Why The Song In One A Day's One Body Commercial Sounds So Familiar

Sometimes commercials stick in your head not because of their product or message, but because of the song that accompanies them. One example is the recent 15-second TV spot titled "One Body," which advertises multivitamins made by One A Day. Featuring a series of quick shots of diverse people demonstrating the benefits of being healthy and happy, the commercial features an edit of two songs by Nina Simone, according to Looper. The edited 1968 song "I Ain't Got No/I Got Life" was a mashup of "Ain't Got No" and "I Got Life," both of which were written and performed for the play Hair.

The lyrics "Got my hair, got my head, got my brains, got my ears, got my heart, got my soul, got my mouth, got my smile" are featured in the One A Day commercial, but in the song from which they are taken, Simone is singing about those things that can never be taken away from her.

Nina Simone might have died almost 20 years ago, but her legacy — and message — lives on through modern media. Besides commercials such as "One Body" by One A Day, she was also the subject of an Oscar-nominated documentary by Liz Garbus in 2015 titled What Happened, Miss Simone? (per IMDb). The documentary showcased Simone's music alongside her political activism, including her famous song "Mississippi Goddamn," which was written as a response to a 1963 bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four young black girls, according to AirTalk. 

That same year, actress Zoe Saldana played the songstress in a biopic, for which the actress received harsh reviews for darkening her skin and wearing a nose prosthetic, reports CNN. Saldana apologized in 2020, saying, "I thought back then that I had the permission because I was a Black woman. And I am. But it was Nina Simone, and Nina had a life and she had a journey that should be honored to the most specific detail, because she was a specifically detailed individual" (via IndieWire).