SELLOUT: Elvis Costello hawks Lexus, Visa

Posted May 10th, 2007 by eric

It pains me to do this, but Elvis Costello has stepped over the line. The man has always flat-out refused to allow his music to be used in any television commercials, a subtler middle-finger to the man than his famed 1977 Saturday Night Live performance. But, the other night, much to my horror, I saw an ad for Lexus which featured Costello himself (not his music) talking up the finer points of Beethoven in the back seat of the luxury car. It’s pretty cringe-worthy to sit through. Incidentally, his wife Diana Krall, has an equally embarrassing pitch for the car-maker, except she extolls the virtues of jazz.

In other shitty sellout news, if you had wanted to attend the Elvis Costello and the Imposters’ show at the House of Blues in Chicago last night, you could have only bought tickets with a Visa Signature card. No American Express. No Mastercard. No cash. It’s a slippery slope. Once that wallet starts getting fat from the corporate suits, it’s hard to say no. And he and Krall just had twins last year, so maybe times are tight. Either way, both are blatant sellouts.

Tags: news

6 responses so far ↓

  • 1 selloutmakemore // May 15, 2007 at 3:34 pm

    when you “sell out” you make more of your product and then “sell more”
    it’s so easy for an idiot nobody who hasn’t yet accomplished very much to hide on his little perch behind his garage and shout “sell out”
    it all seems so shallow to me…i just saw the commercial and tried to find the name of the music…i’ve heard it before…but i want to thank EC for turning me onto this “new” music…i liked that he compared it to ROCKnROLL…check out my songs on youtube at “kuddlemeister” song name “myHeart,MyHeart”….you can leave any nasty reply there…i won’t be back to this blog…eva

  • 2 eric // May 16, 2007 at 2:14 pm

    wha?

  • 3 k // May 21, 2007 at 12:11 am

    wow. Did you watch My Heart, My Heart?

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  • 5 SELLOUT: Elvis Costello's Lexus ad // May 31, 2007 at 8:53 am

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