Velvet Underground’s classic “I’ll Be Your Mirror” serves as the soundtrack for a new Expedia Super Bowl ad. The song is taken from the group’s 1967 debut album The Velvet Underground & Nico.
Listen to the super deluxe edition of The Velvet Underground & Nico now.
In the clip, the band’s song soundtracks a mother booking a trip to Norway to see the Northern lights after seeing how much her child loves them. This is the first advertisement featuring the Velvet Underground song, and the first national campaign featuring a song from the group, since a Nissan Xterra campaign in 2003. Check out the clip below.
When The Velvet Underground & Nico was being written, the group was part of a subculture developing on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, along with The Fugs and The Holy Modal Rounders. During their earliest stages of development, Lou Reed, John Cale, and Sterling Morrison began accepting offers to soundtrack underground movies (Moe Tucker would join the group in a few months), after experimental filmmaker Piero Heliczer asked them to play live while his films were projected onto a screen. This association began in spring 1965, before “Happenings” became all the rage; some of the material the Velvets played, including “Venus In Furs” and “Heroin,” would end up on their debut album.
On March 12 of 1967, The Velvet Underground & Nico Produced By Andy Warhol (as it was presented upon release) was finally in the stores and featured what are now considered Lou Reed standards, “I’m Waiting For the Man,” “There She Goes Again” and “Sunday Morning.”
The release of The Velvet Underground & Nico was somewhat delayed thanks to a special machine that had to be made in order to create Warhol’s original sleeve, which featured a banana-shaped sticker that peeled off to reveal the fruit. It is now regarded as one of the most important albums of the 1960s.
The Velvet Underground & Nico can be bought here.
