Pat Benetar's "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" in a new Applebees commercial. Discuss.

[Miles Archer]

I'm not a Benetar fan. Wasn't then, not one now, and when it was a hit, I lived in an apartment with paper thin walls and the neighbors downstairs played it loud, and often. That made me less of a fan.

OK, that's my story.

[ProudLib72]

1. Hit me with some wet snot

Fire away!!!!!!

Seems about right for Applebees

[jayschool2013]

2. Those monsters!

I'll bet they also cranked J. Geils Band. Off with their heads!

[oregonjen]

3. She's a strong woman that battled sexism in the music industry

I have huge respect for her! Given that, I hate that Applebee’s is using her song!

[underpants]

4. I despise Pat Benetar with every fiber of my being

Not her personally just her music. She started in Richmond singing after her waitress shifts.

[Lochloosa]

5. Not her best song.

[Aristus]

6. Big Pat Benatar fan.

But just like the baby boomers who, in the eighties, started to hear the music they grew up with in the sixties in TV commercials, I'm starting to see the music that I liked and that meant something to me being used to sell crap products. Some things never change, I guess.

Allegedly, there was a scene from the movie Gladiator, in which the main character, a successful and popular gladiator, does a public endorsement for a brand of olive oil. Reportedly, the scene was either cut or never filmed because, although celebrity product endorsements actually happened in the ancient world, director Ridley Scott and the producers thought no one would believe such a modern-sounding thing.

[earthshine]

7. I've been noticing that a lot of commercials on CNN and MSNBC use music in somewhat tangential ways.

Songs you know or knew, often having little to do with the commercial.

Sometimes they just play the smallest snippets of the song.

I think the idea is that they take a song that people know and presumably like, and create a feeling-level association with the product. Not a direct cognitive association.

You love the song, so try our product.

[TexasBushwhacker]

8. She's touring with Heart this summer

So it's probably for publicity as much as money.

[OriginalGeek]

9. Yesterday NPR was doing a story on the flooding

and led* out with When the Levee Breaks


* pun unintended.



I am indifferent to Pat Benetar but I despise Appleby's. Even a Zep song in their commercial wouldn't get me in one.

[JimGinPA]

10. Jimmy Buffett Wasn't A Fan Of Hers Either

I saw him in the mid-eighties in St. Pete, FL, & about halfway through the show he said, "Here's something from Pat Benetar" & he collapsed onstage - to a huge laugh (this was not long after she had fainted during a concert). I thought it was in poor taste at the time, but then a few years later I read her autobiography & discovered she was a RWNJ & huge fan of Ronald Reagan & I wasn't as upset about it.