Like a bad boyfriend, brands lie and cheat. There’s no short­age of exam­ples, includ­ing Volk­swa­gen most recent­ly, but also Ama­zon, Apple and Google, among oth­ers. And, like an inse­cure girl­friend, if con­sumers love a giv­en brand enough, they are more than will­ing to for­give – after per­haps a peri­od of cooled inti­ma­cy.

Brand­ing experts almost uni­ver­sal­ly agree Diesel­gate won’t do any long-term dam­age to Volkswagen’s rep­u­ta­tion, pro­vid­ed it goes through the appro­pri­ate motions and demon­strates con­tri­tion while embrac­ing a bold new era and remind­ing its con­sumers why they loved the brand in the first place.

It has all the trap­pings of a hit pop song. Tay­lor Swift, are you lis­ten­ing?

So, in that spir­it, here are 10 songs that illus­trate fur­ther nuances of the mod­ern brand-con­sumer rela­tion­ship.

1. Destiny’s Child’s “Say My Name”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQgd6MccwZc It’s only get­ting eas­i­er to catch – and out – liars.

And con­sumers do.

In fact, Antho­ny Pens­abene, dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing asso­ciate at SEO firm Evolv­ing SEO, said it’s grow­ing more dif­fi­cult for brands to main­tain good rep­u­ta­tions due to the bar­rage of avail­able social sig­nals.

“If a brand deliv­ers on its sales promise, that’s expect­ed. There’s no sto­ry there,” he said. “But if a brand wrongs the con­sumer or gen­er­ates a cause for neg­a­tive news, the sharks smell blood in the water. I don’t think there’s been a shift in that truth, yet, today, it’s way eas­i­er to spread scan­dalous news in real time and com­pound it with social media com­menters.”

Fur­ther, Barak Kas­sar, part­ner at dig­i­tal brand-build­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions firm Ras­sak, said screw­ing up is much more dan­ger­ous now and blow­back is much hard­er to con­trol because every con­sumer has a voice on social media.

“Where­as brands need­ed to be good at adver­tis­ing, PR, and prod­uct in the past, now they need to be good at adver­tis­ing, PR, prod­uct, and the intri­ca­cies of com­mu­ni­cat­ing and par­tic­i­pat­ing on the social stage,” he said. “I’m not sure it’s about [his­to­ry] as much as it’s about mean­ing of the brand – and of course time can increase mean­ing.”

2. Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Faf1ch7Q9XE Stan­dards are chang­ing and con­sumer expec­ta­tions are shift­ing.

In fact, Rebec­ca Brooks, founder of mar­ket research firm Alter Agents, not­ed there is a shift in which brands are held more account­able for their actions than in the past.

“His­tor­i­cal­ly, we have had a cer­tain com­fort lev­el with cor­po­ra­tions being a bit ‘evil.’ Erin-Brokovich-style activism first brought this to our atten­tion, but there was still this idea that those poor peo­ple were affect­ed, but it does­n’t affect me,” she said. “Now, peo­ple are much more like­ly to pun­ish a cor­po­ra­tion for bad behav­ior even if they weren’t direct­ly impact­ed. You see pres­sure on brands like McDon­ald’s to com­bat child­hood obe­si­ty – even though you have the option of not eat­ing there. Chipo­tle has carved out a huge niche in this space by being trans­par­ent, social­ly active and will­ing to take finan­cial hits to keep their val­ues – non-GMO pork sourc­ing prob­lems took car­ni­tas off the menu for many months.”

3. Aretha Franklin’s “Respect”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FOUqQt3Kg0 Today’s brands have to walk the line.

“Brands have to be able to deliv­er on their val­ue propo­si­tion in a con­sis­tent man­ner that fits the expec­ta­tions of the cus­tomer,” said Cal­lum Beat­tie, part­ner at strate­gic cre­ative agency Hon­est Agency. “If they don’t, I don’t think it mat­ters if it’s Uber or Coke, they will lose cus­tomer loy­al­ty and mar­ket share.”

4. TLC’s “No Scrubs”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrLequ6dUdM The bad boy arche­type is los­ing its lus­ter.

Brooks said grow­ing resent­ment about income inequal­i­ty mean cor­po­ra­tions with high sales and large prof­its are met with skep­ti­cism and frus­tra­tion.

“Local, hand­craft­ed, arti­sanal are all on the rise and will only get stronger as con­sumers look for oppor­tu­ni­ties to vote with their dol­lars on orga­ni­za­tions that ben­e­fit and improve their com­mu­ni­ties,” Brooks said. “Com­peti­tors that have a strong moral posi­tion and trans­par­ent brand will out­pace com­peti­tors.”

5. Spice Girls’ “Wannabe”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJLIiF15wjQ A brand is at the mer­cy of a consumer’s cir­cle of friends.

“The pow­er is now in the hands of the con­sumer,” Beat­tie said. “Brands can’t tell peo­ple what they should think any­more. Con­sumers talk to each oth­er and com­pare notes at light­ning speed.

