Apple Uses Racy Pixies Song in New Ad Campaign

Apple launched their new marketing tagline, “You’re more powerful than you think,” with a commercial featuring a rendition of the extremely popular Pixies song, “Gigantic.” It is a strange choice for Apple. The song’s voyeuristic lyrics describe a woman’s observation of an attractive black man making love to another woman. Pixies bassist, Kim Deal, wrote the song after watching the film Crimes of the Heart, in which a married woman falls in love with a black teenager. However, the Apple commercial only uses the song’s chorus, “Gigantic. Gigantic. Gigantic. A big, big love.”

Not only is the song’s subject strange, but the age of the song too. Apple usually uses newer songs in their advertising. Some of their recent choices have been the Sleigh Bells‘ “Rill Rill” and Lemaitre‘s “1:18.” But “Gigantic” is a classic. It was the Pixies’ first single off their first album, Surfer Rosa – Pixies in 1988.