Just about any style of music can enhance a spot’s creative if it’s the right stuff. Case in point: A familiar rock hit from the ’80s, a moody, ambient piece, and a wistful French pop song serve as soundtracks for the top three picks of SHOOT’s Summer Music and Sound Design Top 10 chart. Each score lends a specific tone—deadpan drama, mystery and sweetness—that contributes to each ad’s impact.
The three commercials and their music are very different from each other. Starbucks DoubleShot’s "Glen," out of Fallon, New York, and directed by Noam Murro of Biscuit Filmworks, Los Angeles, features ’80s band Survivor performing their hit, "Eye of the Tiger," but with a new set of lyrics. GMC’s "Ideas," directed by The Cronenweths—Tim and Jeff—through Untitled, Santa Monica, out of Lowe, New York, employs a score that nicely offsets the spot’s striking sound design. And the action in Chef Boyardee’s "Rolling Can," directed by Phil Morrison of bicoastal Epoch Films via Leo Burnett USA, Chicago, is liltingly accompanied by a deep-voiced chanteur, accordion and band.
Read on to find out how music was created for these top three picks.
Number One
"Glen," which promotes Starbucks’ DoubleShot espresso drink, opens with the eponymous character in his apartment, drinking the high-powered beverage before heading to work. As he takes a swig, the opening chords to "Eye of the Tiger" are heard, but with altered lyrics—Jimi Jamison, the group’s lead singer starts off by belting out, "Glen! Glen, Glen, Glen!" It turns out that the band is set up right in Glen’s living room. "Eye of the Tiger" was originally used in Rocky III as a motivational anthem, and here Survivor sings about Glen’s dream to move into middle management as they follow him on his commute to work.
Ryan Rehm at bicoastal Elias Arts arranged the track for "Glen" after being presented with the original track of "Eye of the Tiger." "The agency had gotten the masters without the vocals from Survivor," Rehm recounts. "We needed to edit [the instrumental tracks] for the thirty-second and sixty-second format."
After working on the music edits, Rehm brought in a friend of his, Matt Phairis, to do a rough vocal. It was at this point when everyone figured out what lyrics would work. "Sometimes a couple of the words would jump on each other, and they would have to revise some of the lyrics while the singer was here," Rehm notes. "It was pretty straightforward once we got that down."
The next step was to have Jamison, Survivor’s lead singer, cut vocal tracks featuring the new lyrics at the band’s studio. That version was then played back on location during the shoot so the band could lip sync to the track.
After that, Rex Recker of audioEngine, New York, created the audio mix, which incorporated the spot’s sound effects. Recker says he had to "tuck [the effects] into the track so that they didn’t detract from the music, but enhanced the spot in general."
Recker wanted to make the band sound like they were playing in the places that are pictured in the ad—in Glen’s living room, at a bus stop, and in an elevator, among other locations. "[I wanted] to bring those guys on location even though they were [performing] in a studio," he says. "You wanted to get the impression that they were really in this guy’s environment. The biggest challenge was to make the music sound not so canned."
"Working with Survivor in the recording studio was the biggest kick for us," remarked Ari Merkin, executive creative director at Fallon. "We were getting our own private concert [from] these recording artists who we grew up with."
Number Two
The spot "Ideas," which promotes SUVs and trucks made by the General Motors Corporation (GMC), opens on an unpopulated stretch of land and strains of a hypnotic piano score. Mysteriously, cars and car parts begin to fall from the sky, each one making a tremendous crashing noise upon impact.
We soon learn that the falling cars represent designs that don’t meet GMC standards. The action pulls back to reveal an engineer at work on some designs. As he surveys a particular drawing, a voiceover discusses the high level of quality and effort that goes into designing a truck or SUV. We see the engineer, dissatisfied with his work, crumpling up the paper and tossing it in the trash, and the spot cuts to another automobile crashing down onto the car-littered landscape. The spot’s tag: "GMC professional grade engineering. It’s not more than you need, just more than you’re used to."
