Pandora’s Commercial Featuring Halle and Chloe – Did They Change the Original Song?

There’s this song out there that I’ve been listening to kind of regularly lately. So I was surprised to hear it in a commercial because… it’s old! What do you think about the song in the new Pandora commercial:

---

The Song. To be clear, this version of the song “To Love Somebody” isn’t old at all. It’s by sister singers Chloe and Halle Bailey who go by the name Chloe x Halle. But go back a few decades for this version from Michael Bolton in the mid-1990s.

---

Well guess what? We can go back even further than that. Here’s the original from The Bee Gees in the 1960s.

---

Lyrics Matter, Though. Chloe and Halle can sing. No question! I remember their performance of “America, The Beautiful” a few years back and it’s beautiful. This Pandora commercial is for Valentine’s Day, which we all know, but I’m really miffed that they’d pick a song of which they’d need to change the lyrics to make it fit the ad. No. Just no. Notice how the lyrics were changed in a key way…

From: “You don’t know what it’s like to love somebody the way I love you.”

To: “You must know what it’s like to love somebody the way I love you.”

Changing one word changes the entire tone of the song and unfortunately, the bleeding heart in the early versions is lost in the new version. It’s replaced by lyrics that just don’t draw out any detectable emotions. Pretty visuals, fine idea, but just needed a different song choice. They aren’t doing justice to a song that evokes so much heartache, hope, and love.

---

-Out of the Wilderness