It’s always possible for the culture to sink lower, though the Grammy nominees for best record this year show that things can’t get too much worse. They include a title by Mr. Cee Lo Green that would have landed you in jail not so long ago if you played it over the airwaves. (It’s just boring and vulgar now.)

However, we’ve noticed a curious thing in the current race to the bottom: much of top 40 or hip hop seems to be about getting tipsy on brand-name drinks. Product placement has been going on for a long time in a variety of products, but it seems that this decade has seen an enormous increase in this form of advertising of spirits.

It would appear that this is an attempt by the makers of the products to evade the current limitations on advertising to underage youth. Charming. Possibly the only thing less attractive than much of today’s popular music is the people who run that business. Ditto for the companies advertising in this way and their Mad Men.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 4th, 2010 at 6:32 pm and is filed under business, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.