Swedish hard rock veterans EUROPE are seen performing their timeless hit “The Final Countdown” in a funny Geico advertisement where an everyday office worker’s burrito is almost done in the microwave. Check out the commercial and behind-the-scenes footage from the making of the ad above.

It was late 1981, early 1982. Joey Tempest was a college student in his native Sweden when he used a borrowed keyboard to compose the haunting minor-key refrain that would one day make him a star.

“I wrote it late one night when I was just trying the keyboard out, and I saved it,” Tempest tells Geico.com about the instantly recognizable introduction to “The Final Countdown“, the iconic title track of the band’s third album and a number one hit in 25 countries in 1986.

It was while preparing to record EUROPE‘s third album that his bandmates convinced him to write a song around the intro.

With its catchy synthesizers and gloriously bombastic sound, “The Final Countdown” is as much a throwback to the 1980s as leg warmers and designer jeans, despite being originally conceived as homage to David Bowie’s 1969 song “Space Oddity“.

(via Blabbermouth)