Top Ten Advert Pop Songs of 2019
I think I gave up on music at around the turn of the century. I certainly found pop music less interesting than I had done. Obviously I still listen to music every day but it doesn't tend to be stuff that troubles the charts. Assuming they still have the charts. I can still turn on and hear Music on Radio 6 that I like but I'm suspicious of that. The music on Radio 6 is for me: I'm exactly the audience they are trying to attract. I am their shabby, middle-aged, white male demographic, with my round shoulders and specs and my band t-shirts I go jogging in to prove I'm not a square to people who don't care.
I feel about the music on Radio 6 the way I do about pedigree dogs, that's there's something perverse and unnatural about it. Its been distorted and manipulated, slowly, over many years, for the fickle fancies of humanity. Its something that struggles to breathe and just sits in your handbag blinking its eyes separately. Sorry, Radio 6 - I know you're good people and you do good work, but you know...
KBO.
So the only place I get to hear new pop is on adverts and so I have compiled another Top Whatever songs on adverts just like I did last year. You're welcome.
Bad Guy - Billie Eilish for BT Broadband.
So this is the winner, really. I mean this is a genuinely good song. And she seems like a genuinely good pop star. I mean I know bugger all about her but she's about as far from Ed Sheeran as you can get and she is still properly a popular artist. So yay. A few years ago I would have done that thing of attempting to "place" her, to try and find a lineage for her, to Pete Frame her like a pop butterfly with a pin through the back of her neck, drying vividly in a Victorian study. But I don't know enough about what influenced this record to even try anymore and that's quite liberating - I can appreciate it as a piece of pop music. And its flipping great. It does interesting things: the whispering, the extended instrumental of one finger synth - that's the hook! The "duh" with its implicit eye roll. It makes me feel dead old which is exactly what it should do. And look at her! She looks like she'd terrorise you on a night bus.
What any of this has to do with better broadband is any body's guess. They must have THROWN the money at her. Good.
Bloom and Wild - Title free song, custom made for the advert.
This is a bit annoying. This has been my favourite advert song for a while and I can't even find out the title. You know this: its light and summery, all whooshing glissandos and burbling synths and parping vocals like a slick, modern The Free Design, perhaps. Its as luscious a thirty seconds of music as I've heard for a while, a swoon of a song. And it fits perfectly with fast cut images of women - viewed from an array of unusual angles - opening boxes of flowers and being delighted. Who wouldn't be? I love getting flowers. Even orchids and they're named after testicles. Especially orchids, then. Who has the balls to buys me some flowers?
Take note BT - this is how you marry image to music.
Nothing Can Stop Us Now - Saint Etienne - for Daisy Love by Marc Jacobs.
This advert has been around for a while and was previously scored with Sonic Youth's "Teenage Riot" meaning that whoever is picking the tunes is an old fart like me. I have a fair amount of history with "Nothing Can Stop Us Now" and its parent album "Fox Base Alpha". After I'd finished being in bands, or thought I had, Saint Etienne became a kind of road map towards how you could make music again. They were just a pair of spods with big record collections who couldn't play any instruments and somehow they were making incredible, dance-able Northern Soul pastiches, seemingly in their bedrooms. Soon they had their own label (Ice Rink) and an identifiable aesthetic (just when indie labels stopped doing that sort of thing) and inventing their own stable of stars (Golden, anyone?) Also, they had proper pop hits! They were on Top of the Pops: a beautiful blonde and two blokes who couldn't get served at the bar!
My attempts to make pop records had the mark of Cain stamped on them and, in truth, I still don't know how Saint Etienne managed to construct a song as untethered and breezy as "Nothing Can Stop Us Now": the lilting flutes, the bassline shuddering toward perfection as it lifts at the end of the chorus, the epiphany shot through with rich solid brass. If I had cobbled together a song as good as this I could die happy.
That girl in the advert, prancing around in a roll-neck and some pants, looks a lot like Cindy Crawford, doesn't she? That's cause its her daughter. FFS.
Wowcher - I'm so excited. (Again custom made. The vocal sounds like the Ladybirds off of Benny Hill)
I love the Wowcher girls. Arsing about, having fun, removing their body hair, spraying themselves with shower heads. Wot a lark. According to the internets the ginger one is the most popular. Which seems...peculiar...
Yeah, this is where we are. Rating the Wowcher girls. Let's move on.
Black Opium - The Weekend - The Hills.
