Stephen Malkmus - Sears Commercial

Stephen Malkmus
Phantasies

A few weeks ago I was absolutely flabbergasted while typing something on the computer to hear the opening words of a Stephen Malkmus song on the TV that was on in the background. “Wake up early in Karakatu, Alaska / We put our masks on to welcome the dawn” isn’t the sort of lyrics that the average commercial will contain so I looked up immediately to watch it.

It was a commercial for a 13 hour sale at Sears that was playing on ESPN2 of all places. I can’t believe that they would choose the second song “Phantasies” out of all of them from his older self-titled album. Way to go Sears. Since then, I’ve seen the commercial about 4 or 5 times on other stations like CBS and Food Network.

The song “Phantasies” has a sort of loping gait that seems to fit in with the general attempted “edginess” that they’re attempting. But in general it is just bizarre upon bizarre to hear a song from the former king of slack-fi pimping appliances at Sears.

What is interesting is that this song actually contains profanity, I believe in the first verse of all things, but I can’t remember if they edited it out or if it was a “radio-friendly” version. In any case, I guess it’s not like Liz Phair selling out but it is a pretty big shock that only now that he’s out of Pavement that you’d hear songs like this on commercials. I mean “Cut Your Hair” would have been great for Supercuts… No Big Hair!

by Bryan