollywood" to "Into the Groove" seems a little compromised and, yeah, desperate.

Madonna's voice, I mean. I don't remember Missy's vocals sounding as weird.

You wouldn't shoot Sandra Dee would you?

"I am disrespectful to dirt!"
http://www.actionfig.com/simpsons/sparkle4.jpg
"Misutaa Supaakoru! Un no yoo besuto washuuuuuu!"

oh say it ain't so, Jean Reno!

including their own product?

Faithfull does it -- a bit surprising, seems to be a sell-out, but secretly sorta cool ("Hey, I never thought that someone like Burroughs/Iggy/whoever could be well known this way.")

Madonna/Missy does it -- they're already mainstream figures with a whole image and place based on what they do as performers, so seeing them directly associated this way is a bit of a downer.

Might that be it?

(and no the ad didn't disappoint me, since i had no expectations when i heard about it...as with everything else she's done this decade, it's sub-par but again as with all her recent mistakes: it is mirwais' fault. he should be blamed for this ad! oh and btw, at this point one case easily say no one but hipster/hip-hop historians will care all that much for missy elliott in 2019)

Cut an ad that serves Gap,
Slam a war, ignore the flap.
Talk real posh, now raise a kid,
Act just like Diana did
But still you'll never get it right,
cos when you're bored in bed at night,
watching Missy take it all,
if you ditch your Guy you could stop your fall.

Sing along with the common people,
sing along and it might just get you through,
laugh along with the common people,
laugh along even though they're laughing at you,
and the stupid things that you do.
Because you think that being them is cool.

"Mad-hatas"? "Opportunism and integrity"?

I'm so tired of people not even reading my posts and caricaturing me. I said nothing about opportunism or any such thing. I only noted how genial the ad was, how it reminded me of Sesame Street in its sunniness and use of long shots, and how it seemed a bit *too* genial to sell soda cans.

I'll ask for an apology, but I don't necessarily expect one.

and knocking my posting style which is often much more casual (and typo ridden) than yours, or saying that you "get a certain relief" in believing in your superiority/my stupidity compared to you, certainly DOESN'T help remove the "smug" brush from your reputation - a bit condescending, isn't it? and goes further to prove my theory that people who have mondo problems w/ madonna or find her repulsive or insufferable or whatever, usually hate fun (unless they direct their passion towards dubious substitutes i suppose, like...killing joke? =)

I do find Madonna hard to take insofar as her interviews and pretentions to political outspokenness go, which I think is what people were discussing when I called her "insufferable."

I couldn't care less whether people appear in advertisements, nor did I say anything about careerism (pro or con) which I think was the substance of the debates here.

For a start, leave Killing Joke out of this. Secondly, you're making a giant leap by thinking I have a huge problem with Madonna. I don't, and I own and enjoy a few of her records, actually. If I did, in fact, loathe her, I wouldn't have been so surprised at this Gap ad, nor would have I have found it as tragic as I do. I actually have higher expectations for the woman, which is why I find it so tragic that she's pulling such a desperate stunt. I get the impression that it's not the lack of success of her record that's distressing her, but rather the gradual erosion of her relevance that is causing her to make such rash decisions. She should be above such concerns.

>For a start, leave Killing Joke out of this

and nah, i disagree. i don't think madonna is as concerned with her star waning as much as with her assets decreasing, since she views everything through financial eyes first. this was a business move, as is the upcoming publishng of the children's books (in multiple languages?! etc.), to a lesser extent. maverick has had a tough time following up on michelle branch's success, and now even branch wants out. she needs to find herself another alanis or something soon, since these days no record label can afford such a long dry-spell without calling it a day, and i think she's milked her star leverage to keep the company afloat as long as he could. besides, her star is still shining at an even, consistent wattage outside the US, as the album sold between 8 to 10 million copies in the worldwide market, not counting north america. but she knows that she need to solidify her domestic sales again and soon, or else maverick sink faster than you can say "candlebox"

I have lost all respect for Missy Elliot over this. She can go fuck herself.

...And people are FASCINATED by the ad. They stand there in little groups, frozen, staring up at the screens. (Occasionally, they'll break into little conversations about whether or not Madonna's "still got it," etc.) The level of attention is a little unnerving: you'd think they've never seen televised images of these entertainers before. Anyway, by this barometer, the commercial sure is popular.

(But totally, altho when that came out i was like "who's the oddly-familiar fuddy-duddy with Michael?" Paul didn't seem very concerned with still "having it," it just seemed like a laugh.)

"Say, say, say what you want but don't play games with my affection
Take, take, take what you need but don't leave me with no direction"

Fuckin' stranger than fiction.

YEEHAW!!

Dan, would you like Alex and I to be ad agents, therapists or pyros? Or all three?

This is one of your lamest jokes/disses yet.
Joke? What Joke? It's a solid provable fact based on watching the behavior of actual human beings in the Gap. Go down to the Gap and carefully watch the inhabitants. It'll blow your mind.

