Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: How Commercial Jingles Work

Episode Date: September 15, 2018

You probably can recite five right now. Commercial jingles are designed to hijack your working memory and implant a product or service and they really work. In this classic episode, learn about the history of these insidious and catchy advertising vehicles with Chuck and Josh. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey everyone, it's me, Josh, and for this week's SYSK Selects, I've chosen how commercial jingles work. You could also call it how commercial jingles slash earworms work.

And I have to say, if you make it through this episode with no earworms in your head, then your brain is broke. This episode was also actually the origin of the first commercial jingle we got, the Stuff You Should Know, which was done by Rusty Mattias of the Sheep Dogs, a Canadian band, and thanks again to Rusty for kicking that tradition off for us.

Hope you enjoy this episode. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HouseTuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Have you noticed that Jerry has a more aggressive countdown since we're shooting video now?

Yeah, we're shooting video now. Yeah. For those of you not watching and just listening, like old school, we have these on video, potentially. Yeah, Jerry's aggressively counting down now. Yeah, he just yelled at us three, two, one. And I keep, you know, we do two of these at a time. Yeah.

And I always bring a shirt, and I always forget to change into it. Like I have a shirt sitting over there. Yeah, I feel like a jerk. No, I did change once the first time. Well, today you have on your Mystery Science Theater 3000 shirt. I sure do. Shout out to Kevin and Bill.

Yeah. Hey, guys, if you're listening. You know everybody. Mike, Joel, anybody. Yeah, that's true. Whoever had anything to do with that show. TV's Frank, who's now a successful tweeter. Yeah.

I don't know if you follow him. No. He's pretty liberal. You know, Joel went out and did his own thing as well. Like they're both doing similar versions of their previous job. Oh, what is it? Cinematic Titanic?

Yeah. Is Joel's, and then Rift Tracks is Mike's. Yeah. Yeah, I'm well aware. You know, Robert Lam interviewed Joel Hodgson. Oh, yeah. And there's like a really awesome lengthy blog interview on the Stuff to Blow Your Mind blog.

Cool. Check it out. Yeah. So that's the intro for commercial jingles, which is what we're talking about. That's right. I really don't have anything except Chuck. Have you ever heard of a little songwriter

named Lynn Duddy? Nope. I hadn't either. Apparently Lynn Duddy wrote the I Love Bosco jingle, which I've never heard before, but it's listed as a famous jingle. So I feel like I'm missing out. Yeah, I didn't know half of these actually.

The I Love Bosco jingle, that's the one that we list. What's with this? And Barry Manilow wasn't in here. No, which, let's just get that out of the way. Manilow, who I love. Sure. You and me and I have seen him, Front Row Center in Vegas.

Yeah. It was an awesome show. Did he, he looks a little scary now. I, he's a great guy. I don't know if I'd want Front Row is all I'm saying. He, it was cool. He said something to me. I had to go to the bathroom and I like went

and left in the middle of one of the songs. And while he was singing, didn't miss a beat. He says to my back, don't leave now, it gets better. And then just like went into the song. Yeah. And you move like, Barry Manilow just talked to Josh. Yeah. Did you hear it?

Did you know what was directing it? No, I didn't hear. I came back and she was still like, oh my God, did you hear? Wow. Yeah. But Barry Manilow, in addition to his incredible singing career.

Yeah. Also is one of the better commercial jingle writers of all time. Yeah. Performed and co-wrote jingles like, like a good neighbor, state farm is there. That's a big one, man. They're still using that.

Stuck on the Band-Aid because the Band-Aid stuck on me. That's huge. Grab a bucket of chicken. I haven't heard that one. Grab a bucket of chicken. It was like 70s. Yeah. And that was for KFC, obviously.

And you deserve a break today at McDonald's. Yeah. Big one. Yeah. And he apparently recently did one for Dodge. I saw. I hadn't heard it either, yeah. Randy Newman, obviously.

He writes whatever pays the most. Right. He wrote a bunch back in the day. And then this guy, Jim Brickman, who made quite a name for himself with ads like, we are Flintstones kids. Oh, yeah. For the vitamins.

