Slate's Bizbox
number 1: How popular culture gets popular.

Dirty VegasThe band that Mitsubishi made.

By Rob Walker
Posted Thursday, Sept. 19, 2002, at 11:29 AM ET

TV commercials have famously introduced a slew of obscure music artists to the mainstream public in the past couple of years. Volkswagen gave us Nick Drake, to take one often-mentioned example. Mitsubishi, though, has practically turned into an A&R scout. It brought early exposure to Groove Armada, and then turned an obscure, 2-year-old song called "Start the Commotion" into a minor radio hit. But Mitsubishi's most recent triumph pushes things to a new level: There's simply no way that Dirty Vegas would be an electronica success story if "Days Go By" hadn't found its way into Mitsubishi's rotation.

And Dirty Vegas is definitely a success story: Its self-titled debut CD has already gone gold and is in its 13th week at No. 1 on the Billboard electronic albums chart, where it has consistently placed higher than the most recent and wildly hyped offering from Moby. A sticker slapped onto my copy of the CD reads, "Includes Days Go By … as featured in the Mitsubishi Eclipse Remix Commercial." (It's the ad, by the way, in which a young woman in goofy hat does a dance in the passenger seat as she and her companions tool through the city at night. You can see it, along with the Dirty Vegas song, at Ads.com.)

Dirty Vegas consists of three English guys—Paul Harris, Steve Smith, and Ben Harris—who were basically house music fans and had been working on the periphery of the music business when they decided to record together. Paul Harris was a moderately successful DJ; Smith had a bit of experience playing in a band; Ben Harris (not related to Paul) was doing reasonably well as a producer. The first song they recorded was, in fact, "Days Go By," a mellow, hypnotic, and almost haunting piece of dance music with a minimal and electronically fiddled-with vocal track. An influential British radio DJ flogged the tune, which rose to No. 27 on the U.K. singles chart in 2001, and the band was quickly signed.

Of course, lots of stuff breaks big in Britain without making a dent here, and it's likely that, without the commercial, Dirty Vegas would have had a hard time finding its way onto American playlists. Radio here is famously cookie-cutter, and none of the most dominant formats that are repeated endlessly in every city in the country (adult contemporary, Top 40, modern rock, etc.) are a natural fit for "Days Go By" or almost anything else on the Billboard electronic chart. (Other artists in the Top 10 slots on this relatively new chart include DJ Sammy, the Happy Boys, and Amber.) This is too bad for the radio business, and too bad for us: Some of the most creative music being made today falls into a category that most programmers don't seem to be aware of.

Plenty of people complain about hipster music breaking in TV commercials, but what they ought to complain about is what an indictment this is of radio—if that business were more adventurous, Dirty Vegas wouldn't have needed Mitsubishi, and record buyers wouldn't need commercials to find new music. But it isn't, so they did. Not that Dirty Vegas is complaining: Lately the band has played on Letterman and opened a series of live dates for Moby.

As for the group's future prospects, they're hard to gauge. Most of the rest of Dirty Vegas is far less distinct than "Days Go By." An energetic instrumental number called "Throwing Shapes" would probably sound good in a club but also verges on being generic. The most recent single, "Ghosts," is marked by traditional vocals, as is most of the album. Oddly enough, many of the cuts on the disk actually sound a little too radio-ready, a kind of lite version of electronic music that might actually fit right in on many adult contemporary stations. A "bonus track" version of "Days Go By" with untreated vocals ends up sounding like Crowded House. (You can hear clips from all these songs at MSN Music.)

In other words, even though Dirty Vegas' path to chart success was unusual, the band could still end up a one-hit wonder. Which might just go to show that there's a limit to how much the music-in-advertising trend will really affect the traditional process of breaking new artists. You can almost imagine a record company listening to some band's material and musing, "Well, the overall sound is OK, but I don't hear anything strong enough to make it in a commercial."

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Notes From The Fray Editor:

Witchay Jen congratulated Walker for pointing out that electronica is relatively hard to consume via radio, and she spoke for many when she said she was annoyed by the girl in the car (Yev Kasem called her the "spasm girl"). jrs and Gigantor had a little debate about whether "Dirty Vegas" is even a band. Ex-Singer Songwriter and Anonymous debated whether selling out is worse that selling nothing at all.

Remarks From The Fray:

What's worse? A hooky, cheesy song getting in your head because you heard it on a commercial or because it was a TV theme song. Bought any cutout Rembrandts lately?

-- Dave Rygalski

(To reply, click here.)

Thank you Rob for your comments on electronica and the radio missing out on some of these bands. Although I am hestitant to talk about it because it seems like I'm telling a "best kept" most big cities have an electronica station somewhere on the dial. My car radio has been tuned to it nonstop for weeks now, because there are almost no commercials. No morning show, no DJ trying to be witty and new, just music.
As for the Mitsubishi ad, well...I don't like the girl in the goofy hat, something about her chin makes me want to kick something, but I do like the commercial. I also have a problem with the guy in the passenger seat in their "chicadachina" commercial, he's a total goofball.

-- Witchay Jen

(To reply, click here.)

I will say this, if I could do it all again, I would gladly let a corporation sponsor my songs and music. So many bands work for years for the chance to "hit the big time" and go undiscovered. Does it matter if a Hollywood or Nashville talent scout discovers you?, or a corporate ceo?. It takes money to even be played on the radio, not to mention the gobs of money needed to record, distribute,and promote music artists of all genres. So as far as Im concerned, if TacoBell uses a band to sell its goods, and the band gets discovered, its still better than playing dumpy beer joints for tips anyday !!!

-- Ex-Singer Songwriter

(To reply, click here.)

Homes, you are missing the whole point! When some ol' republican corporate fat-cat lackey "sponsors" your music, YOU HAVE LOST TOTAL CONTROL OVER YOUR MUSIC.

Just ask yourself, if General Motors or Bank Of America sponsored The Doors do you think their music would have been what it is? Or Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Bruce Springsteen, The Beatles, CCR, the list of great music with a social message is endless.

The answer is HELL NO. Jim Morrison singing about killing his father and fucking his mother is not something the corporate white-bread republican shitheads would want to be associated with. The anti-war message from bands like CCR, Dylan, The Beatles would have been anathema.

If your idea of success is "fleeting fame" and money than 'N Sync, Britney Spears, O-Town and manufactured crap like that is right up your alley.

-- Anonymous

(To reply, click here.)

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