In Popular Culture
The song is performed by private investigator Vinnie Van Lowe in the Veronica Mars episode "Kanes and Abel's." After Veronica tries to bug Vinnie's office, he asks his receptionist (also his mother) who his favorite band is, then leans out the window and sings the song to an eavesdropping Veronica. At one point he changes the chorus from "Private Eyes" to "Veronica Mars/I'm watching you." There was a popular reworking of this classic at Rockness 2010, performed by the Shire Sect and was appropriately renamed "Scanty Eyes", to encourage the practice of scanting, in particular, towards mothers on Valentine's Day.
The Disney Channel ran a DTV music video of the song, set mostly to clips from the Goofy cartoon short How to Be a Detective.
Captain Kangaroo in the early '80's had a puppet vignette of the song.
On the August 13, 2007 episode of WWE Raw, John "Bradshaw" Layfield and Michael Cole dressed up as Hall & Oates and sang versions of "Private Eyes" and "Rich Girl."
In episode 3.16 of Psych, An Evening with Mr. Yang, Detective Lassiter is shown singing along to the song playing on his iPod. USA Network later parodied the original music video to "Private Eyes" in a promo for the television series.
In the television series Chuck, the titular character included the song in his stakeout mix.
In the film Knight and Day, the song is being played on a stereo system in a safehouse of a fugitive who is an inventor who is a fan of the duo, who later sports a vintage pin.
It was made available to download on January 10, 2012 for play in Rock Band 3 Basic and PRO mode utilizing real guitar / bass guitar, and MIDI compatible electronic drum kits / keyboards plus vocal harmonies.
Read more about this topic: Private Eyes (song)
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