I used to love those. But every once in a while, my mom would just buy the cheaper knockoff ones. And the difference in taste was awful. So there is a spell where she would find sticky knockoff Flintstone vitamins in my Lincoln Logs just stuck to things because I'd just be like, bleh. It would stick to it.

Yeah, I'd just put it in my Lincoln Logs because I guess throwing it away was too difficult. Yeah, that's pretty good. But yeah. And then, of course, Lynn Duddy. And Lynn Duddy. And Brickman's other big one was GE. We bring good things to life.

Do you know how rich these people must be if they had even just a halfway decent agent? Well, it points out in this article. I don't know if it's still the case, but if you wrote the jingle, you own the rights to it. I know. I don't know if that's still, it seems like it should be. I guarantee you Manilow owns the rights

to the ones that he wrote. He didn't need to do it. No. But he still does, although he likes to cancel once in a while. He just came, I had tickets for his Atlanta show. Oh, really? He just canceled it. Cancelled, I'm not playing.

Sorry. Huh. Day off. Oh, really? Yeah. That's pretty lame. Yeah, I thought so, too. Well, I hope he's all right.

I was really into Barry Manilow when I was a kid. I know. For someone who ended up being, like, fairly cool with my music taste. Hey, I've got great music taste, too, and I love Manilow. Oh, yeah, no, I'm just saying. All right, let's get into this. OK, so Chuck, what is a commercial jingle?

It's one of these things that anybody can define it, but it's actually a little specific. Yeah, well, it is a song or a snippet of a hopefully memorable melody written about a product. And that's the original jingle. We'll get into how it's changed over the years. Right, so it can have just about anything in it, like a slogan, like a good neighbor state farm is there.

Yeah. It can have a phone number, like 805-8-8-2-3-100 Empire today. Good going. It can have call letters, like NBC. Yeah, I looked into that. That is what they now call audio branding or an audio logo, like the sound your computer makes when you open it.

Oh, yeah. Apple has theirs, PC said theirs. Or the ding, ding, ding from NBC, like you just said. But that's a big business now. Or CBS. That jingle, like who can ever get rid of that one once it's in your head? But that's a new thing, like that's even more specific now

than jingles or what they call audio branding. Every time I hear the word branding, a little piece of me dies. But the dude from the Human League, remember that band? Yeah, yeah. He has a company now that's like getting rich doing this. Oh, yeah? Yeah, basically, it's a little more complex than a jingle

because they're trying to capture like the essence of your brand with a few notes maybe. Or in the case of like an LG dryer, instead of hearing, at the end, it plays this little melody. It's like, laundry's done. No, what is that? No, it's a little melody, like a little dingy chiming melody. Who was it that wrote the Yahoo one?

Yahoo. Oh, man, who was that? We were just talking about that recently. Oh, it was the guy who wrote a... Oh, man, I can't remember. Sorry. Oh, well. Somebody right in.

It was in a previous podcast. Yeah. That's less than two months old. Yeah. It's all gone now. Yep. All right, so anyway, that's audio branding. But I do.

We left out one other part of a jingle. It can also tout the benefits of a product. Yeah, especially back in the day, that was huge. Like you'll wonder where the yellow went when you brushed your teeth with pepsident. Really, you're not familiar? No. Oh, yeah.

I remember the crest patrol. Yeah. We make holes in teeth? Remember that? No. Oh, man, I wish I would have looked this stuff up. In the 70s, there was the cartoon of the crest. I remember that.

Yeah, and then there were the yuck mouths, who were the bad people in that? I don't remember that. The enemies were the ones we make holes in teeth. Oh, OK. And then to the cavity creeps. I know they're the cavity creeps. Nice.

Wow. All right, I'm firing on all of them. You know, I remember being in third grade, I think, and we got a bunch of promotional materials from the crest patrol. And it included a play of which I was, I think, a toothbrush. Oh, really? Talk about infiltrating schools.

Yeah, seriously. Like we put on a play about the crest patrol in school. Wow, that is weird. It's a little weird. So Chuck, Jingles, they've been around since the Egyptians, as I understand it. That is not true. Technically, it is true, because the Egyptians

were around in the 1930s. Oh. Funny guy. Christmas Eve 1926, they have credited the Wheaties quartet with singing about the Wheaties breakfast cereal as being the first ever jingle. And apparently, Wheaties was in pretty bad shape, and they're even going to get rid of it

until they noticed that in markets where they were playing this song on the radio, Wheaties picked up. And they said, hey, maybe this Jingles, maybe he's got something to it. I think they probably didn't call it a jingle at the time. And then they put it nationwide, and Wheaties was saved. Yeah.

