The Clash are being used to promote the 2012 Olympics, weirdly

According to NPR Music , the 2012 Olympics organisers are planning to use The Clash’s London Calling as an ad jingle to invite people from all over the world to the capital.

It’s a pretty interesting choice, considering the apocalyptic nature of the lyrics, which celebrate the rise of the punk culture and discuss the problems of drug abuse and unemployment which troubled London in 1979. It’s likely that the advertising gurus will skim over lines like “A nuclear error, but I have no fear/‘Cause London is drowning, and I live by the river”, though, in order to repurpose the song as an inviting call of patriotic welcome.