📌 In This Deep Dive
Meta’s AI commercial leverages David Bowie’s 1972 classic “Five Years” to frame artificial intelligence as a human-centric tool rather than an existential threat. We break down the paradox between the song’s apocalyptic origins and Meta’s message of corporate optimism, exploring how the ad triggers public defense mechanisms around tech ideology. Unpacking Bowie’s original NME commentary alongside Meta’s strategic spin, we examine why a commercial selling the future of technology ultimately ends up reminding us what makes us human.
When Meta released its new commercial about AI, the instant wave of public debate was completely predictable. Think about it: an ad that isn’t trying to sell you a physical product, a new feature, or a device. It’s trying to share an ideology.
It’s understandable. Whenever a tech giant or an official authority tries to sell us a worldview, our collective defense mechanisms kick in immediately. We become suspicious, and we start picking apart every single frame of the campaign.
And so, people naturally started focusing on the soundtrack. The song in the Meta commercial is an iconic classic by David Bowie, and on paper, there’s nothing wrong with that. The problem is that the track is famously about the end of the world. Which brings up an obvious question: why would a commercial aimed at sharing optimism about the future use a song about the end of humanity?
“Five Years”: The David Bowie Song in the Meta AI Commercial & Its Meaning
The song featured in the Meta commercial is “Five Years,” the opening track from David Bowie’s 1972 album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.
![David Bowie - Five Years (Live) [Official Video] [HD]](https://auralcrave.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-youtube-lyte/lyteCache.php?origThumbUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2F8gPSGrpIlkc%2F0.jpg)
On paper, Meta’s intention with the track is straightforward. The commercial tries to address the widespread anxiety around artificial intelligence, reframing AI not as a force that will disrupt human connection, but as a tool people can use to improve their lives. It is a message meant to spread optimism and counter the growing fear that technology is making us isolated.
Meanwhile, underneath the visuals, we hear David Bowie sing these lines:
I heard telephones, opera house, favourite melodies
I saw boys, toys, electric irons and TVs
My brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spare
I had to cram so many things to store everything in thereAnd all the fat, skinny people
And all the tall, short people
And all the nobody people
And all the somebody peopleI never thought I’d need so many people
In the context of Bowie’s original song, those lyrics aren’t optimistic at all. Back in the early 1970s, Cold War paranoia was at its peak, and people were living with the genuine fear of a nuclear apocalypse. David Bowie’s “Five Years” sets the stage for his album by telling a story about an Earth that has just learned it has exactly five years left before complete destruction.
Faced with an impending end, the song’s protagonist doesn’t start buying canned food or building a bunker. Instead, he decides to start hoarding human memories. He frantically absorbs everything around him: the music, everyday objects, art, and the faces of random strangers on the street. Because when the end is near, you suddenly appreciate the beauty of human connection, realizing just how much you actually needed it.
So how does all of this match the message and the actual meaning of Meta’s commercial?
The Focus on People
At its core, those lyrics in “Five Years” point to a simple truth: when everything is stripped away, the only thing that truly matters is human connection. The art, the music, the everyday strangers in the street, the shared memories… that is where the protagonist’s mind immediately goes when he learns the clock is ticking down.
In a roundabout way, Meta’s commercial is trying to tap into that exact same instinct. It wants to reassure us that, as humans, we will always stay grounded in our natural human dimension. We aren’t going to let AI or any other wave of technological progress dismantle the lives we actually want to live. The underlying promise is that we will treat these systems as tools to improve our world, not as forces meant to completely overhaul what makes us human.
When WIRED reached out for comment on the soundtrack, Meta spokesperson Francis Brennan actually pointed to a 1972 NME interview with David Bowie. In that interview, Bowie explained that he wanted the song to turn the public’s deep dread of an “unbelievably technological” future into a wave of optimism, basically poking fun at the intense paranoia of that era. That interview is mentioned here on bowiebible.com:
There the whole thing was to try and get a mocking angle at the future. If I can mock something and deride it, one isn’t so scared of it. People are so incredibly serious and scared of the future that I would wish to turn the feeling the other way, into a wave of optimism. If one can take the micky out of the future, and what it is going to be like… Its going to be unbelievably technological. There isn’t gong to be a triangle system, we aren’t gong to revert back to the real way of life. That’s not going to happen.
It’s certainly not a new thing, my God I haven’t got any new concept. I juggle with them, but what I’m saying, I think, has been said a million times before. I’m just saying again that we’ve gotta have some optimism in the future.
David Bowie on NME, July 1972
Not everyone buys Meta’s spin, of course, but Bowie’s original sentiment still hits on something real. By pointing our attention directly at the richness of human connection, “Five Years” reminds us who we are and what we naturally gravitate toward.
This focus on people is central to how Meta wants us to view the future of artificial intelligence. To them, all the dramatic, world-ending theories surrounding AI feel a lot like the nuclear panic people carried around in the 70s. But those existential fears tend to overlook one key detail: our survival instinct isn’t going anywhere. Humanity will always be naturally oriented toward other humans, and that instinct acts as the ultimate safeguard protecting us from any technological shift that threatens to go too far.
Meta is doing everything it can to calm our nerves because, as a massive tech giant, they are betting big on this AI future. And as the audience, we have every right to put our guards up and meet that pitch with a healthy amount of skepticism. But right in the middle of all the corporate spin and public debate, David Bowie somehow gets both sides to agree on the same core truth: we need people. We need each other, and we will always protect what makes us human.
