All we don't need is more Beatles songs used needlessly in commercials

October 24, 9:55 PMBeatles ExaminerSteve Marinucci

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Has that Blackberry "All You Need Is Love" commercial that's run endlessly during the baseball playoffs made you grumble just a little, especially if you own one?

Has there been a more useless use of a Beatle song? What does "All You Need Is Love" have to do with a Blackberry?

Who said this?

"Every Beatles song ever recorded is going to be advertising women's underwear and sausages. We've got to put a stop to it in order to set a precedent. Otherwise it's going to be a free-for-all. It's one thing when you're dead, but we're still around! They don't have any respect for the fact that we wrote and recorded those songs, and it was our lives."

That was George Harrison in 1987 after "Revolution" was used in a Nike ad. Since then, Beatles songs have been used almost continuously in advertising. Not all of them have been bad or as badly and, it seems, as thoughtlessly used as the Blackberry one.

But it just doesn' t make sense that the original meaning of "All You Need Is Love" has now been changed to using a Blackberry. What it really reeks of is "money, that's what we want" from the ad.

It probably won't be the last silly use of a Beatle song in a commercial. But maybe if we all grumbled really loud and it hits the right ears we might be able to make someone think and prevent at least one silly ad like this in the future.

Whatever happened to "money can't buy me love", anyway?