America is the last major country on earth where the populous doesn’t appreciate the nuances of both electronic music and soccer. Despite flare ups of popularity of both (womans US World cup and olympic performance, Moby’s incredibly popular “Play” album years ago or today: Lady GaGa’s “The Fame” album) both still struggle with mainstream attention.
In the realm of electronic music, the only on going success has been in soundtracks, ESPN and shopping mall background music and in advertising. When I was ahead of the curve, buying white labels, in record pools and hanging out at record shops hours on end to get the latest music, if I heard anything I purchased, later turn up on a commercial that track would instantly go into my dead pool. Dirty Vegas’s “Days Go By” was a key example, made famous by the Mitsubishi Eclipse commercial.
I’m not so much on the forefront of music these days so a good background track on a commercial catches my ear and I will want to hear it again, maybe even buy it. This happened earlier this year when I caught a Scion tc commercial entitled “Samples”. Here’s the commercial:
Scion Samples TC
I did plenty of research on this one and found the track isn’t even a full track but was created by Face the Music (Executive Producer: Adam Joseph Composer/Sound Designer: Tony Shimkin Mixer: Tom Burbank) specifically for the commercial, rather than the marketer picking up an already produced track to match the commercial message.
FTM has done some quality work for commercials and I’m sure they claim to have a successful business out of their work, however, I’m putting a public request out for them to remix the Samples track into a full 12″ and I’m sure they can extend their music talents with a private record label.
Justice went the other way with a sample from their “Genesis” track at the end of the Cadillac Escalade commercial. The sample didn’t kill the track use in the club scene however, still drove home the point of the commercial.
As long as the style continues to permeate in American culture, I’ll continue to accept it, hoping one day electronic music becomes even half as popular as European football.