Lowe senior producer Sara Eolin reports that initially there wasn’t going to be any music in the spot. "The sound design was great, but it needed a little bit more to keep it going, especially for a sixty-second," she explains of the shift to a score.
Lowe turned to Human, New York, which had worked on earlier GMC and Mercedes-Benz campaigns with Eolin for the job. "The main reason we went to them was that we really didn’t have a good idea of what we wanted the music to be," she relates. "We were open to interpretation from composers, and Human has a really nice, balanced roster. We knew that they would be able to come up with something innovative and interesting that matches the cut, but didn’t seem commercial-y."
Six Human composers created eight demos for "Ideas." Eventually, composer Morgan Visconti, who had worked with Lowe on previous GMC projects, was chosen to score the ad. The composer faced the challenge of writing something that would work well with the spot’s prominent sound design, which was created by Roland Alley of Final Cut, New York. "The front of [the spot] is very sparse—you see all the cars falling out of the sky—so it’s very sound design-driven," notes Visconti. "I tried to come up with as little music as possible for that. It’s just sustained piano chords with a lot of reverb on them, and this spooky celeste pattern.
"[The agency] wanted it to be a bit more heroic when you see the engineer," continues Visconti. "We played around with varying degrees of how big to make the music, and we ended up keeping it pretty understated."
"[‘Ideas’] is very cerebral," Eolin comments. "This is our engineer’s field of lost ideas. This is in the guy’s head. [The music] drives home the inquisitive and peaceful nature of [the spot]."
Alley, who also served as the spot’s mixer, points out that "the music sets the emotional tone for the spot, yet leaves room for the sound design to convey the violent realism that the images connote."
Number Three
Chef Boyardee’s "Rolling Can" finds a mother and her young daughter shopping at the supermarket. The girl really wants a can of Chef Boyardee, but her mom says, "Not tonight, sweetie. You’ve had Chef every night this week." The girl wistfully responds, "But I love Chef," and the two walk away. Suddenly, the can leaps off the shelf, rolls down the aisle, and heads out of the store to track down the little girl. Accompanied by the spot’s jaunty score, the can travels across various highways and byways before it winds up at the girl’s house. The ad’s closing tag reads: "Boy, this stuff is good."
Josh Denberg, executive VP/creative director/copywriter at Leo Burnett USA, says that originally the agency was going to use Cheap Trick’s "I Want You to Want Me" to score "Rolling Can." But during the editing sessions, they explored other options. "We kept throwing tracks up against it, and we just started listening to them," Denberg recalls.
Eventually, executive VP/creative director/art director Paul Hirsch brought in "Un P’tit Air," which was originally recorded by Tetes Raides. The track clicked. Even though at one point there was concern that a French song was being used to promote an Italian food product, the agency went with the piece. "We always look for contrast," says Denberg.
Mat Morse, partner/composer at Spank! Music & Sound Design, Chicago and Santa Monica, rearranged and re-recorded the song for the spot. "Sometimes if it’s truly a song that’s driving the bus on a spot, the picture is cut to the song," he explains. "And if it’s a post score, obviously the music is done after the fact. This was sort of nudged both ways. The song isn’t exactly how it’s arranged on the record; blocks of it have been shifted around to accommodate the picture."
Morse played accordion and bass, Spank! composer/producer Matt Walker played drums and percussion, session player Biff Watson contributed the guitar part, and singer Neil Donell provided the vocals. "He nailed it," says Morse of Donell’s performance. "It’s sort of a Jacques Brel delivery, and he knew all about that. I felt like he did a great job."
John Binder of Another Country, Chicago, mixed the spot. Getting just the right volume for the vocals was key, but Binder had to tweak other parts of the spot as well, like the sound of the rolling can. "We went out and bought some Chef Boyardee cans—three different varieties—and rolled those around in the Foley stage [to get the right sound]," he laughs.
