Simple Minds‘ “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” appears in a Super Bowl ad for Facebook’s parent company, Meta, which will air during the game’s first quarter.
The commercial, called “Old Friends, New Fun,” starts at a Chuck E. Cheese-style restaurant called Questy’s that’s fallen on hard times. The animatronic band onstage in the middle of the arcade splits up, and some of the characters get removed. The hangout closes, and lead dog Harry ends up discarded on the side of the road before getting a second chance.
The commercial aims to introduce the public to Meta Quest 2 devices and show how the company is moving from an old-school social-media brand to a more futuristic platform. They’ll involve Foo Fighters in that process, too. Meta Quest VR goggles take players to Horizon Worlds and other apps and games in the metaverse, and the Foos will perform in the metaverse at Horizon Venues after Sunday’s game.
You can watch the commercial below.
Producer Keith Forsey and musician Steve Schiff wrote “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” for the 1985 film The Breakfast Club. They struggled to find an artist to record the song, getting rejected by Billy Idol, Bryan Ferry and Fixx singer Cy Curnin before Simple Minds finally agreed to record it. (Idol eventually recorded a version in 2001 for a greatest-hits compilation.) The song topped the Billboard Hot 100 and helped break the Scottish band in the U.S.
Simple Minds frontman Jim Kerr said the band “knocked it back five or six times” before relenting. “We were working on our own stuff, the album that was about to become Once Upon a Time,” he noted. “We thought, ‘We’ll be fine without your song.'”
After meeting with Forsey and The Breakfast Club director John Hughes, Kerr said they “understood the context” of the song and agreed to record it. “I think it was about six months between being approached and actually doing it – which is kind of ironic, given the success the thing went on to get,” Kerr told The Morning Call in a 2018 interview.
Other rock songs that will be heard during Sunday’s big game include Fleetwood Mac‘s “Little Lies” for Amazon Alexa, George Baker Selection’s “Little Green Bag” for Planet Fitness, Survivor‘s “Eye of the Tiger” for T-Mobile, Electric Light Orchestra‘s “Showdown” for Michelob Ultra and Bonnie Tyler‘s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” for Kia.
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