A Brief History of Popular Music in Television Commercials

Popular music in television commercials is nothing new. In fact, television advertising right from its very beginning in the early 1950s has relied heavily on music to get people's attention, set a mood, create the right brand image and sell the advertiser's product. The reason why is simple - it works.

Music is an important part of the American culture, and for that matter, almost every other culture in the world. It can relax us, excite us, make us want to get up and dance or simply involve ourselves by listening. That's what makes it such a powerful tool in advertising.

Most music used in TV commercials is what we call "rug" music - tracks of innocuous "elevator-caliber" music that is just "slid" under the announcer and actors' voices to fill a gap and help bring all of the audio and visual elements of the commercial together. These musical tracks are not meant to be recognizable and they're usually so subtle, you hardly know they're there.

Very often, more recognizable songs are used as background music to set a mood or help establish an image for the product. Early television commercials in the 1950s featured well known classical masterpieces as background music.

The works of the "Waltz King", Johann Strauss, an Austrian composer of the mid 1880s were among the most popular pieces used as background music for television commercials. His "Artists' Life". "Tales from the Vienna Woods", "Voices of Spring", "Emperor Waltz" and of course, "The Blue Danube" were all used as background music for Palmolive Soap, Cashmere Bouquet Beauty Bar and other soap and beauty aid commercials. Rossini's "William Tell Overture" and Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture" were popular background tracks for breakfast cereal and food commercials.

Advertisers then expanded into jazz and rhythm and blues. Soon TV commercials were featuring songs like Duke Ellington's "Satin Doll" and Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" as background music to help sell a variety of different products.

Madison Avenue then borrowed a musical genre from radio - the jingle. These short and often witty little custom created musical numbers became popular with advertisers and radio audiences ever since companies like Proctor and Gamble and General Mills first hit the radio airwaves in the 1920s. Jingles became quickly popular with television advertisers and their audiences

"Winston tastes good like a cigarette should"," Tan don't burn get a Coppertone tan", "See the USA in a Chevrolet", "My beer is Rheingold the dry beer", "I'm a Pepper, you're a Pepper ...", "Fly the Friendly Skies of United" and countless other TV jingles hit the airwaves. These jingles sold billions of dollars worth of products, amused and entertained people and became a part of American culture.

Advertising agencies even began taking pop melodies, rewriting the lyrics a little and turning them into TV commercial jingles.

One of the earliest of these was a jingle for Desoto, a now extinct gas-guzzler of an automobile. Desoto borrowed a catchy Cole Porter show tune from 1936 "It's De-Lovely". The song had had been popularized by singers like Rosemary Clooney (George's aunt), Ella Fitzgerald and other recording artists for almost 20 years, so the melody was very recognizable. By simply re-writing a few lyrics and changing the refrain to "It's delightful, It's De-Lovely, It's Desoto", the car company had an instant hit jingle on their hands. Countless TV jingles emerged from pop tunes and show tunes alike.

Advertisers and their agencies soon realized that they could take popular songs and make them amusing and entertaining jingles without changing a word or note of the original song. Hit songs ranging from the Italian favorite "O Solo Mio", to Chubby Checker's "The Twist" became hit TV jingles as well. Yoplait has recently used the 60s hit "Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini" as both the visual concept and music for its yogurt commercial.

Recycling both music and lyrics of popular songs not only gave a second life and new popularity to the music, it gave additional income to writers, musicians and recording artists as well.

Today almost 60 years later, we still use classical pieces from Bach, Handle, Vivaldi and other classical composers as commercial background music for everything from luxury automobiles to various gourmet food and spirits. Melodies from popular songs are given new lyrics and sell billions of dollars worth of products. And of course, music from the Beach Boys, The Beatles, Kiss have become popular TV commercial music as well.

I've created hundreds of TV commercials, web commercials and videos, over 90% of which contain music either original or "borrowed" from some other source. Music makes them work for the advertiser and makes them more enjoyable for the overwhelming majority of TV viewers as well.

TV commercials will be around for a long time to come, unless of course we want all TV, even staples like cartoons, sitcoms and the evening news to become pay TV - on top of our regular cable or satellite bill. As long as music remains such a key part of American culture, it will be an important part of TV commercials too.