Acura #Fail
October 6, 2014 § Leave a comment
Acura is a luxury car maker, owned by Honda Motor Company. It has a new ad on TV I’ve seen a few times, and every time I see it, I’m completely gobsmacked. The ad, which I’ve posted below, shows a generic luxury car, but it’s the music that shocks. That’s Sid Vicious, former “bassist” for the Sex Pistols, mangling “My Way,” Paul Anka’s song made famous by Frank Sinatra.
Vicious, real name John Simon Ritchie, wasn’t a musician. His bass was usually unplugged when the Pistols played live. He was a junkie and a general degenerate, what would today be called a ‘gutter punk.’ On 12 October 1978, Vicious killed his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, in a drug-stupor in the Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan. He stabbed her once in the abdomen, and she bled to death. Vicious was arrested. He eventually died of a drug overdose on 2 February 1979. No major loss, really.
Aside from the fact that Acura has clearly missed the point of 1970s punk, a movement against corporate rock and other creeping commercialisation, Acura has completely lost the plot in casting a girlfriend-killing junkie’s music as a means of selling a car. This is a complete and utter disgrace and a #fail.
Matthew Barlow 
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