{"id":2540,"date":"2008-05-08T06:00:38","date_gmt":"2008-05-08T11:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2540"},"modified":"2008-05-08T07:26:45","modified_gmt":"2008-05-08T12:26:45","slug":"its-ca-ca-catching-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2540","title":{"rendered":"It’s Ca-Ca-Catching On…."},"content":{"rendered":"

Pianomomsicle <\/a>writes to let me know that I’m far <\/em>from the only one to have gotten a bad case of earworm from the Subway jingle (“Five. Five Dolla. Five Dolla Footlong!”)<\/p>\n

Indeed, according to Slate<\/em>, it’s something of a trend<\/a>. It’d seem the creative jingle is making a bit of a comeback; in addition to the Subway spot (whose genesis the article explains), there are a few others:<\/p>\n

Dunkin’ Donuts hired They Might Be Giants<\/font><\/a> to pen a series of short songs about coffee and smoothies and such.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Until the Subway campaign (“Five. Five Dolla. Five Dolla Footlong!”) came along, Dunkin’s jingle (“Is it French, or is it Italian? It’s FreTalian!” and “Doing things is what I like to do…YES!”) were my commercial earworm du jour.<\/p>\n

And then…:<\/p>\n

And the current campaign for FreeCreditReport.com makes bold use of infectious<\/font><\/a> musical<\/font><\/a> storytelling<\/font><\/a>. While the Subway jingle is more a demi-jingle, with very little build and no verses, the FreeCreditReport.com songs are full-blown ballads\u2014which of course include carefully enunciated mentions of the brand, in this case literally spelled out.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“F R E E, that spells Free, Credit Report Dot Com, Baybee…”<\/p>\n

The songwriter for these spots was David Muhlenfeld of the Martin Agency, who says he “went away with my guitar and some cheap Chianti” to find inspiration. When I asked Muhlenfeld whether he used any particular tricks to make the tunes catchy, he replied: “Repetition alone will make something stick in a listener’s head. The question is, once your song is in their head, will they want to stick that head in an oven?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My oven won’t hold my head, but fear not; I have no idea how to find a Dunkin’ Donuts (I’m more a bagel guy anyway), wouldn’t patronize Free Credit Report.com at gunpoint, and work right by a Jimmy John’s.<\/p>\n

But dang – I do wind up singing singing those damn jingles…<\/p>\n

However – and this one’s going out to all the musicians in the house – I almost laughed a Lattachocca out my nose reading this bit – talking with the writer of the Subway jingle:<\/p>\n

“The chord structure does imply something dark,” [songwriter Jimmy Harned of boutique studio Tonefarmer], agreed, getting out his guitar to demonstrate over the phone. “On the word long<\/em>, it goes down from a C to an A-flat,” he said, strumming, “which is kind of a weird place. It’s definitely not a poppy, happy place. It’s more of a metaly place. But at the same time, the singing stays almost saccharine.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Back in college, I was asked to write the most irritating possible musical passage on my guitar. I came up with something that crunched between C and A flat – over, and over, and over, and over and over…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

(“Five. Five Dolla. Five Dolla Footlong!”)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pianomomsicle writes to let me know that I’m far from the only one to have gotten a bad case of earworm from the Subway jingle (“Five. Five Dolla. Five Dolla Footlong!”) Indeed, according to Slate, it’s something of a trend. It’d seem the creative jingle is making a bit of a comeback; in addition to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geekery","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2540\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}