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.
Growing up, every Rush album cover I gazed at was epic and teased the promise of something equally epic happening inside. One of the albums that I’ve played from beginning to end incessantly was Moving Pictures. In the streaming age, this ritual has lost its luster a bit, as I’ve ended up playing its individual tracks probably more often than the entire LP. But in recent years, this has only helped reinforce how much each of these songs mean to me — and none more so than “Red Barchetta”. A song that both the cool and uncool kids in my elementary school could all agree on.
“Tom Sawyer” had swagger. “YYZ” had prowess. “Limelight” had melody. But “Red Barchetta” had heart. About a joy ride turned car chase, it had all the musical trappings to further the narrative — from Peart’s cymbal crashes to Lee’s adrenaline-fueled vocals. One of my favorite Alex Lifeson guitar solos happens at the 3:20 mark. Often overshadowed by Lee’s bass playing skills and Peart’s prowess on drums, Lifeson more than held his own on “Red Barchetta”, a song that carries with it so much nostalgia.
“I strip away the old debris That hides a shining car. A brilliant red Barchetta From a better vanished time.”