All You Need is Love ... the Beatles. Photograph: AP
Taste, especially musical taste, is an entirely subjective concept. One man's Lily Allen can be another man's Celine Dion. When there's money to be made, however, taste is as relevant as a West Coast train timetable. Nothing illustrates this better than Sony/ATV Music Publishing's decision to offer the Beatles' back catalogue to the TV advertisers. With 259 songs by John Lennon and Paul McCartney in its possession, Sony/ATV is now taking bids from brands angling to use the tracks in their television ads. Sony/ATV says it will only licence a song if the ad is tasteful. Given that All You Need is Love has already been snapped up by Proctor & Gamble to flog nappies in the States, Sony/ATV's powers of discrimination have clearly been thrown out with the bath water.
You have to wonder which other brands will pass this rigorous taste test. Viagra must be a shoo-in. What says erectile dysfunction better than A Hard Day's Night, Norwegian Wood, When I'm Sixty-Four and Come Together? Debt consolidation companies might well want to consider shelling out for Baby's in Black. After all, there's nothing like a bit of apposite Beatles music when you're sucking the very marrow from the bones of the insolvent. Talking of the financially challenged, Northern Rock might find solace in You Never Give Me Your Money, while Gordon Brown could bid for Taxman.
Pharmaceutical manufacturers, ailing banks and dour Scotsmen aren't the only ones who could benefit from a Beatles song. Apart from the more obvious couplings - Colmans and Mean Mr Mustard or Bonne Maman and Strawberry Fields Forever - there are a few other riskier unions. A dogging pressure group (there must be one) might like to use the White Album's Why Don't We Do it in the Road in a campaign to make their predelections more acceptable to the public, while campaigners against prostitution could take Can't Buy Me Love. Now the floodgates are open, it seems unlikely that questions of taste will deny the oldest profession a theme tune.
