Jarvis Cocker hosts a round table discussion in this month’s Observer Music Monthly and asks ‘Does music still matter?’

Jarvis: To start with: advertising. I don’t live in England any more but I came back the other day and was watching telly and that Johnny Cash song came on [‘Hurt’]. But it was advertising Nike trainers, and that struck me as being a particularly inappropriate use of music.

Nick Cave: I personally find that offensive. Iggy Pop’s ‘Lust For Life’ was used for a car ad. I used to drive around in my car when I was 19 screaming that song, and it had an anti-establishment purpose. For it now to be appropriated by the advertising industry … I think that’s fucked. I don’t know what situation the people who have written the music are in, if they need the money or … I’m not trying to take the moral high ground but I wouldn’t allow my music to be used in that way.

Jarvis: Do you get offers?

Nick Cave: Often. There’s a song called ‘Red Right Hand’, and a sanitary napkin company back in New Zealand wanted to use it, which was tempting … but that was the closest I’ve ever come.

I was tempted to make a glib comment about all this, particularly in the light of the mind-boggling prospect of the Bad Seeds’ ‘Red Right Hand’ soundtracking a sanpro ad (that’s just wrong) but as a big fan of both Johnny Cash and Nick Cave, it did make me think. Are we agencies doing a bad thing? Personally, I find the use of ‘Hurt’ on the Nike ad (from W+K Amsterdam) a respectful and moving use of the song, but I may be biased and clearly not everyone feels that way. There is a danger that ad agencies and record labels piss in the cultural water supply by taking pieces of music that are meaningful and important to people and devalue them by putting them to commercial use. (There was a fuss when The Beatles ‘Revolution’ was used on a Nike ad a few years ago. And I remember feeling somehow personally let down when The Clash consented to having ‘Should I stay or should I Go’ used on a Levi’s ad. Who’s working for the clampdown now, boys? I thought. And it does cheer the nonconformist in me a little bit every time I hear that Tom Waits has refused yet another lucrative offer to use one of his songs on an ad.)

But the artists can always say no. And most ads are pretty ephemeral. And the exposure of an ad camapign can bring artists a wider audience than they might otherwise expect. (Conversely to my comments about The Clash, I was delighted when Vauxhall put The Fall’s ‘Touch Sensitive’ on their Corsa Hide and Seek ad. Better musical taste than we ususally see from agency DLKW.) Long after the ads are gone and forgotten, the music will live on. If it’s any good. Who else remembers that Levi’s ad with the Clash song now?