Did you listen to it? No. Is it pretty bad? No, it's great. It sounds like the B-sharps. You know, it's barbershop quartet. It sounds like baby on board, except they're singing about Wheaties.

So that whole Wheaties thing is pretty well established. But some still dispute it. And it depends on how you look at what a jingle is, whether that's the first one or not. But there's a song that was written in 1905 called In My Merry Old Mobile by Gus Edwards and Vincent Bryan, and I didn't realize that people were named Vincent back in 1905.

Does that seem like a modern name to you? Seems more like 1940s to 1970s, maybe. Maybe. You know, there's a website that charts popularity of names in a graph. I believe that. I betcha Vincent's pretty low back then. But those two guys made In My Merry Old Mobile,

and Old Mobile used it in the 30s. But it wasn't originally recorded or written for Old Mobile to use. I think the guys just really liked their Old Mobile. And so the author of this article, Tim Faulkner, points out that you'd probably more accurately call it the first pop song licensed for commercial use. OK, that makes more sense now.

So it's technically not a jingle. So the Wheaties quartet still stands. Right. Christmas Eve 1926, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Is there any place more desolate then? Hey, it worked. Yeah, because we still have Wheaties today. On the podcast, HeyDude, the 90s,

called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show HeyDude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends

to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair.

Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it, and popping it back in,

as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to HeyDude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road.

OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god.

Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander

each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. So the whole reason Jingles came about, too, was because I'm all about my 1930s consumer history. And in the 30s, consumer protection was way stronger. And one of the things was direct advertising was very strict. That's so funny now. Yeah, this is so, like, no holds barred now.

You know, Australia is going to town preventing direct marketing to kids. Oh, really? Yeah, they're really protecting their kids. Oh, cool. It is very cool. Just beer. You can only market beer.

Exactly. Do you remember when there used to be, like, cigarette ads? Oh, yeah. Cuddy Sark ads and things like that? It's funny to look through, if you go, like, to antique places and they have old life magazines and stuff, you just look through the ads and it's like, these happy people slowly killing themselves.

Right, with merits. So but in the 30s, if you wanted to get an ad on the radio, you pretty much had to buy some time, like, a half hour or an hour, and put on a program. And hence, we have things like the King Biscuit Flower Hour. Oh, yeah. You know? Or the General Motors car thriller mysteries.

Right. You know? Whatever. And at first, I think it was really boring and dull and dumb. And they figured out that consumers were a little more savvy and were not really willing to share their time for something that's just an ad, like an infomercial. Right.

So they started to make things like The Shadow and Little Orphan A&E. And they made them so they could advertise. But eventually, it gave us radio programming and then, ultimately, TV programming, as we understand it today, were basically born out of this desire to advertise to radio listeners in the 30s. Pretty cool.

Yeah. And I didn't realize this, or I realized it, I guess, but it's just hard to imagine these days, because advertising is so all over the place. But back then, you had direct-to-consumer sales, one-on-one. You go to a store, or you have a traveling salesman come to your house to sell a vacuum cleaner or whatever. And the ads back in the day bore that out.

They were basically real matter of fact and kind of dry and really just bullet-pointed how our product is better than the other. Right, exactly. It was very boring, very dry. Like, our spats are better than our competitor's spats, because they're made with virgin baby goat skin. That's right.

But with the popularity of radio, things changed. And they realized that jingles could make a real impact. And they did, because it's music. As the Wheaties Quartet proved pretty early on. And just right out of the gate, people started really paying attention to this. And they brought the field of psychology in. And psychology started cranking out books

that basically guided advertisers and companies on how to reach these audiences, like who's listening when and how to talk to them. And yeah, but it just basically exploded overnight. And it was all largely thanks to the jingle. Yeah, and early on, and I think it still holds true today, if you want to be a successful jingle, it's got to be very simple.

