Most Indian commercials directed towards young, upwardly mobile, urban kids (SEC AB, 15-24, look mom, that MBA) these days have pretty much the same vanilla, Nikhil D’Souza, acoustic-twee soundscape. Vodafone and its seemingly bottomless talent pool of breathy singers have forever transformed jingles to almost-song-y indie pop clips. The result is that almost every commercial that features young people doing happy, summer-y, green things is now soundtracked by an acoustic track inspired by whiney singer-songwriters like Damien Rice and Jose Gonzalez.
This Nokia commercial, pimping an instant messaging service, is another clever, young clip about a girl who can’t decide what colour shoes to wear. Women, right? The brand manager who approved this commercial is clearly a fan of Mercury Prize-winning UK indie electro poppers The xx. The clip uses a track heavily inspired by the band’s debut album highlight ‘VCR’, including the opening xylophone-y bits of the track. In fact, the track is so heavily inspired that apart from changing one line of the guitar melody, it could pretty much serve as a note-perfect cover.
Check it out below.
And here’s the original by The xx.
Found another commercial that rips off a popular song? Leave a comment!
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