From speakers to lip balm, music videos advertise anything and everything. Pop stars have fallen victim to product placement faux pas in music videos, and it can be distracting from the art that these videos present.
One of my biggest pet peeves is when a song is incredible, but it goes to waste when the artist makes the video to accompany it. The track has the perfect beat, the best production and makes you want to dance, cry or maybe both at the same time.
Then the artist makes an average video with a boring, unoriginal plot line and there are so many ‘subliminal’ ads scattered throughout the footage that you actually feel cheated watching it, like the artist convinced you to buy their music only to try and get you to want a $180 Beats Pill.
Speaking of the Beats Pill, it has had its fair share of the spotlight in numerous pop music videos. In Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda” video, a bright fuchsia Pill sits inside a skull's mouth in the middle of a rain forest, apparently fueling the twerkfest that ensues.
In “Hands to Myself,” Selena Gomez casually turns the speaker on for her one-woman rendezvous in the mansion of a model she’s stalking.
And Miley Cyrus turns up her song "We Can't Stop" on the cylindrical device to get the video's smoke-filled party started. Afterwards, Cyrus heads to the bathroom to find a rainbow of Eos lip balms at her disposal on the counter and decides to slather some on before her big night of smashing french fry skulls.
In each of these occurrences, the Beats Pill is nothing but a distraction from the scenarios that are taking place.
The product is supposed to be subliminally placed for the viewers' subconscious to pick up and think they want to purchase it, but so often they’re an eye sore or they pop up at pivotal times in the video and end up interrupting the flow of the footage.
While these videos are guilty of uncomfortable Beats plugs, nothing compares to “Work B***h” by the one and only Britney Spears. Not only does this video shamelessly advertise Britney’s own perfume and Vegas residency at Planet Hollywood, it features a model holding an oversized — you guessed it — Beats Pill in her mouth. The positioning already looks painful enough, even before you add the leather harness that’s wrapped around her head.
An honorable mention goes to Ariana Grande’s “Focus” video that features her and her dancers actually taking singing selfies into Samsung smart phones.
Apparently advertising in music videos might not even be legal. According to Pitchfork, the FCC requires that “all sponsored material must be explicitly identified at the time of broadcast as paid for and by whom.”
While it’s understandable that stars sometimes want to include ads in their videos to make a little extra cash, it can become overwhelming.
I say just stick to making good music and that’ll be enough to make us want to buy a speaker to play it on.
