Back to Music WITH This Commercial Break!

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The other day I mentioned that interesting time in history when the BBC banned the Kinks’ song “Lola” because it mentioned a brand name in the lyrics. The Kinks changed “Coca Cola” to “cherry cola” and everything was fine. So what about all those songs that had brand names IN THE TITLE? Not so easy to change the lyrics! Were they, too, banned by the BBC? They weren’t banned here in America! In fact, most of these were hits (and the couple that weren’t are still well-known). One of the earliest examples was “Rum and Coca-Cola” by the Andrews Sisters. Interestingly enough, a lot of stations wouldn’t play that song….because of the rum reference! So let’s look at the commercials in commercial music. Here’s our teaser, an item that’s a relic of the past. Kodachrome was a type of color film that Eastman-Kodak had developed in 1935. Nowadays people would say, “What’s film? What’s a camera?” But the song is still good! Paul Simon said he was going to originally call it “Going Home,” but thought that was too mundane, so he made it more mysterious with the brand name usage. And that opening line? One of his best!