{"id":227,"date":"2021-10-15T14:19:00","date_gmt":"2021-10-15T14:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magnifycopy.co.uk\/blog\/?p=227"},"modified":"2021-10-29T15:12:59","modified_gmt":"2021-10-29T15:12:59","slug":"227","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magnifycopy.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2021\/10\/15\/227\/","title":{"rendered":"Top Three Tunes Made Famous By Adverts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Phat Planet, a.k.a. \u2018the song from that Guinness advert with the horses\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The advert makers can sometimes find ways to communicate a piece of music more effectively than the musicians themselves. Heresy! But it\u2019s true. The musicians (and the people they employ to make their videos) are trying to sell themselves, a lot of the time. They\u2019ve often got their own set of marketers, trying to align them with one demographic or another. They may have a need to represent themselves to the world through their lyrics. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The advertiser is unencumbered by any of this wider context. They just focus on the feelings evoked by the music, and try to create the best combination of sound and visual. The artist\u2019s ego is sacrificed to the audio-visual experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The advertiser is also free to take liberties with the music, in ways that the musician would never dream of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe just want the intro.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYeah, we\u2019re going to cut the song off, right before the beat kicks in.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo! How could you? What\u2019s wrong with you?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cListen Leftfield, we\u2019ve got waves, horses, and the ominous rumbling intro from your song. Here\u2019s your money. Any questions?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*staggers off, mumbling and wiping tears on a bank statement*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Joker, a.k.a. ‘Levi\u2019s advert with the bike in the lift<\/strong>‘<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Nowadays, it\u2019s much easier to take a great song from a famous artist, and strap it to your ad campaign. That\u2019s because musicians don\u2019t get paid properly anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But for a few decades there, musicians didn\u2019t have to play like that. Letting your music get used in adverts was \u2018selling out\u2019.  It meant you were working for the man, man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Obviously, this moral high ground was reserved for the big names. But it did make things trickier for \u2018the man\u2019. Either he could take advantage of superstars who\u2019d made unwise contractual choices (Marvin Gaye, \u2018Heard It Through The Grapevine\u2019) or shared the view of their output as product (James Brown, Sex Machine).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or he could start crate digging for great songs that just needed the light of day. Rare grooves from artists with less of a rep to protect. Steve Miller had enjoyed huge success on his native US soil, but was unknown to British audiences before this celebrated Levi\u2019s campaign of \u201986 scored him his first UK No.1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Feist at Coachella, licensed under CC by 2.0<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Feist \u2013 \u20181,2,3,4\u2019 a.k.a. ‘iPod Nano ad\/awesome Sesame St counting song<\/strong>‘<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u20181,2,3,4\u2019 is childlike. Like \u2018Little Boxes\u2019, or the bit in Big where Tom Hanks plays the foot piano. Written for Fiest by Australian songwriter Sally Seltmann, it\u2019s not a song that would have seared itself into your memory, had it not been for the Apple advert that put it front and centre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The advert is clever, even by Apple\u2019s standards. Having mercifully abandoned U2 as their advert soundtrack of choice (about sixteen years too late, but lots of people were needlessly loyal to Bono and Reg\u2019s gang, long after their sell-by date), the wide-eyed simplicity of \u20181,2,3,4\u2019 provided a much gentler, sweeter appeal to the hearts and wallets of their audience, with the song\u2019s hook right up in front.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Things get really clever, though, when you consider what\u2019s actually on-screen in this advert. We see the product, in a rainbow of available colours. We see Fiest\u2019s promotional video for the song, displayed on<\/em> the product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a nice get-out for Feist. No-one\u2019s splicing her song with any unrelated imagery. They\u2019re showing her video. It\u2019s almost an advert for Feist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And Apple align themselves with the artist, this way. \u2018Look at how much we love music, too,\u2019 it says. \u2018We respect Fiest so much, we use her video in our video\u2019. Meanwhile, you\u2019re still just staring at their product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
 ‘Green Honker, Sesame Street’ | Santiago Otero\/Flickr | Licensed under CC by 2.0<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, both the song and the product were bulldozed into submission the following year by the pop-cultural juggernaut that is Sesame St.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Feist\u2019s monster-themed reworking of the song for her appearance on the show has proved to be the definitive version, clocking up a whopping 898 million views on Youtube, in comparison to the original video\u2019s perfectly acceptable 15 million or so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kenny Loggins\u2019s attempt to drag the song\u2019s dismembered corpse into the danger zone in 2009 appears to have been withdrawn from circulation. We live in hope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Any advert bangers that should have gotten a mention here? Drop a comment, and I can tell you why you’re wrong<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Phat Planet, a.k.a. \u2018the song from that Guinness advert with the horses\u2019 The advert makers can sometimes find ways to communicate a piece of music more effectively than the musicians themselves. Heresy! But it\u2019s true. The musicians (and the people they employ to make their videos) are trying to sell themselves, a lot of the …<\/p>\n

Top Three Tunes Made Famous By Adverts<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":236,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11,10],"tags":[12,16,14,13,15],"class_list":["post-227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general-interest","category-marketing","tag-advert-songs","tag-apple-advert","tag-feist","tag-guiness-advert","tag-levis-advert"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/magnifycopy.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/magnifycopy.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/magnifycopy.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magnifycopy.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magnifycopy.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/magnifycopy.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":249,"href":"https:\/\/magnifycopy.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227\/revisions\/249"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magnifycopy.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/magnifycopy.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magnifycopy.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magnifycopy.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}