There are your standard “so-bad-they’re-good” commercials, and then there’s the commercial for Microsoft’s new Songsmith software, which sets a new standard for “unintentionally hilarious and blissfully unaware of it.”
At least a commercial that extols the virtues of “losing weight with AYDS” can use the excuse that the deadly affliction hadn’t yet entered public consciousness at the time the advertisement was made. The company responsible for the Songsmith abomination, though? Nuh-uh. You guys ain’t getting out of this one that easily.
Okay, let’s start off with the not-so-bad. I’m not ashamed to admit that I like musicals, and if the world were literally a stage, I think it would be damn fun (at least for a little while, if Buffy is to be believed). Also, I guess that the underlying tech behind Songsmith – a program that produces Casio-style muzak underneath whatever you warble into your computer microphone – is potentially pretty cool. There, that’s what’s tolerable.
Everything else, though, is just one disaster after another; I’m honestly not sure where to begin. It isn’t so much that the cast just sings its way through some of the blandest and most generic tunes I’ve heard since the local rock station started playing the new Nickelback album, as much as it is the fact that … these people are producing a commercial full of so much cheese it would make Green Bay feel insecure, and just seem completely oblivious.
There’s so much unintentional hilarity in the four-minute long commercial that it’s really something that literally needs to be seen in order to be believed. Our favorite line: “Microsoft, huh? So it’s pretty easy to use.”
Really, though, that one guy’s expression at ~3:15 sums up the entire commercial quite nicely.
Alas, one can’t help but wonder what masterpieces the late, great Wesley Willis could have whipped up with Songsmith if he were still around today. The world will never know.
Update: Apparently, Gizmondo has discovered that David Lee Roth and Singsmith is a winning combination. Boy, is it ever.
