Why These Musicians Refused to Sell Their Songs to Advertisers

A sanitary napkin company in New Zealand once wanted “Red Right Hand,” and the fact that the offer existed almost sounds like a dark joke written by Cave himself. He turned it down, later explaining that he found the use of meaningful music in advertising offensive, especially when songs with rebellious or dangerous energy were softened into commercial tools. The stance has not been perfectly absolute forever; he later allowed the same song to appear in an Australian tourism campaign because the context felt different to him.