Weezer’s ‘Buddy Holly’ latest victim of twee advert syndrome

Is there anything worse than overly twee cover versions? No. No there is not. Take a perfectly great, good or just half-decent song, sap out any energy or spark it ever had, and replace with ukelele/banjo/plain old plucked acoustic guitar or something, and voilà! The wet dreams of some cash-blinded kooky advertising exec.

So whether it’s the now-annual menace of the John Lewis christmas TV ad, this take on Buzzcocks’ ‘Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve)’ starring in a Kia car promo, or someone deciding a song from ‘Grease’ - a musical - needed to be less exuberant for Sky, nobody’s safe.

Including now, Weezer. Because Honda have decided, in their infinite wisdom, that to make this 90s alternative anthem a family singalong in the worst way possible.

“The sort of ironic thing is that millennials are aging,” said the company’s assistant vice president of advertising in the US to industry publication Brandchannel, while stating the bloody obvious, “We’ve sometimes got to catch ourselves in internal meetings when we talk about this hyper-youth target, because the older end of the millennial range is a 35-year-old who is raising a family and looking at family vehicles. That’s why our marketing [for Pilot] has to be more fun and youthful than in the past.”

In this case ‘fun’ and ‘youthful’ means Hollywood director Jason Reitman (who should know better, really) helping ruin a perfectly brilliant song. Boo.