Father John Misty Releases A Car Commercial Song
Father John Misty
Father John Misty knows how to punk us all, he always do it with a song, and this time, it’s called ‘Prius Commercial Demo 1’. You know how indie songs always end up on a commercial, a car commercial more specifically, from Grizzly Bear’s ‘Two Weeks’ or Wilco’s ‘Sky Blue Sky’ or Nick Drake’s ‘Pink Moon’ for Volkswagen, to Noah and the Whale’s ‘5 Years Time’ for Saturn, Phoenix’s ‘1901’ for Cadillac, Sleigh Bells’ ‘Riot Rhythm’ for Honda, Black Sheep’s ‘The Choice Is Yours’ for Kia,… I could go on forever.
So why lying, indie songs are made to advertise cars and Father John Misty totally got it. At the same time, the song is nice and if it was not for all these ‘Hey Ho!’ and all the clichés you can imagine in the lyrics, you would almost miss the fact that it is a complete parody of the folk revival scene… did you say cliches? Let’s see, a train, a farm, growing soybean even corn, drinking whiskey, and juicy lines like ‘where the mountain hits the sky’… ‘when I met you I was only seventeen’… ‘I never love to say goodbye, when I look into your eyes’…
It’s barely a song, only 2 minutes and 16 seconds long, but why bother? That’s all you need for a jingle, and it encapsulates everything you need to sell a car to hipsterland, a sort of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros meets the Lumineers meets the War on Drugs… and as usual, John Father Misty feeling smarter than everyone else. I am calling Toyota national headquarters right now!
Listen to ‘Prius Commercial Demo 1’ below.
