Father John Misty Releases “Real Love Baby,” Rejects Burrito Money
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It’s been a whole day since our last post about Father John Misty, so hey, it’s about time for an update! In all seriousness, some of us are feeling a little bit of Father John Misty news fatigue right about now. But we at Stereogum pride ourselves on being the world’s premiere source for rock burrito news, so we couldn’t let this particular story go unmentioned.
During his performance at Newport Folk Festival over the weekend, Father John Misty revealed that he was offered $250,000 to cover the Backstreet Boys’ “I Want It That Way” for a Chipotle ad, Consequence Of Sound reports. “I just got asked to do a Chipotle commercial not that long ago. I’ll tell you this: They were going to pay me a quarter of a million dollars to sing ‘I Want It That Way’ by the Backstreet Boys,” Josh Tillman told the audience. “Yup. That’s my life. I was like, cool, so then I could just buy, like, two Cadillacs and crash them together. I don’t want your fucking burrito money.” My Morning Jacket’s Jim James and Alabama Shakes’ Brittany Howard ended up recording the cover for the ad instead, joining the hallowed ranks of Chipotle collaborators that also include Fiona Apple, Karen O, Willie Nelson, and almost (but not quite) Frank Ocean.
It’s possible that Father John Misty is trying to preserve his artistic integrity by rejecting Chipotle’s offer. But maybe he was just holding out for Frank Ocean money. Or maybe he’s #TeamTaco? Yeah, he probably would have done it for Taco Bell. Anyway, you can find footage of his speech below, along with his responses on social media and the commercial itself.
Point of the Chipote story was a discussion on whether folk music is good for anything anymore other than just the selling of things
— FARMER JAH MISERY (@fatherjohnmisty) July 26, 2016
@jetfury @pitchfork have you seen this fucking commercial? It's like if Orwell got hired by an ad agency
— FARMER JAH MISERY (@fatherjohnmisty) July 26, 2016
In other Father John Misty news, he finally released an official version of “Real Love Baby,” the surprise one-off that he put up on SoundCloud back in May. Hear that below.