Its night. There is lens flare everywhere, hovering like glow-worms. A young woman sets out with purpose and suddenly, through the sheer force of her personality, her double-taking friends form a posse behind her. She doesn't need to make any arrangements. There's no frantically texting at a bus stop for her. She just powers down the street with her bra showing and they fan in behind her. This is very much how Jesus operated with the Fishermen. Her "squad" will probably be persecuted for the rest of their lives but that's what happens when you associate with a charismatic insurrectionist. I don't think she even paid to get in the club.
Regardless, she only stayed there for two seconds before powering back down the street. But what's this? A coy over the shoulder look? Don't even try to resist. With a quick burst of "Follow me, follow me, leave your homes and family" she's got you and you are powerless to resist the siren song of The Hills with "The Weekend". Or perhaps The Weekend with "The Hills". We just don't know.
That girl in the advert, like the Pied Piper with shiny thighs, she looks a lot like Lenny Kravitz and Lisa Bonet, doesn't she? That's because she's their daughter. FFS.
Peloton - Bloc Party - Banquet.
I'm mildly obsessed with Peloton. I mean, its a static bike - there's no getting away from that. Its a static bike like Julia McKenzie would have in the credit sequence to "Fresh Fields" (and latterly "French Fields"). Its a static bike like you would find gathering dust in any larger than average charity shop, next to the rowing machine, the chest expanders and the DVD copy of "Hot Fuzz".
I mean its not just that. Its a static bike where a sweating, muscle-bound idiot barks absolute arse-water at you as you pedal away in your spare room, while your partner turns the telly up downstairs to drown out the sound of your wheezing. On the video screen in front of you are a dozen other Pelotoners, all sweating away where they are and judging you. You can now be judged on a static bike in the privacy of your own home. Or at least what used to be the privacy of your own home. Eventually you'll move that porcelain figure you got as a wedding present from the in-laws in case Craig from Nantwich falls off his bike laughing at you. Though its one less competitor, I suppose. Maybe I'll add a couple of pottery shire horses - sort out Jade from Cardiff too.
"Ian from Stourbridge - you are racing up that leader board!" screams Peloton Leader One, shining in her perfect make-up. But you aren't Ian from Stourbridge. You're nowhere - languishing at the bottom, never mentioned by miss, never given the gold star or the head pat you crave. You will never make it to boot-camp. You're never going to be told you "smashed it". Because you didn't. It remains intact. Whatever it is it is inviolate.
You get off the bike and pull your knickers from your sweaty hole. You aren't even Hester from Fresh Fields. You'll never be Julia McKenzie now. You're Sonia from next door (played by Anne Beach, Nadia Sawalha's mum).
"Its only, Sonia," you cry. "It's only, Sonia." And that's all it will ever be. You will never smash it. It, like you, remain tantalisingly intact. Like the virgin you are.
You sicken me. Hit the showers.
Bloc Party did the music but, you know, they were probably glad of the cash.
I feel about the music on Radio 6 the way I do about pedigree dogs, that's there's something perverse and unnatural about it. Its been distorted and manipulated, slowly, over many years, for the fickle fancies of humanity. Its something that struggles to breathe and just sits in your handbag blinking its eyes separately. Sorry, Radio 6 - I know you're good people and you do good work, but you know...
KBO.
So the only place I get to hear new pop is on adverts and so I have compiled another Top Whatever songs on adverts just like I did last year. You're welcome.
Bad Guy - Billie Eilish for BT Broadband.
 |
| Actually looks like she might crawl out of the telly and get you... |
So this is the winner, really. I mean this is a genuinely good song. And she seems like a genuinely good pop star. I mean I know bugger all about her but she's about as far from Ed Sheeran as you can get and she is still properly a popular artist. So yay. A few years ago I would have done that thing of attempting to "place" her, to try and find a lineage for her, to Pete Frame her like a pop butterfly with a pin through the back of her neck, drying vividly in a Victorian study. But I don't know enough about what influenced this record to even try anymore and that's quite liberating - I can appreciate it as a piece of pop music. And its flipping great. It does interesting things: the whispering, the extended instrumental of one finger synth - that's the hook! The "duh" with its implicit eye roll. It makes me feel dead old which is exactly what it should do. And look at her! She looks like she'd terrorise you on a night bus.
What any of this has to do with better broadband is any body's guess. They must have THROWN the money at her. Good.
Bloom and Wild - Title free song, custom made for the advert.
This is a bit annoying. This has been my favourite advert song for a while and I can't even find out the title. You know this: its light and summery, all whooshing glissandos and burbling synths and parping vocals like a slick, modern The Free Design, perhaps. Its as luscious a thirty seconds of music as I've heard for a while, a swoon of a song. And it fits perfectly with fast cut images of women - viewed from an array of unusual angles - opening boxes of flowers and being delighted. Who wouldn't be? I love getting flowers. Even orchids and they're named after testicles. Especially orchids, then. Who has the balls to buys me some flowers?
