A tipster just sent us a YouTube clip for a Wrigley's gum ad that aired during last night's episode of
American Idol, wondering if the droll singing voice coming out of the actor's mouth was none other than the Magnetic Fields' Stephin Merritt. It sure
sounds like a Magnetic Fields song that just happens to be about the American Dental Association—right down to the plinky (but charming!) piano on the backing track—but the performance is a little too polished to
quite convince us it's the man himself. Merritt's obviously
cool with selling his distinctively froggy pipes to ad agencies, but clearly we need a second through sixty-ninth opinion here, so decide for yourself after the jump.
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.jpg "This Year, \"American Idol\" Will Be Won By A Dude Named David (But You Knew That Already)")
Idolator
CBS has decided to pick up the Mark Burnett game show Jingles, during which contestants will be required to write songs showcasing the various sponsors of the program in a positive light, then have those tunes judged by an "expert panel" and Americans. Winning songs will get used in the featured products' commercials, a fact that should make any indie musician hoping to pay his rent by selling his track to a soap company quiver in his boots. The designed-for-evading-TiVoers show will likely appear on the network's schedule come summertime, and casting is apparently going on right now! Here's a suggestion for CBS: How about cueing up a "marginal indie celebrity" version of the show to bring down your network's average viewing age—perhaps Feist vs. Wilco vs. Stephin Merritt? A preview of that potential throwdown is after the jump.
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Stephin Merritt reads fifth-grade fave Ethan Frome on his birthday every year, because "it expresses everything about how horrible New England is." And hey, at only 99 pages, you can read its entire "if you want more out of your horrible existence, you're pretty much screwed" tale and still have time for cake and ice cream! [
