I had a little rave about Walter Meego’s album Voyager recently. I’ve gone off it a bit now, to be honest – but am still a fan of several of the more sugary confections contained therein.
I’d heard that their tracks have popped up here and there on ads and TV shows, but was quite surprised to hear it’s being used to flog a big old manly beer like Heineken. Then I saw the advert and lo, it all made sense. Heineken’s DraughtKeg thingy allows it to be positioned as a more cosy, IKEA-esque booze.
Check out the lifestyle porn after the jump.
You might have seen that whizzy new ad for Tropicana Smoothies on your tellybox recently. It features lots of fruit apparently exploding, over a female voice crooning Perry Como’s “Catch A Falling Star”.
This is one of those instances where people are going to see the ad and just DIE if they don’t find out who sings it, etc. So allow me to fill you in.
While flicking through this month’s Observer Music Monthly I encountered what struck me as a weird way of advertising Duffy’s album Rockferry. It was a page with lyrics from Sam Cooke’s emancipation anthem “A Change Is Gonna Come” prominently displayed, against a picture of Duffy.
The bottom right has a plug for Duffy’s album, and the bottom left has the HMV logo. So it’s an ad for Duffy and HMV, but it uses Sam Cooke’s lyrics.
As a way of advertising Sam Cook’s music it might be effective, perhaps, if the ad mentioned his album more prominently. As a promotion for Duffy, however, it struck me as extremely cynical, and a little insulting.
I don’t know how long this ad’s been doing the rounds, but I saw it this morning on E4 and I was rapt. RAPT, I tell you. I’ve never been that big a fan of Snap’s “Rhythm Is A Dancer”, but when you’ve got a wee man from Thunderbirds shaking his strings to it, it ascends to that elusive “next level”. OK, so it’s clearly CGI, but ’tis still mucho clevs.
It’s all in aid of a brand of water called Drench, who clearly have their viral video head screwed on right proper. It sure beats a drumming primate, anyway. Click over for Brains’s moves – and try not to get distracted by how much he looks like the guy from Hot Chip.
I’ll be honest, the new “business models” surrounding paid-for music confuse me a fair bit. The salient details of how to pay for, and get music onto, this Zune doo-dah pretty much passed me by as I watched this new ad.
BUT! It has a clip of a new N*E*R*D track soundtracking it, which is a crafty way of getting people to check out the commercial, if not the actual gadget. The track’s called “Spazz” and features rather pleasing rat-a-tat-tat percussion with a typically bangalicious bass backing it up. Give it a listen over the page.
They were already doing pretty well Stateside, but getting the nod from the ad folk at Apple to appear in one of their era-defining commercials should mean The Ting Tings can sell out venues of a slightly larger size before too long. They will also be able to buy as much fizzy pop as they like, which may make their next “product” even more jumpyshouty.
See the ad over the page. Although you can probably guess more or less how it goes…
H&M are using it, as did Bailey’s a while ago. Minnie Ripperton’s ‘Les Fleurs’ has been long loved on the breaks scene, and rightly so. Of course, Minnie is best known for her crystal shattering ‘Loving You’, but for me, ‘Les Fleur’ is by far her best and most outrageous work.
[video:hoopkim]
Posted by
mofgimmers on
Wednesday April 30th, 2008 at
2:38 pm
You may have seen a commercial recently, starring a Volkswagen Tiguan. Well, in it is a tune by one of electronic music’s true pioneers, Andrew Weatherall. His ‘Feathers’ track is the one featured here, but before that, Weatherall has been in Two Lone Swordsmen, Sabres of Paradise as well as essentially creating the masterpiece that was Screamadelica for Primal Scream. Salute him.
[video: soundstick62]
Posted by
mofgimmers on
Thursday April 24th, 2008 at
1:58 pm
Recently, Vauxhall advertised something called an Antara. Sod the product! Just what was that funkyass track at the back? Well, that track bruthas and sistas is the Black Moses of funk, brother Isaac Hayes and his dynamite ‘Run Fay Run’. Yessir, it’s the Stax-man who you may recall provided a voice for chef in South Park.
Of course, there’s much more to Hayes than a dumbass cartoon. He’s been sampled to hell with the beautiful strings of ‘Ike’s Rap’ and of course, scored blaxploitation flick, Shaft. Also, Hot Buttered Soul from ’69 is one of the greatest soul LPs ever made. But wait! Back to ‘Run Fay Run’… I know it from somewhere else! Yep. You may well have heard it on the Kill Bill Soundtrack. If you still don’t know what I’m talking about, click over and press play.
No matter how rubbish an advert is, or what tat it’s selling, now again, you hear a tune and say “Yes! I want that!” Well, this happened to me quite recently during a Head and Shoulders commercial of all things. Cooing along, the tune goes “A little bird, told you that you love me…”. After some hunting, it turns out it’s by Evelyn Knight and it’s called ‘A Little Bird Told Me’. And here it is for your listening pleasure. [video:gramophoneshane]
Posted by
mofgimmers on
Thursday April 10th, 2008 at
2:16 pm
I had a little rave about Walter Meego’s album Voyager recently. I’ve gone off it a bit now, to be honest – but am still a fan of several of the more sugary confections contained therein.
