Warning: long article
We're sold on their songs
But these mega-musicians still won't grant their tunes to grace advertising. Too bad.
By Brian Truitt
Picture this: A man breaks his wife's favorite antique vase. In a panic, he rushes to the kitchen to grab the Krazy Glue and avoid his love's potential wrath. But he inadvertently attaches his palm to the vase, and as a forlorn expression comes over his face, you hear Bono crooning the U2 song "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of".
It's a great idea for a television advertisement. But companies wanting to use a U2 tune still haven't found what they're looking for. The only way you'll ever hear one of the group's songs in an ad is in your imagination.
At a time when new bands are fighting to get their tracks in ads and established performers like Moby and the Who are licensing their music, U2 is on a short but notable list of groups -- including the likes of Beck, Radiohead, the Beastie Boys and R.E.M. -- that don't allow their music to be used in commercials.
"In this climate, where a lot of people are selling songs, you notice the holdouts much more, because they're fewer and farther between," says Beth Urdang, music supervisor at Agoraphone Music Direction, a New York-based company that works with ad agencies to match music to commercials.
Some bands are getting hip to pitching products, but there's still a strong "selling out" stigma attached. And there's good reason for such thinking: Many people probably still think of Sunkist when they hear the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations". It essentially became a jingle, and Urdang says some artists may worry that their music could become synonymous with an ad or a product.
"Bands like U2 and R.E.M. are being cautious about ... a worldwide reputation," says Urdang, a former Wieden & Kennedy ad executive who collaborated on the 1998 Nike ad that put the Verve's hummable "Bitter Sweet Symphony" in the heads of millions of TV viewers. "These songs are not meaningful to a small coterie in their hometown; they're meaningful to the whole world, and it must be a difficult choice to think about changing the meaning of [a] song."
So how can one please a client who's dead-set on using an unattainable song? It's up to ad agency music producers to find a band that matches the better-known artist's iconic sound, although "it's just not as simple as 'X replaces Y,' " Urdang says. One of her clients once wanted a song with the Beastie Boys' energy, so she recommended Plastilina Mosh; their song was used in a Palm TV spot. When U2 is requested, the go-to groups for an anthemic sound are French electronica duo Air -- whose songs have been featured in commercials for Levi's and L'Oreal -- and the Doves.
Rich Bologna, former music director at Fallon advertising in Minneapolis, which won this year's Clio Award for Agency of the Year, says finding a lesser-known artist means fewer headaches. "For a lot of labels, this is a vehicle to get their music out there in an unorthodox media," Bologna says. "And you don't have to shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars for the new Britney Spears track if you have some good music that's more reasonable and more underground."
But some smaller bands emulate their more famous peers and balk when an agency requests to use a track. Belle & Sebastian, a Scottish folk-pop septet on Rough Trade Records, turned down a Gap ad; Matador Records' Yo La Tengo also doesn't allow its recorded music to be used for commercials but is game for writing original music for ads, as they did for four recent animated Starbucks commercials created by Fallon-New York.
"I'm very proud of my bands," says Lyle Hysen, head of the film and TV department at Matador. "They're a finicky bunch, and if they don't want to do the spot, they won't do it. ... But now, I think bands see and hear other bands on TV and getting paid, and they want to be a part of that, too."
