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Listen to Alabama Shakes + My Morning Jacket Cover Backstreet Boys in a Moving New Chipotle Ad

Chipotle has a fantastic marketing team. Despite whatever you may think of their fast food, they make really good ads. Often taking a swipe at industrial food processing and artificial ingredients, the cutesy animations are superbly well made. But Alex, I hear you ask, Howl and Echo isn’t a marketing blog, why are we talking about a Chipotle ad? Well, first of all, it’s Howl and Echoes and secondly, each ad features a pretty great cover of a (usually) classic song. Their most recent advertisement is no exception, with a cover of The Beach Boys‘ I Want It That Way being performed by Brittany Howard of Alabama Shakes and My Morning Jacket‘s Jim James.

The ad follows two young children selling lemonade (the drink, not the album) and orange juice from competing stalls. What follows is a cautionary tale about rampant capitalism free market economics artificial ingredients and the lack of authenticity in the fast food industry, all soundtracked to the great sounds of Alabama Shakes and Jim James. The pair grow up in competition, upgrading their stalls from simple tables to buildings, to chain franchises that colour the city. In the end they discover the horrors of what their dreams have come, with horrible tasting fast food, processed en masse through machines and artificial flavours. Eventually, they remember their roots. They come together and fall in love, opening up their own family small business.

Nawww. It’s part of the same campaign as their previous ad, which saw Fiona Apple covering Pure Imagination from Willy Wonka, and was also surprisingly moving, if not exactly subtle. You can watch the latest ad below, and enjoy the sweet re-imagining of the Backstreet Boys classic.

Image: Idolator