You got to have repetition. You got to have rhyming is good, because it helps stick in your head a little more. And before you know it, it's become part of your consciousness for life. Like they point out here in the article, the Oscar Meyer Bologna song, like anyone who grew up in the 70s can sing that word for word today,

unless you just weren't paying attention as a kid. Do you want to sing a little of it? Well, no. Do you? No. My Bologna has a first name, it's O-S-C-A-R. And the plop plop fizz fizz, oh, what a relief it is. These things get burned into the collective consciousness,

basically. Custanza. What's that? From Seinfeld, remember George gets a girlfriend because he associates his name with that by men. Oh, really? But he goes Custanza. And the woman doesn't even like him,

but she can't get him out of her head because that Custanza's in there, which you would call an earworm, which we've talked about, it feels like, before, right? I think so. But we may as well talk about the oerwurm. Is that how you pronounce it? In German, it's oerwurm.

And everyone knows it when an earworm is. It's when a song or a part of a song gets stuck in your head, sometimes an explica-bee. Explica-bee? Inexplicably. Something weird got stuck in your head. Like you wake up in the morning and the song is in your head. You hadn't heard it in weeks, months, years, who knows.

But it's just there. And they don't really know how it works either. No, but a couple of very smart guys in the 70s got together. Their names were Allen, Badly, and Graham Hitch. And they, I think they're responsible for coming up with the idea of the working memory. Badly and Hitch sounds like a 70s pop group. It does.

It sounds like research. Well, they went on to write the hustle. OK. But the Badly and Hitch first, I guess, have investigated working memory. And they came up with this thing called the phonological loop, which is an earworm, or a snippet of music, or a sentence, whatever.

It's running around. You can almost see it tracing this track in your head over and over again. That's the phonological loop. And it's made of two parts, the phonological store, which is your inner ear, which hears it. And then the articulatory rehearsal system, which is you driving yourself totally insane by saying it

over and over again. Yeah, repeating it. It's how we learn to talk. Right? Or learn a foreign language. And they think that this phonological loop is basically an earworm hitching a ride on this neurological process that we have naturally, and basically exploiting it

for commercial purposes. Wow. Happens more in women, supposedly. More in musicians, supposedly. And if you have OCD, it might really present a problem with you. That was a really good episode of ours, if you ask me. OCD? I remember you talked about David Sedaris' licks,

light switches, I think. Yeah, and his book he did. I don't know if that's real. I think it is, though. How to get rid of an earworm. There's all kinds of things you can try, like actually hearing the song in full. Like if you can't get a call me maybe out of your head,

just go listen to call me maybe. Sometimes singing it yourself all the way through can do it. You could sing call me maybe. You could vanquish it from your mind. But there's really no surefire way. Those are just little tricks. I heard someone say something about listening to Rush. We'll get rid of it.

Rush Limbaugh. Is that what it was? Because you just get so mad, right? Who's Professor Calaris? So he's the one who's basically he's the University of Cincinnati professor. He's in the earworm article. And he has dedicated his career to basically exploring

earworms, figuring out how they work, why they work. I think he's made a name for himself in it. He appears in not one, but two How Stuff Works articles. So he's arrived. So what he's done through surveys, he said it's obviously all up to the person. It's very individual as far as what songs get stuck in your head. But he put together through some surveys

what he calls the playlist from hell. And I would have to agree. I'd like to see this updated because it's a little dated. Little bit. I mean, I'm sure that one Party Rock is got to be at the top of the list. I don't know that one. Party Rock is in the house tonight.

I don't know that at all. It's literally impossible that you have not heard Party Rock. Is it a song? Yes. I have not heard it. I will play it for you. You'll be like, oh, OK. Is it like a pop song?

Yeah, it's not a commercial. It's everything. It's inescapable. It is the alpha and the omega. It's just not possible you haven't heard it. All right. But his playlist from hell includes The Baby Beck Ribs, Chili's Jingle, which we won't even

say out loud, The Baja Men's Who Let the Dogs Out. That's a good one. Queens We Will Rock You? That's another good one. It's a good one. But I don't know. That doesn't strike me as particularly earwormy. God, I could say.

