Banger Rock Songs That Got A Second Life In Commercials

You can always tell a beloved rock song has reached the status of the all-time greats when it's considered catchy enough to be included in advertising campaigns. Or at least that's what seems to be true in the corporate world, where brand recognition often meets pop culture to sell everything from luxury cars to prescription drugs.

What makes a successful band turn over some of its best-known work to be used as a theme song for cars, beer, or medication? Perhaps these acts have seen a drop off in popularity and recognize the opportunity to get their songs potentially in front of millions of listeners, reminding them of how amazing their glory days were. Or maybe the prospect of enormous wealth that often comes from licensing a song for commercial use is too tempting to pass up. Sometimes, the artists aren't even involved in the decision-making process at all, depending on who owns the publishing rights to the music. In those cases, executives are making the choice, even if the band shares in the revenue.

Whether you've heard Led Zeppelin crooning "Rock and Roll" in service of luxury cars or bopped along while Queen lent "Don't Stop Me Now" to a slew of different companies, these songs have acquired interesting second lives as advert soundtracks.

No matter what the true story behind Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now" is, there seems to be nothing the bouncy tune can't sell. In fact, this could be the most versatile song ever attached to an advertising campaign, thanks to the joyful chorus, "Don't stop me now/ I'm havin' such a good time, I'm havin' a ball." With a slogan like that propelling your product, you have an instant happiness factor associated with whatever you happen to be selling.

So many companies have picked up the song as the theme for their commercials, it's hard to know if customers associate it with any specific product. There's a 2008 U.K. ad for Cadbury Dairy Milk, and in 2013, an ad for Visa used the song, too. A 2019 Super Bowl ad for Amazon worked the song into the mix, with a litany of celebrities like Harrison Ford, Ilana Glazer, and ex-astronaut Senator Mark Kelly using Alexa items that didn't make the grade. Then, there's the 2021 Tesco commercial that showed families dashing around getting ready for Christmas with Queen's ditty playing instead of Christmas carols.

There are many more examples of the song accompanying product promotions — too many to name here. But if you've seen ads for Silk, Toyota, or L'Oréal, to name a few others, you've probably heard it playing in those, too. With so much commercial resurrection for this tune, Queen may be the reigning monarchs of ad-based needle drops.

There are a few false things people believe about Led Zeppelin, and one of them is that the band was above licensing its music for commercial use: The band's classic "Rock and Roll" became the soundtrack for Cadillac commercials in the early 2000s for the manufacturer's Break Through campaign. Originally, the ad agency that created the campaign intended to use "Break on Through" by The Doors, but the eco-conscious drummer wouldn't approve using the music for a fossil-fuel-heavy product like a car, even if it was a Cadillac.

To find a replacement, the ad execs shuffled through songs until they came upon "Rock and Roll" and obtained the rights, which disappointed the "no sell-out" purist rock fans. It's easy to suspect that the target consumers for the ads were boomers with cash to spend, and for whom Led Zeppelin's music holds great meaning. But the cash flow didn't last long; Cadillac dropped the song in 2006 and launched a new Led-free campaign.

This visual "Rock and Roll" reconnection for the band came before the band released a new, official video for an extended and remastered version of the song in 2014. For a song from a band that broke up over 40 years ago, that's a lot of reconstituted 21st-century play.

One of the more popular go-to rock songs that car manufacturers gravitate toward when creating their commercials belongs to the British rock band Blur. Even if you don't recognize the title, you undoubtedly know the driving guitars backing up an emphatic falsetto "WOO HOO!" from lead singer Damon Albarn. It's a clarion call for good times that's been adopted by several brands throughout the decades.

Labatt Blue beer may have produced one of the first commercials to put the tune to use. The 1998 clip landed the year after the song was released as a single. It featured a four-member crew racing grocery trolleys back to their home store so they could grab enough quarters from the rent-a-cart system, similar to the one Aldi uses, to afford a few bottles of Labatt at their local bar.

But maybe that's not where you heard it; maybe it was a car company that used "Song 2" as its background music instead. Try a Toyota Corolla ad from 1999 that picked up on the catchy chant with the tagline, "Put more WOO in HOO you are." For a bit of poshness in your vehicle of choice, a BMW commercial from 2018 that used the tune promised both style and adventure. And if neither of those is rugged enough for you, maybe hearing the song in a 2025 Nissan Pathfinder ad will persuade you to upgrade your whip.

If you're going to license your music to be used in advertisements, you might as well make them as meaningful as possible. Maybe that's what Robbie Robertson and the other members of the Band were thinking when they agreed to let their beloved 1968 song "The Weight" be used to sell beer. You may not know the song by its name, but you definitely know it by the famous chorus that begins, "Take a load off, Fanny." And when it showed up in a Budweiser Super Bowl commercial in 2024, it felt brand-new again.

The storyline is one of dedication and perseverance, where a Budweiser delivery has been ground to a halt by a snowstorm. Rather than relying on modern trucking to move the kegs, the driver resorts to old-fashioned horsepower, in the most literal sense. The historic Budweiser Clydesdales prove to be hoofed heroes when the delivery man loads up his haul to the horses instead. They're able to deliver Bud to a snowbound tavern. The path is treacherous, but the massive beasts come trotting around the corner to excited barking from the bar's hound dog. The ad ends with the dog licking a Clydesdale's snout in appreciation.

This is one of those moving ads that merges emotional visuals with a classic song that sparks instant nostalgia. It also reminds many viewers who've forgotten how powerful a band The Band was, and how much weight "The Weight" still carries.

Before Chicago landed squarely in the middle of the road in the middle of the '80s, the band was adept at arranging semi-experimental rock tunes that utilized deft horn accents, courtesy of a horn section that gave the band its signature sound. One of the brassiest examples of this fusion was "25 or 6 to 4," a high-energy exploration of being pressed for time with a title that sounds like a cryptic code. At first, it seems out of place in the Amazon commercial that brought it back to life. But once the lyrics pair up with the images that accompany the song, the underlying message proves to be a clever piece of modern advertising.

Showing a couple with a toddler who won't sleep, the lyrics "Waiting for the break of day/ Getting up to splash my face/ Wanting just to stay awake" play as the doting stay-at-home dad orders an espresso machine from Amazon, which gives him and his working wife more pep in the morning. Really, it's a reference to the songwriter checking the clock during a bout of insomnia, while writing the lyrics and realizing what a nifty patter it adds.

Critics consider this to be one of Chicago's finest songs, which makes it strange to see it being recycled to peddle appliances for the world's biggest global retailer. If it means getting more exposure and some residuals long after the song's initial era has passed, maybe it's worth the sacrifice.