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[video]
[video]
The year is 1997. I am 14 years old and embarking on yet another road trip with my Dad, a couple of hours north, into the country for a Christmas party. As usual, Dad has chosen The Eagles, Bad Company and Cold Chisel to accompany us on our trip.
I do not want to listen to any of these, so I bring a friend’s Discman and spend the entire drive listening to Green Day, Nirvana and the Foo Fighters. I settle back for a trip, pointedly ignoring the lame 20 year old classic rock my Dad wants me to listen to.
Fast forward to Monday last week. I am driving with a friend and we are listening to Nevermind. Suddenly, I am struck with the stunning realisation that the music I am currently listening to is 20 years old, and I can feel my hair greying just at the thought of it.
Is this how my Dad felt in 1997 when I scoffed at him that Hotel California was stupid music from “forever ago”? Did he look at me and think “please, 1977 wasn’t that long ago!” the same way I am thinking about 1990? Did he suddenly feel like his youth was slipping away because the music that had defined and inspired him was now considered “classic rock”? Did he stand there thinking “that music everyone listens to now is just rubbish”, like I felt on Tuesday during the Hottest 100?
I don’t want to get old….but I don’t like anything new. Think I’ll just listen to Ten until my hair goes totally white.
So, I’m sitting here watching Video Hits (I know, right??) and the video for Open Happiness starts. At first, it looks like an ad, and I am confused because I thought the ad break had just ended, but I recognise the guy from Gnarls Barkley and think “Hmm, so maybe it is a song.”
Turns out, it IS a song. No longer content with just infecting our ad breaks, Coca Cola, under the guidance of their ad boffins, the McCann Erickson Creative Agency, have decided to release their jingle as a single. Featuring Cee-Lo, Brendon Urie of Panic! At The Disco, Patrick Stump from Fallout Boy, Travis McCoy from Gym Class Heroes and Janelle Monae, it’s a cute, inoffensive little pop song, that was created purely to promote Coca Cola’s new “Open Happiness” campaign.
I don’t want to bore everyone toooo senseless right here, but allow me to rant just a little:
What the fuck? I mean seriously - since when were ad jingles meant to be singles you can actually buy? Since when did rock musicians take part in the big, corporate machine? Art and advertising are merging and I don’t like it. I’m putting my foot down today and saying it’s not good. I sort of feel dirty - like I was tricked into liking an ad. Now, I have no objection to actually liking ads, because there are some hilarious ads out there that I will admit to liking (not that any of them are coming to mind right now), and I have some objection to already extant songs being used in advertising (that’s another rant for another day) but this idea of a song being created and marketed as a single but also being advertising bugs me.
Art is meant to exist as a vessel of expression for the artist, for the purpose of putting something beautiful into the world for people to experience, to record human history, or comment on the human condition. Advertising is meant to exist to remind people to buy a product so that a fat cat in a suit somewhere makes money - the two are diametically opposed, and yet here I sit, witnessing art turning into advertising.
So that’s Open Happiness. A jingle disguised as a single. You can check out the whole campaign at the Open Happiness website.
As for me, I’m going to cleanse myself with some Kasabian.