I always have an eye-open for older songs heard during commercials.
Here are couple picked up on lately:
Patsy Cline's "Back in Baby's Arms" during a Mazda commercial
The Vogues "Turn Around Look at Me" during a VW spot
How about the reverse? In the SB, Chevy played a cut from "We Are Young" by fun. and that became the most downloaded single in Apple history up to that point, after playing one time, and gave them their only really successful album, after being together for 12 years. That also awakened the masses to music from bands like Imagine Dragons and that anthem sound was for real.
When I think of music in commercials, three come to mind. "No Matter What Shape" was the Alka Seltzer ad showing stomachs and was fleshed out (pun intended) to a full on hit for the T Bones from being just an instrumental jingle.
Cadillac used one track of music from Zeppelin to completely change the image of the brand after failing to do so with "this is not your father's Oldsmobile". I remember the first time I saw that ad with the car on wet pavement and that song playing, I had to stop and wrap my mind around what I was hearing and seeing, it did not compute. I ended up with two of their cars and partly because of the impression that made on me.
But the best is the careers of The Carpenters launched when listeners were calling the radio stations where their bank jingle, "We've Only Just Begun", was playing and requesting that it be played. They wrote that out to a full song and very successful musical careers were born out of that :60 jingle.
