Ad out of hell

I've got an idea. Let's pitch our product apparently aimed at teenagers by using a parody of a 30-year-old rock song about losing one's virginity.



How long do you think it took Meat Loaf to agree to do this ad? Five seconds? Two seconds? "So, let's see, you'll pay me to appear in the ad, and then I'll also get residuals because you're using a parody of my song? 'Let me sleep on it!!!' Heh, you guys get it? That's a line in the song. I'm just fucking with you, let's make it happen."

I would like to know what Tiffany is doing there. For one thing, she's 24 years younger than Meat Loaf, making her an unlikely candidate to be that kid's mom (although she's 20 years older than the actor, Adam Cagley, which just makes it not really creepy to cast her in that role). For another, why is she there? Okay, they needed a female vocalist, but she has virtually nothing to do in the 30-second version of the spot, which AT&T had to know was the only one that was going to air in any real capacity. Even in the interminable 90-second version that exists online, she basically has one line to sing. You could have paid a session singer to record the line and some extra to mouth it; I'm guessing that would have been cheaper. On the other hand, maybe Tiffany's presence will be used to justify a spinoff ad featuring the parody song "I Want a GoPhone Now."

Here's another question: why is this kid so pissed off? Or, more importantly, why did the writer(s) of this ad make him so pissed off? We've never seen you before, guy. We have no idea how many times you've asked for a GoPhone, nor do we give a shit. Calm down. Really, he just sounds whiny and annoying; this should have been a parody of Caddyshack where Ted Knight growls at him, "You'll get nothing and like it!" (If they can make Fred Astaire dance with a vacuum cleaner, they can drop Ted Knight into this ad rather than exhuming the career of a pop music footnote like Tiffany.)

Finally, the transposition of lyrics in the parody just creeps me out, in particular the kid's promise to love his dad until the end of time - you may recall from the song that this is a promise Meat Loaf makes so that his (presumably virginal) girlfriend will let him fuck her. So yeah, that's totally appropriate. We might need a commercial featuring "I Would Do Anything for a GoPhone (But I Won't Do That)," just to clear things up.