This month on Twitter, @sotachetan hosts #BrandedInSongs – which is a head-on collision of my personal world of music and my professional world of branding and advertising. The challenge is to simply pick a song with a brand name in its lyrics or title. I added one more criteria to my picks, which is this: the songs themselves must be as iconic as the brands they mention. No filler here.
As an MTV kid, I heard a lot of John Mellencamp growing up. John Cougar, actually, as that was his artist name at the time. “Jack & Diane”, “Small Town”, “Pink Houses”, “Hurts So Good”, “R.O.C.K. In The USA”. His version of America was different than mine. But what kept me from changing the channel was that Mellencamp always told captivating stories of the everyday. He’s an underrated storyteller in the music medium.
“Jack & Diane” are just “two American kids growing up in the heartland”. The song is a personal portrait of, well, nothing in particular. “Oh yeah, life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone.” And that’s the hook. Musically, it adopts a quiet-loud-quiet dynamic to give the song a bit more edge. The ultimate example of this is the bridge. And what a bridge it is. Thunderous drums and unyielding vocal harmonies for an unforgettable refrain.
“Suckin' on chilli dog outside the Tastee Freez.”