“Different strokes, for different folks, and so on and so on, and scooby dooby dooby.” These lyrics, awkwardly sung by hall-of-famer Cher, backed with ad-libs drenched in autotune by rapper Future, have made their way onto the “For You” page of thousands of TikTok users as the 2017 Gap commercial the singing originates from resurfaces. Met with parodies, jokes, and even hateful comments from TikTok users, viewers watching Cher and Future are really left questioning, “What on Earth are they doing?”
“This song is a riddle,” one user comments on a video posting the lyrics. “Cher is really just hootin’ and hollerin’” jokes another. “WHAT IS THIS WOMAN TALKING ABOUT?” exclaims a third. And they aren’t wrong. The unexpected- and honestly mismatched- duo really do sound laughable in the commercial, Cher’s singing choppy and Future’s words mumbled over an incohesive beat. What were they trying to accomplish here?
The commercial aired as a part of a Gap campaign, “Meet Me in the Gap,” a promotion of inclusivity centered around celebrating bringing together diversity and “what can be created when distinct people connect and discover they have more in common than what divides them,” hence the seemingly strange duo of 60’s and 70’s icon Cher and modern rap artist Future.
“Everyday People,” originally sung by Sly and the Family Stone in 1969, once topping charts, has become a joke amongst social media in the 2017 rendition, but the lyrics themselves suit the campaign like a perfectly fit Gap sweater. Not only does it fit the campaign, but playing back some original recordings and classic covers, the song has a lot to offer for today’s current world of listeners.
The 2017 cover sounds, to put it frankly, off; that’s because it took the lyrics out of their original upbeat and soulful song and dropped them into a sound that they simply weren’t made for. The lyrics feel more natural coming from its original album “Stand!” and featured on compilation albums like “R&B: From Doo-Wop To Hip-Hop,” where Sly and the Family Stone are masters of their genre in soul and funk. The lines like “scooby dooby dooby” flow like they aren’t just words dropped into the middle of the song, and instead add an aspect of fun to the upbeat tempo, and the chanting of lines like “there is a blue one who can’t accept the green one” reminiscent of childhood playground songs acts as commentary on how childish judgement and exclusion are.
Covered countless times by artists like Joan Jett, Aretha Franklin, Billy Paul, and Jeff Buckley, the lyrics are much more comprehensive when backed with some soul as they were when first sung in 1969. The sentiments that Sly Stone brings, telling listeners that his “own beliefs are in my song,” bringing up that “I am no better, and neither are you; We are the same whatever we do; I am everyday people!” are all ideas that listeners today can apply to their own lives.
Music communicates and expresses, and most importantly, connects. As the 2017 Cher and Future cover resurfaces (albeit it a little unpleasant to play), listeners can wind back to older versions, backed by more funk and soul, connecting the lyrics that express the importance of diversity and living together peacefully to today’s atmosphere that still, five decades after the original release, is wrought with racism, sexism, and prejudice, hopefully taking away a bit more than a rendition that doesn’t do the song justice.