Give me a break. It's a good one, too. It's a Kit Kat bar. The Mission Impossible theme. I think it's funny that this is on here because I had an experience with that when I lived in New Jersey. It was when I think the first Mission Impossible movie came out in YouTube, did the update of the theme.

That thing was stuck in my head for like three days. I was walking around just going, done, done, done, done. And coming up on corners really quick and like looking around doing a tuck and roll. It was crazy. So it didn't surprise me to see that on here. YMCA, there's nothing wrong with that. I kind of like this playlist.

I wouldn't call it from hell. I'd call it maybe from heck at best. OK. No, I do hate The Lion Sleeps tonight. I hate that song. I think that's probably on there for the very famous song. The Weem away thing. Wump there it is by tag team.

Another good song. It's a Small World, I guess that one. Because you go to Disney World and you just hear it over and over and over. What ride is that? It's a Small World. Is that the name of the ride, too? Yeah, I think so.

It's been a while, but yeah. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the co-classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal?

No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it

and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road.

OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear.

And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step.

Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio

App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. So, there's still plenty of jingles out there, and I'm trying to think of a, of a new jingle. Well, they're, they're all over, um, sports radio. Oh, yeah. Because I listened to a lot of sports talk, and me and my lead guitarist, Eddie, who you know, and a Cheepo.

Eddie, Eddie. Eddie, Eddie. No, Eddie Cooper. Eddie Cooper. Eddie Cooper. Eddie Cooper. Eddie Cooper. Eddie Cooper.

Eddie Cooper. Eddie Cooper. Eddie Cooper. Eddie Cooper. Eddie Cooper. Eddie Cooper. We have been joking around about doing, um, like, a medley of radio jingles now and our set.

Yeah. Because if you listen to sports radio, man, it's, like, the same ones. Oh, like what? Well, lookie lookie lookie. Here comes Cookie. Oh, yeah, Cook's pest controls. Alarmforce.

I haven't heard that one. Alarmforce. Oh, man, I can't think of them. But yeah, I mean, there's just like, if you listen to any kind of sports radio, it's like the same ones. The ad that always sticks out to me when I think of like sports radio or talk radio is that one guy who's, he's like trying to sell like some sort of refi. Like he's a refinance guy and he's like, it's the biggest no-brainer in the history

of Earth. Oh yeah, I remember that guy. I love that guy. Or if you've heard, and this isn't even a jingle but a full-on song, have you heard any of the Bluebell Ice Cream commercials? I don't know. It's pretty great. How does it go?

Oh, I mean, they're all different but it's all like this guy singing about like, you know, country morning and the sound of birds chirping and it's like the sound of coming home is what you taste when you eat Bluebell Ice Cream. It's pretty funny. Which is a lie. But like you said, they sort of have gone out of fashion a little bit, at least from the heyday, even though they're still around. Yeah, they are viewed somewhat as hokey, I think if you stop and think about a commercial

jingle or the concept of a jingle, it's hokey, even though you probably have 500 of them in your head that you could recall at any moment. But yes, if you are, say, the company responsible for running VW's advertising campaign, you're probably not going to use a commercial jingle. You're going to go the other route, which is to appropriate a pop song. Yeah, and in VW's case, they use Nick Drake. Which great one. The song Pink Moon.

Yeah, that's how I came to find out who Nick Drake was. That's how a lot of people came to find out and that's what the article points out is a lot of times they can resuscitate careers, although in his case, he passed away. But he definitely was way more popular after that commercial than he was before. Yeah. StereoLab was also VW. Who else? I don't think they needed any help, but it was like a perfect fit, the Polyphonic Spree.

Oh yeah. They had their, I can't remember the name of the song, it was like their huge hit. That was on a VW commercial, like when VW first came out with the new Beatle. Hey, and shout out to Toby, right? Yeah, Toby. He was in the Polyphonic Spree. He's shooting a feature film right now. Oh, really?

Yeah. Wow. In Louisiana. Like, he's shooting it. Yeah, Toby's a friend of Josh and Yumi's who was in the Polyphonic Spree. Yeah, he played theremin. And now he is a... Oh, did he really?

Yep. I don't think I knew that. Yeah, he was like friends with a couple of them and said, hey, you know, I want to be in the band. What do you need? And they're like, how about theremin? And back then anyone could be in the Polyphonic Spree. It was huge.

