The Association Of Music Producers is arguing that the NARAS should create two new Grammy awards: one for best original song in an advertisement, and one for best original score. Shouldn’t a freestyle regarding the glory of Sprite garner the performer a Clio instead, you might ask? Perhaps, but the AMP feels that the commercial appeal of these jingles proves their artistic merit and the need for the music industry to award their creators. With artists already treating their music’s appearance in an ad as an accomplishment in press releases, I suppose it’s time for them to start giving themselves trophies for it as well.
While the Grammy campaign is just getting underway and could face a long, hard road to its desired destination, Lyle Greenfield, recently elected AMP’s national board president, thinks the timing of such a lobbying effort is ideal in that commercial music is becoming more widely regarded as mainstream entertainment–so much so that major recording artists are embracing the ad discipline, and original music that strikes a responsive chord with audiences is regularly making spots standard fare on YouTube.
Songs For Soap notes that “Better Than I’ve Ever Been,” by KRS-One, Kanye West and Nas, was nominated for a Grammy despite being written for an advertisement, so an Best Original Song In An Advertisement award might be superfluous. My problem is that the proposed cateogry will ignore the efforts of artists who take one of their popular numbers and adapt them to fit a product.
Why should this be up for a Grammy…
and not this?
Organization Plans To Petition For Grammy Recognition Of Spots; Spec Sheet Introduced [Shoot]
Do We Need Grammy Award Categories for Ad Songs? [Songs For Soap]
Man, can’t they just be happy taking pride in their work brainwashing the masses?
Holding hypnotic power just must not satisfy like it used to. *sigh*
More consumers, hungry for shiny tin trophies.
Man, thanks for the horrifying trip down Earworm Lane. Wasn’t that New Kids ad the one launching that ill-fated Coke promotion where a $100 bill was supposed to pop out of the can when you popped the top–but people paid no attention and drank the near-poisonous liquid surrounding the mechanism?
5 Dollar Footloooong.
So if this hypothetically happened in the past, Van Hagar could have won a Grammy for their participation in the Crystal Pepsi ad?
I’m for it.
I think the big problem with this (at least, beyond the four million obvious reasons this is an abomination) is that most of the best jingles are regional. The ones playing in the town I went to high school in are different than the ones in the town I went to college in. Since moving to New York, I’ve encountered an entirely different set once again. While they still shouldn’t be up for consideration, it would at least be more logical if they were up for something like the BAMA’s, rather than a worldwide endeavor.
877-393-4-4-4-EIGHT! The savings are for real / triple play is the deal.
Does this mean that Barry Manilow and Paul Williams, actual jingle writers both, get nominated for Lifetime Achievement Awards?