The problem with success is that it attracts the attention of sneaks, cheats, and people bent on exploitation. It may be an old story, but this particular spin on it is one we haven’t heard before: the good guys are hometown heroes Beach House, and the baddies are Volkswagen. Yes, the car company.
A year or so ago, Volkswagen (via its ad agency DDB) started hassling Beach House about using the 2010 song “Take Care” in an ad. The duo declined the (generous) financial offer. DDB kept coming back and offering more money — and the band kept declining. Simple enough, right? Except that DDB apparently couldn’t take no for an answer. Instead, they hired a bunch of Beach House sound-alikes to make a close approximation of the song for the ad spot. The real song features Victoria LeGrand’s dreamy, soaring vocals promising “I’d take care of you”; the knock-off song in the ad has a suspiciously similar-sounding woman crooning “I’ll watch over you.” The songs are so close in sound that Beach House fans were tweeting about hearing the dream pop duo in the ad — which is apparently just what Volkswagon wanted. (Watch the ad and hear the original song below the jump.)