CLEARLY ALL THREE. Who are you asking?

And they are different from the inhabitants of any other shop how?

Note: Yes, I am exaggerating the intensity of the chihuahua on nitrous befuddlement I've noticed to anyone who goes into the Gap. But I'm not exaggerating about the existence of the phenomenon. It does, however, become painfully noticable in the Gap for Kids store. I suspect theres either subliminal messages on the loudspeaker or something being pumped in via the airvents < /PARANOIA>

Madonna Falls Into the Gap
Her new ad's a dud, but Devo cleans up the mess.
By Rob Walker
Posted Monday, August 25, 2003, at 7:53 AM PT

Remember the song "Good Vibrations," as it was reworked with Sunkist-specific lyrics? Or whatever that hair-care product was that was peddled by a woman singing, "I'm gonna wash that gray right outta my hair!"? As ubiquitous as popular music is in ads these days, the practice of reworking lyrics for the benefit of the advertised product has mostly faded. Or it had until recently. This formerly shunned practice returns in two recent ads: one in which Madonna and Missy Elliott perform on behalf of the Gap (see it here) and another in which Devo sings for something called Swiffer (see it here.).

The much anticipated Madonna ad is a total dud. In it, she dances about on a city-street movie set, lip-syncing a song that mixes the beats of "Into the Groove" with lyrics from the more recent single "Hollywood." Then Missy Elliott pops up and does a short rap on the subject of Gap jeans, and the two improbably prance about like good, Gap-shopping friends. Madonna sings the closing line, "Get into the groove, got to show ya some moves, best to take it from me. …" Totally limp.

As a failure, the ad is interesting because Madonna has always been praised as much for her ability to market herself as for her actual talent as a singer and performer. Long before the "cool hunter" idea entered mainstream marketing discourse, she was renowned for spotting new trends and exploiting them for her own benefit. But in the wake of yet another box office tanking (what was that last movie called?) and disappointing album sales, she can't even get an actual commercial right. Maybe Madonna really is over.

The Swiffer ad makes no particular attempt to be hip, self-conscious or otherwise. It's a totally by-the-numbers spot in which a central casting Mom robot-dances around her suburban habitat, using Swiffer cleaning products. The sound track is "Whip It," given new lyrics: "When you've got a dirty floor/ You need Swiffer …" and so on, climaxing with, "With Swiffer—place looks great! It's not too late! Swiffer's good!" There's a mild joke at the end as Mom's daughters (curiously dressed in 1980s outfits) hope that they will not inherit whatever condition has afflicted the old lady.

This is the most preposterous ad I've seen all year—and I love it. It's hilarious. And it only works because they got Devo's actual lead singer, Mark Mothersbaugh, to sing the sublimely stupid new lyrics.

Advertising Age reported the debut of this spot with the headline "Former Anti-Business Band Does P&G Commercials," and the story referred to "Whip It" as "the anthem of … Devo's rage against a society dehumanized by industry and commercialism." I would call that a novel interpretation of the song's essentially meaningless lyrics, but never mind. It's certainly true that Devo had a vaguely angry and corrosive attitude (or pose?) toward consumer society in general.

But to ask whether this means Devo has "sold out" completely misses the point. Mothersbaugh told Ad Age that the band agreed to remake the song for the commercial because "it was so absurd." He understates the case: The ad is perverse. As an aside, this isn't the first commercial to feature a Devo song: Target used "It's a Beautiful World" not long ago (a song that might actually qualify as a rage-filled anthem, albeit a subtle one; the less subtle video featured a series of nuclear explosions).

I would say that the Swiffer spot comes off as a parody, but that's not quite right. Because what makes it so delightful is that somebody at an ad agency actually thought it would be a good idea. Given the opportunity to make such a self-evidently foolish thing into a reality, placed in time slots aimed at the mythic American Housewife, it would have been a crime for Devo to say no. The name "Devo" was, after all, short for "devolution," a kind of evolution in reverse—so how could they possibly stand in the way of such a perfect crystallization of that idea?

Every time Missy (and the backing geeks) rap "Where you get them JEEEEEEEAAANNSS?" Eddie Murphy's gay intepretation of Mr T pops in my head.

Also, TS: M&M@The Gap vs The Jacksons do Pepsi. Because this is still less wrong than what Michael did to 'Billie Jean'.

Between these two cases, though, there's a bit of a difference. Mothersbaugh's not necessarily trying to re-introduce Devo into the marketplace....it's strictly a nostalgia trip, whereas the Gap ad strike me as desperate measure on Madonna's part to re-inflate the withering blimp that is her current album and to STAY CURRENT & RELEVANT!

Devo also did a Honda ad back in the distant past.

...and you set them on fire, I trust.

Madge's bills can't be that tight, surely.