And they're all made out of ticky-tacky

I've seen some people criticising that advert that uses a version of "Little Boxes" as its jingle to sell mobile phones or whatever it's for (I never remember what adverts are advertising - ad companies really need to work on that), but the advert at least follows the same basic theme as the original song. There are quite a lot of adverts nowadays that take cynical songs and just strip out the cynical parts to make a happy piece of music to illustrate whatever they're selling. My three favourites:

"Smile" by the Supernaturals - an advert for Sky TV or something along those lines, uses the "Smile, smile, smile" chorus to leave viewers with the impression that happy programmes are coming on telly (or whatever the advert's for), but anyone who knows the song will surely just carry on after that and sing "Cause that's all that you've got left, your life's a mess, you've been cut adrift...". For me it just makes me think of the brilliant opening line of that song, "Every silver lining has a cloud!"

"Lucky You" by the Lightning Seeds - used in a Halifax bank advert that cleverly fades the song in and out so you only hear the words "Oh lucky you", and not the immediately preceding "If it's really true..." This one starts with the line "You're lying again, you say you don't but then you do," which is even more appropriate for a bank.

"Happy Ending" by Mika - an advert for shampoo or something similar, which has to be my personal favourite because at the end of the ad they didn't even edit out the backing singers singing "This is the way you left me, I'm not pretending, no hope, no love, no glory, no hap--" before it abruptly cuts off. Did they just choose a piece of music at random and play it in the background?

I've become so cynical these days. I don't know how it started, but it won't go away...