Truth in Advertising

I love that you can hear great songs on television commercials.

I know it's not a new phenomenon—advertisers have been picking up the slack from radio and MTV for almost a decade now. MTV doesn't even play songs on spin-off channel MTV2 anymore, though there are a few choice programs on the two-headed dog, like Team Sanchez and the seizure-inducing Wonder Showzen.

The tipping point for good commercial music came with Moby's Play in 1999—nearly every song on the album, from "Bodyrock" to "Porcelain," was licensed to some car manufacturer or liquor company (the latter was used for a Bailey's Irish Cream advert). The best part was that Moby didn't compromise his integrity with crap like "Like a Rock!" or "Simply the Best." The marketing people just accepted what he had to offer as it was.

[update:As was pointed out by Lisa Liu, it seems hypocritical for Moby to be an environmentalist and do commercials for carmakers. I actually asked him about that when I interviewed him in 1999, and he said that he took the money Ford or Toyota paid him and donated it to transportation alternative groups. Don't know if the ends justified the means, but he obviously gave the issue a lot of thought.]

After the success of "Play," Madison Avenue woke up and realized that if they used cutting edge music in their commercials, they'd attract that essential 18-34 demographic. (Not to mention people of all ages who just like a good beat). Not only are we exposed to music we won’t hear elsewhere, but good non-mainstream artists get a little money to boot.

The stigma associated with marrying music and marketing has pretty much faded. Occasionally things gone awry—like Club Med using the Stooge's "Lust for Life" to promote their family friendly vacation resorts—but by and large it's been a good trend.

I'm not ashamed to say I've been introduced to some of my favorite tracks and bands via TV spots: The Orbs' "Little Fluffy Clouds" (VW Bug) Broken Social Scene's "Lover's Spit" ("The L Word"), The Caesars' "Jerk It Out" (iPod Shuffle), the Von Bondies' "C'mon, C'mon" (FX's "Rescue Me"), the Walkmen's "We've Been Had (Saturn cars) and The Transplants' "Diamonds and Guns" (the woo-HOO!" song in those Garnier Fructis ads).

Adtunes.com is an invaluable resource—you can just search the forums and chances are someone else is dying to know where that song from the Victoria's Secret "Angels" commercials comes from. (FYI: It's Air's "Playground Love.")

At any rate, I was over a friend's house watching TV last night and a commercial for the new Adidas 1 sneaker came on. The visuals struck me first—a lone man wakes up and runs through a surreal landscape that emerges as he trots by. It was right out of a Bjork video, like a mash-up of "Human Behavior" and "Bachelorette." Then I noticed the tune playing over it, a haunting melody that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. It's one of those songs you only have to hear a bar or two of before you think "I must own everything this person does!"

Fortunately we had a laptop handy and started scouring the Web for details. Well, the visuals looked so familiar because the spot was directed by Spike Jonze, who did a number of Bjork videos, as well as Being John Malkovich and Adaptation. The song is an original composition sung by Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Here are the lyrics:

Whenever do i wake up
I'm trying to take the shape of
turning to the whole wide world
I made up.

the lights are golden...

the lights were golden...

Whenever do i wake up
I'm trying to take the shape of
turning to the whole wide world
I made up.

You can watch the ad by going to the Adidas 1 site and clicking on the "Watch TV Ad" button on the top right.

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update: Just found out the spot is called "Hello Tomorrow." You can see the whole clip with all the credits here.