High tech companies have often used rock ‘n’ roll to show how cool their products are. When Windows 98 was launched, with great fanfare, Bill Gates personally chose the Rolling Stones’ “Start Me Up” as its advertising song, to emphasize Windows’ cool new Start button. He apparently forgot the rest of the lyrics, which include: “You make a grown man cry.”
At a computer show one year I heard Philips’ new jingle, the Beatles’ “Getting Better All the Time.” They were using a version re-recorded by other singers, but in so similar a style that I wondered why they didn’t just use the original. Then, as I listened, I realized why. After “I’ve got to admit it’s getting better, a little better all the time,” the new version elided the line: “it can’t get no worse” !