It was extensive. And he went out and bought a theremin and taught himself how to play it and came back and was like, all right, I don't want to be in. He like went to Japan, like toured the world with the spree for a while. That's on the spree. That's awesome. Yeah. And he's making a movie now.

Yeah. Well, you know, they had that short. Yeah, he produced one. One with a South by South one. Yeah, starring Bonnie Prince Billy. Right. That was amazing. Now they're on something else.

It's like a feature film. Same company. That's awesome. Yeah. Anyway, pop songs, getting back to that. They credit the Beatles 1987 Nike commercial when Nike famously used Revolution. Do you remember that? Yeah.

It's kind of starting this whole new wave of let's use, like pay a lot of money to use really popular songs because it's not enough anymore. You can't just say our brand is better than yours. You want to identify your brand with the public consciousness in a lifestyle. Right. Like that Cat Stevens song, Wind of My Soul and like the Timberlin ad that kind of struck me as the same thing too. Great song.

You put these shoes on and you will automatically be transformed. Yeah, I'm surprised he went for that. I am too. Hmm. I'd like to look into that. I wonder if he doesn't have the rights. It doesn't seem like something he would do. There's no way he doesn't have the rights to the songs.

Yeah, that's true. But it is kind of, you raise a point, like it is surprising that he would have gone for that. But apparently if you work on artists long enough or just wait for them to grow old and need money, they will eventually cave. Yeah. I mean, he didn't need the money, but. Who Sting?

Nah, I doubt if he did it because he needed the money or it loaded. I guess that's right. He has a castle. He did it for a reason though and it was probably money. So in the 80s when Sting was still, because you know, the police started out as a punk band. Yeah. And in the 80s, it was post-punk, but Sting still thought of himself as a pretty cool

dude. Sure. And apparently I don't know the company, but they approached Sting and said, hey, we want to use, don't stand so close to me for our deodorant commercial. Awful idea. It's a terrible idea. Yeah. And he very wisely said, no way.

But then Jaguar said, hey, you know this terrible desert rose thing you have going on? We want to use that for our ag campaign and Sting said, way. Right. Cheers to that. Yeah. And that's a big, you know, bands get accused of selling out less these days I think because especially smaller bands, you just, you know, people think music is free now. So they're not making money selling records like they used to.

They break even on tours, these small bands. So I like, I've done a 180, I used to think like, ah, don't sell out. But now I'm like, dude, make whatever money you can while you can. Yeah. I know Band of Horses is one of my favorite and Jerry's favorites. They were kind of taken to the mat by some of their fans because they did, they licensed their movie to Chevy and the dude, Ben Bridwell came out and was like, no, you know, I drive a Chevy.

It's old and maybe now I can get the AC fixed. You know, he drives an old pickup truck and he's like, what's, what's the problem? Yeah. Like we're trying to make a little dough here. Yeah. And it's a product I believe in. Yeah. You know, that part in the movie, the doors where like Jim Morrison is like off on like

whatever for a while and comes back and sees that like, um, like my fire's been, oh, that's right. Chevy commercial. Yeah. Yeah. It's like the, the Ray Conniff singers or something doing it and he's like, it's catchy tune. Well, it starts breaking stuff. That brings up my, my biggest pet peeve today is this new thing and it's not super new because

they've been doing it, but it's like worse than it's ever been when they will take a great classic song and bastardize it and have some like lady session singer come in and sing like satisfaction by the Rolling Stones, but in a different way and talking about being like satisfied with your, you know, your new car. Right. And it's just, it's all over the place now and it's just the worst. Like I would rather hear someone license their real song than hear them remake it with some awful session singer and change the words to fit their product.

You know what I'm saying? Sure. But then that corporation would take the Ben Bradwell stance and be like, Hey man, we're going to make our quarterly earnings. Yeah. That's true. You know? No, it's not true.

I was being totally facetious. It doesn't count. It's not the same thing. Or the other thing now that, um, like the black keys are suing Pizza Hut right now because what companies will do in Tom Waits to sue people a bunch of times, like every other year he sues someone because they'll go in and they'll say, give us something Tom Waitsie or boy, listen to the gold on the ceiling by the black keys. Can you do something like that?