Take note BT - this is how you marry image to music.
Nothing Can Stop Us Now - Saint Etienne - for Daisy Love by Marc Jacobs.
This advert has been around for a while and was previously scored with Sonic Youth's "Teenage Riot" meaning that whoever is picking the tunes is an old fart like me. I have a fair amount of history with "Nothing Can Stop Us Now" and its parent album "Fox Base Alpha". After I'd finished being in bands, or thought I had, Saint Etienne became a kind of road map towards how you could make music again. They were just a pair of spods with big record collections who couldn't play any instruments and somehow they were making incredible, dance-able Northern Soul pastiches, seemingly in their bedrooms. Soon they had their own label (Ice Rink) and an identifiable aesthetic (just when indie labels stopped doing that sort of thing) and inventing their own stable of stars (Golden, anyone?) Also, they had proper pop hits! They were on Top of the Pops: a beautiful blonde and two blokes who couldn't get served at the bar!
My attempts to make pop records had the mark of Cain stamped on them and, in truth, I still don't know how Saint Etienne managed to construct a song as untethered and breezy as "Nothing Can Stop Us Now": the lilting flutes, the bassline shuddering toward perfection as it lifts at the end of the chorus, the epiphany shot through with rich solid brass. If I had cobbled together a song as good as this I could die happy.
That girl in the advert, prancing around in a roll-neck and some pants, looks a lot like Cindy Crawford, doesn't she? That's cause its her daughter. FFS.
Wowcher - I'm so excited. (Again custom made. The vocal sounds like the Ladybirds off of Benny Hill)
 |
| Forty Four per cent off trampolining? TAKE MY MONEY! |
Yeah, this is where we are. Rating the Wowcher girls. Let's move on.
Black Opium - The Weekend - The Hills.
Its night. There is lens flare everywhere, hovering like glow-worms. A young woman sets out with purpose and suddenly, through the sheer force of her personality, her double-taking friends form a posse behind her. She doesn't need to make any arrangements. There's no frantically texting at a bus stop for her. She just powers down the street with her bra showing and they fan in behind her. This is very much how Jesus operated with the Fishermen. Her "squad" will probably be persecuted for the rest of their lives but that's what happens when you associate with a charismatic insurrectionist. I don't think she even paid to get in the club.
Regardless, she only stayed there for two seconds before powering back down the street. But what's this? A coy over the shoulder look? Don't even try to resist. With a quick burst of "Follow me, follow me, leave your homes and family" she's got you and you are powerless to resist the siren song of The Hills with "The Weekend". Or perhaps The Weekend with "The Hills". We just don't know.
That girl in the advert, like the Pied Piper with shiny thighs, she looks a lot like Lenny Kravitz and Lisa Bonet, doesn't she? That's because she's their daughter. FFS.
Peloton - Bloc Party - Banquet.
 |
| Get on that static bike right now or so help I will rip the steaming lungs from your chest and piss in the hole... |
I mean its not just that. Its a static bike where a sweating, muscle-bound idiot barks absolute arse-water at you as you pedal away in your spare room, while your partner turns the telly up downstairs to drown out the sound of your wheezing. On the video screen in front of you are a dozen other Pelotoners, all sweating away where they are and judging you. You can now be judged on a static bike in the privacy of your own home. Or at least what used to be the privacy of your own home. Eventually you'll move that porcelain figure you got as a wedding present from the in-laws in case Craig from Nantwich falls off his bike laughing at you. Though its one less competitor, I suppose. Maybe I'll add a couple of pottery shire horses - sort out Jade from Cardiff too.
"Ian from Stourbridge - you are racing up that leader board!" screams Peloton Leader One, shining in her perfect make-up. But you aren't Ian from Stourbridge. You're nowhere - languishing at the bottom, never mentioned by miss, never given the gold star or the head pat you crave. You will never make it to boot-camp. You're never going to be told you "smashed it". Because you didn't. It remains intact. Whatever it is it is inviolate.
You get off the bike and pull your knickers from your sweaty hole. You aren't even Hester from Fresh Fields. You'll never be Julia McKenzie now. You're Sonia from next door (played by Anne Beach, Nadia Sawalha's mum).
"Its only, Sonia," you cry. "It's only, Sonia." And that's all it will ever be. You will never smash it. It, like you, remain tantalisingly intact. Like the virgin you are.
You sicken me. Hit the showers.
Bloc Party did the music but, you know, they were probably glad of the cash.
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