October 07, 2004 - 8:34 PM

Fishing About for Music in Commercials

A new commercial from Toyota, debuting their "Moving Forward" campaign, features a tire rolling through various vignettes of life. Much more toned down than previous ad campaigns from Toyota (I love what you do for me, Toyota!), it's almost affecting. Helping curry and carry the emotional punch is a new tune by the band Fisher, who've also been featured in ads for Chrysler's PT Cruiser (Love), Hyundai, and Verizon (People everywhere just want to be free). They seem to be the king/queen of memorable tv commercial jingles.

One half of the duo, Kathleen Fisher also contributed vocals to the semi-famous and uber-inspirational Nike/Lance Armstrong ads that aired earlier this year.

And their song I Will Love You has been used in tons of movies and tv shows.

Then there are several commercials, including the American Express "Beautiful Things" one, using the former Wild Colonials leadwoman Angela McCluskey's whiskeyed brogue to good effect.

What I'm not enjoying is the overbearing use of popular music all willy-nilly these days in movies and tv shows that are trying to appeal to teens or to "hip" tastemakers. The premiere of the new show "life as we know it" featured The Postal Service, Frou Frou (who've been getting airplay all over the place lately), as well as half a dozen other cool-kid songs throughout. Shows on the WB, shows on Fox, even Joan of Arcadia, seem to have music supervisors throwing as much music into each episode as they can without appearing to care about any sort of creative impact the songs might have.

Homicide: Life on the Streets was a shining example of how to use cool music in effective, creative ways that helped further the story. Songs were almost always used in montage scenes where edits were timed to beats of the music, and the melody and lyrics replaced dialogue and musical score to convey information and mood. Dawson's Creek and Buffy continued this tradition, but slowly, it became a matter of music publishers seeing a new market to exploit and trying to get as many songs as possible placed in each episode. 5, 10, 15 second snippets popping in and out with no purpose other than to serve as product placement. Every few minutes. It's like beating your head against a table. It's shocking and cool the first couple times you do it, maybe even hurts; but then, after the 43rd time, you become inured, unfazed- it has no more effect than a fly landing on your shoe.

Ah well.

************
LDBL and I saw The Section Quartet on Tuesday performing their arrangement of Radiohead's "OK Computer" at the Echo in Echo Park. Very interesting, LDBL enjoyed himself a lot. If you're familiar with the album, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at how they've brought it to life for a string quartet.

Now Listening To : Beth Orton-Central Reservation
Random Thought : Thanks for the Army of Darkness midget toys, mark!

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