And these, you know, dudes that write these songs, basically rip them off and the black keys are watching Pizza Hut and they're like, wait a minute, that's my song in a different, slightly different way, selling Pizzones. And so we're going to see you and take you to court and that's when they get in court and like compare them side by side. And well, you know, Ray Parker Jr. famously got messed up because he apparently ripped off, I need a new drug, Huey Lewis song. That's right.

And I never really heard it. And then finally it clicked and I was like, Oh wow, that is really subtle. Did he settle? He lost. I don't know if he settled or what, but he definitely lost that case. I guess finally we should talk a little bit about product placement because we had a whole product placement episode. Oh yeah, that's right.

Well, obviously with Tivo and DVRs now people are speeding through commercials. So you are going to find some product placement in your shows, quite possibly our own even. It happens. But there are better ways than others to do it. And if you want a good laugh, go to the YouTube and Google soap opera serial. And just watch. It's great. That's all I'm going to say.

I watched that the other day. Did you? Yeah. It's so funny and awful. It's just, it's colossally bad. But it's so bad that like it's earned a place in the pantheon of pop culture now. So it did its job. That's true.

And then some. Yeah. I bet you there's a lot of hits on that on YouTube. Yeah. A lot of hits. Honey, what are you doing? Just having some delicious honey nut Cheerios. Yeah.

It's really packed in fiber in there. The thing is, it's like a seven minute long scene. Yeah. It was awful. They just started talking about Cheerios the whole time. Yeah. It's pretty funny. And there was a little product placement right there for your Cheerios.

So it was all over the place. Bonus. No, I mean just now. No, but I'm saying, geez, all we did was talk about brands. Oh, yeah. We don't have control. Cook's pest control. It was just a check.

Yeah. We're just combined. Get the termites out of my house. That'd be nice. I want to check. Let's see, if you want to learn more about commercial jingles, you can type those words into the search bar at howstuffworks.com. And I said, search bar, which means it's time for a listener mail.

I'm going to call this, remember you asked for good causes in the white collar crimes? Yeah. Distance from Athens, Georgia. Oh, hey. So it made the cut. I've been there. Love the show, guys. And now a segue into a shameless plug, right to the point.

For a non-profit in Athens, Georgia, I represent free IT Athens, Frida. It's an all-volunteer non-profit, and it is a grassroots organization dedicated to reclaiming discarded technology like computers, refurbishing it, and distributing it to those in need. That's awesome. That's great. Makes perfect sense, too. I think, in fact, I have some old stuff I could donate. You know, there's gold in there.

There's all sorts of rare earth and precious metals that if you combine them, like a bunch of computers, you'd have a little gold nugget. Really? Yeah. Well, maybe I'll do that instead. We serve mostly low-income populations that cannot afford the latest and greatest technology. We also aim to reduce e-waste through computer reuse and responsible recycling. We are currently in need of working laptops for a volunteer program.

I know a whole room full of them. Seriously. Laptops are distributed to volunteers that complete our computer refurbishing program. We are interested in laptop computers that have been made within the last five years with little to no damage. Donating your computer can change someone's life. Imagine you can write that stuff off. You know, we really should see what they're going to do with this.

See if we can get rid of these guys. Donating can change someone's life. I already said that, but it can really change someone's life. No. Repetition. Financial donations are also welcome. You can visit www.freeitathens.org. Thank you so much, guys.

That is from Joel Isler and Athens. Thanks, Joel. I appreciate that. That is a very good cause. We'll see if we can help. Thank you. If not, we're in addition to, hopefully, there's a lot of listeners in the Athens and Atlanta area that can help.

Agreed. Or maybe people can mail them from all over. I'm sure you could. Or just gather and give them a little cash. Give them $10. Oh, yeah. You could do that, too. What was it?

Freeitathens.org. That's right. Nice. If you have a commercial jingle, we want to hear it. Send us a link. Sure. Some great, forgotten commercial jingle. We want to hear about it.

Or the worst one ever. Yeah. Let's just start talking about this. Let's get a conversation going. You can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K Podcast. You can join us on facebook.com. And you can send us an email. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com.

On the podcast, HeyDude, the 90s, called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or

wherever you listen to podcasts.