“It’s very dif­fi­cult for brands to keep up to con­sumer atti­tudes and behav­iors,” he added. “The brands that are get­ting a lot of atten­tion these days are brands that involve the con­sumer at the very core of the brand. Uber and Airbnb are per­fect exam­ples of this. The con­sumer is both cus­tomer and employ­ee of these brands.”

6. Fleetwood Mac’s “Little Lies”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5HkuhSEnPQ Even if some con­sumers dis­ap­prove of a brand’s actions, a fan who real­ly loves it may be will­ing­ly blind to wrong­do­ing.

For his part, Pens­abene points to the halo effect, which he said means con­sumers will gen­er­al­ly stick with an over­all impres­sion regard­ing their feel­ings toward an enti­ty.

“So if we assume that those pur­chas­ing VW vehi­cles had pos­i­tive thoughts and an over­all good impres­sion to start, it would take more than the cur­rent scan­dal to alto­geth­er doom the brand,” he said. “I believe things may momen­tar­i­ly seem more dire because the major­i­ty of the pub­lic are not VW own­ers. It’s eas­i­er for them to think neg­a­tive­ly about a brand they nev­er thought pos­i­tive about.”

7. Adele’s “Chasing Pavements”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08DjMT-qR9g Con­sumers care about integri­ty.

Fur­ther, cri­sis and rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment con­sul­tant Eden Gillott Bowe said con­sumers’ patience and abil­i­ty to for­give and for­get have atro­phied.

“We’re always look­ing for the best, fastest and most con­ve­nient,” Gillott Bowe said. “If some­thing new dis­rupts the mar­ket, we’ll jump ship like lem­mings. The same goes for if we’ve been wronged by a brand, assum­ing, of course, switch­ing to an alter­na­tive does­n’t incon­ve­nience us.”

Con­sumers are also grow­ing accus­tomed, and per­haps jad­ed, to hear­ing apolo­gies from those that have wronged them.

“If you’re caught doing some­thing wrong, a heart­felt mea cul­pa may help, depend­ing on how much good­will you have in the bank and how inclined the pub­lic is to pounce,” Gillot Bowe said. “But it’s become overused with so many politi­cians, exec­u­tives and celebri­ties caught in com­pro­mis­ing sit­u­a­tions. It’s lost much of its effec­tive­ness. Unless you’ve amassed a cult-like fol­low­ing, if you’re a new, small­er brand you’re toast.”

8. Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdQY7BusJNU Rela­tion­ship his­to­ry mat­ters, too.

“A frac­ture with­in a sin­gu­lar fan base means hav­ing to build a new base from scratch. And that can be an impos­si­ble job,” said John Lane, chief strat­e­gy offi­cer at mar­ket­ing firm Cen­ter­line Dig­i­tal. “Think Sat­urn, from not long ago, whose base built on the ‘non-car buy­ing fans’ but noth­ing more, lost momen­tum and could nev­er recov­er.”

While longevi­ty can cer­tain­ly help a lega­cy brand weath­er a cri­sis, it doesn’t guar­an­tee suc­cess, par­tic­u­lar­ly if the brand reacts poor­ly to the cri­sis, said Wilde Agency Pres­i­dent John Sis­son, point­ing to Enron.

9. The Police’s “Every Breath You Take”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMOGaugKpzs The longer the rela­tion­ship, the hard­er it is to sev­er.

“Old­er, estab­lished brands are ‘grand­fa­thered’ in as far as gen­er­al accep­tance and are more resilient to a scan­dal,” Pens­abene said.

10. Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You”

Brands can weath­er vir­tu­al­ly any scan­dal if they are tru­ly loved by con­sumers.

Brooks not­ed oth­er brands like Ford, Cadil­lac and Toy­ota have also expe­ri­enced declines in con­sumer trust due to poor prod­uct and/or man­age­ment, but they’ve all bounced back.

“Each brand did this by lever­ag­ing the love of their core fans and hark­ing back to the core ele­ments that launched them,” she said.

Brand con­sul­tant Daryl Weber points to Tylenol, which was able to rebound after numer­ous safe­ty issues and recalls as well.

“Though VW is a bit worse because it was an inten­tion­al move on their part, and because this flies in the face of the brand’s lov­able, good-natured feel, I still think they have the brand his­to­ry and strength to even­tu­al­ly over­come this,” Weber said. “They have built a lev­el of con­sumer love that is very, very hard to break down.”

Kas­sar points to dis­rup­tor brands like Airbnb and Uber, which have short­er his­to­ries, but have also amassed a great deal of mean­ing in a short amount of time.

“And it’s part­ly atti­tude. They’re out to cre­ate very mean­ing­ful brands,” Kas­sar said. “They’re not 100 per­cent loved by any stretch. They are, in some ways, scan­dal brands…but those who love the brands love the brands.”

What addi­tion­al lessons do you see in con­sumers’ will­ing­ness to for­give brands they love?