Capitalism has chosen chaos. Taco Bell, home of the Flamin’ Hot® Cool Ranch® Doritos® Locos Tacos Supreme®, recruited Doja Cat to cover the Hole classic, “Celebrity Skin,” with reworked lyrics from Courtney Love herself.
In “The Grande Escape,” Doja Cat is despondent in the Clown Conformus cafeteria, staring down a burger as a dreary voice on the loudspeakers announces the ice cream machine is still broken. She is not lovin’ it.
But under her party hat, a Fire Sauce packet offers deliverance. Her crew makes a run for it, hijacks a clown car, and pummels through the gates of the Clown Conformus, as if they’re shouting at the air itself, “Oh, make me over.” The wind, in turn, grants their wish to Live Más and strips the chalky paint from each and every pore. They will never wake up in their clown makeup again. Another gust sends their mustard sack uniforms into the ether, revealing the leather jackets that I guess they were wearing under there the whole time.
Back at the Clown Conformus, a new set of depressed jesters encounters the Fire Sauce, igniting the fire inside them. At long last, our trailblazing OG crew makes it to Taco Bell. The taste of freedom, it turns out, is spicy.
If 30 seconds isn’t enough for you to enjoy the Shawshank Redemption our generation deserves, a BTS video features a full-length version of the song, which you can also find on the streaming service of your choice.
Doja’s voice is a better fit for grunge than you may expect from her hyper glossy pop music and takes on a bit of gravel for the occasion. As for the new lyrics, the changes are pretty negligible. She sings “bitches” instead of “sluts” so we can infer that Taco Bell is a sex-positive fast-food chain.
“I’ve enjoyed every moment of this campaign,” the rapper said in a press release. “Especially the ones where we get to break all the rules, and look forward to continuing collaborating with the brand.”
If you say so!
You can catch the ad during the fourth quarter of the big game.