And Love, Such A Silly Game We Play, Oh, Like A Summer's Day In May, What Is Love, What Is Love? I Just Want It To Be Love

--"Love", Matt White

The first time I heard Matt White's "Love" was in the film Little Manhattan. As soon as I heard it I knew I liked it. It had this light jazzy sound to it that complimented the movie well. Plus, the lyrics with their focus on how love is this indefinable quality that's filled with joy paralleled my own viewpoint on the subject. I made it a point to track down the title and artist of the track so that I might place in regular rotation on my playlists.

But the biggest selling point of the track was the movie itself. It went so well with the film that I just associated it as the main musical theme of the story even though on the soundtrack it isn't listed as such. I mean--they never exactly play it repeatedly throughout the film and it doesn't provide a key turning point in the plot. It's just a pleasant sounding song that really caught my ear upon my first listen. And, since I really am still enamored of the film, I continue to be enamored of the track it spawned for me. For me this song is part and parcel of the larger film it came from.


who can tell me? I am lost.
I just think that I am strong.

You can thus imagine my surprise when I heard McDonald's recent use of the song to advertise their McRib sandwich. Now I'm a huge proponent of the delectable offering, but it honestly irks me that they have appropriated this particular song for their own devices. Normally I don't mind so much the relative ease with which one song can be used for multiple purposes. I myself am tickled most of the time when I hear a song I haven't heard in a while pop up in a newer advertisement. It's also kind of cool when a song that was made popular from a movie in my youth gets recycled in a newer movie. I always think how it's wonderful that it gets exposure to a younger generation than the one I hail from--kind of like passing the torch of classic ditties down.

But damn it all, "Love" is and always should be Little Manhattan's and Little Manhattan's alone. They are just some songs that are synonymous with one particular place, one particular moment in time, or one particular element of one's life that it's rather sacrilegious to ever think of them linked to something else entirely.

I wouldn't say it spoils the song for me, but it definitely calls undue attention away from where people should first encounter in. Admittedly, it isn't misused entirely in the McDonald's ad, but it definitely lacks the "awwwWWWwww" moment it has when it's first heard in the film. I believe that's what annoys me, that people's first impression of this song is going to be from some food advert instead of in its proper context of as the backdrop to an excellent coming-of-age/love story. For an entire group of people it's going to be a song that's dismissed because of its commercial use instead of being something to be cherished like it is for me.

I don't know--I know it's just a song. But when a song takes on meaning greater than itself the way this song has it's almost like losing a bit of the magic when you know other people are experiencing it the wrong way. For me it's like seeing the ocean at night driving by in a car when you're half-tired instead of in its full glory, standing on the shore under the noontime sun. It's like having a steak cooked by Applebee's instead of a steak cooked at a proper steakhouse. It's taking a plane trip to the city ten miles away from you instead of the other side of the country.

Sure, they're both the same song, but the context in which it's heard is the thin line between making a memory that will last a lifetime and a memory that lasts only minutes.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers