• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, January 30, 2024

A version of “Let It Be” not sung by the Beatles turned up as the theme music on a promo spot for the upcoming seventh-season premiere of “Young Sheldon.”

Seen on CBS during Sunday’s AFC Championship Game between the Chiefs and the Ravens, the promo’s linkage between “Let It Be” and the upcoming “Young Sheldon” season was hard to fathom. 

The same can be said for the many other classics of boomer-era AOR (album-oriented rock) that turn up constantly in commercials.

Will Mother Mary come to young Sheldon Cooper to speak words of wisdom “in times of trouble,” as prophesied by Lennon and McCartney in ancient times (1970)?

A time of trouble does come to the Coopers in the new season.

Call it a plot twister: A tornado destroys the home of grandma Meemaw (Annie Potts). What’s the family supposed to do, just “let it be”?

Sometimes the old songs seem to be applied more for the catchiness of their music than for their lyrics.

One recent example is the spot for Amazon Prime in which a man seems to be obsessed with making coffee, and turns to Amazon to order various gadgets that he tests at home.

The spot uses the old Chicago song “25 or 6 to 4,” also from 1970, whose hard-driving music is likely a lot better remembered than its lyrics.

The meaning of the title has been the subject of conjecture for years. Band member Robert Lamm said in an interview cited on Wikipedia that he wrote the song in the wee hours of the morning, and the “4” referred to 4 a.m.

The first verse goes like this: “Searching for the break of day, searching for something to say, dancing lights against the sky, giving up I close my eyes, sitting cross-legged on the floor, 25 or six to four.” Nowhere does the word “coffee” turn up in this song.

Written and released in an era that was famously drug-addled, many have long thought it was some kind of drug song. Maybe the Amazon man’s obsession with coffee is just as addictive.

Meanwhile, a Hyundai spot seen the other day, possibly in the same football game as the “Young Sheldon” spot, used the old Heart song “Barracuda” from 1977.

I do not recall the name of the Hyundai model or models in the spot, but none of them were named Barracuda, which was a Plymouth car brand from 1964 to 1974.

Let it be said that the song “Barracuda” has nothing to do with cars. Like many of the old rock songs (and possibly the new ones too), the meaning of the songs’ lyrics can be obscure.

The first verse of “Barracuda”: “So this ain’t the end, I saw you again, today. I had to turn my heart away. Smiled like the sun, kisses for everyone. And tales, it never fails.”

And the second verse, not the same as the first: “You lying so low in the weeds, I bet you gonna ambush me. You’d have me down, down, down, down on my knees, now wouldn’t you, barracuda?” My goodness.

The upcoming “Young Sheldon” season, shortened to 13 episodes as a result of last year’s writers’ and actors’ strikes, will be the show’s last. The season starts February 8. The show will conclude with a one-hour finale on May 16.

The performer of the “Let It Be” version heard in the promo was not identified. Aretha Franklin once recorded a version of it, but the “Young Sheldon” version was not hers.

More recently, Dolly Parton sang it with Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr on her recent album “Rockstar” released last November. Maybe the “Young Sheldon” song was hers. She has an upcoming dog special on CBS.