Earn This

Historians tell us that the world’s first jingle was written by the minstrel Bartholomew the Profitable in 986 CE.  Hired by Percival of Shropshire to help sell chicken-bone dice, Bart traversed the countryside playing to captive audiences, replacing his traditional opener “The Tale of Sir Ywain the Bastard” with a ballad of 652 stanzas in praise of Percival’s dice.  The memorable chorus was permanently planted in the ears of all English men:

Across the streams and valleys
Of our flushing island home
Much finer dice you’ll narry find
Than Percival’s chicken-bone!

Subsequently, Percy’s sales increased to such an extent that he nearly altogether rid the British isles of barnyard fowl.  His example was adapted by all merchants who heard tell.  Soon the dales were swollen with contracted bards peddling epic commercials with the help of their road-worn lutes.

Moving forward a thousand years, we find that the jingle has blossomed into a virtual necessity for market-men in every market.  And while sing-along slogans have always adhered to the musical zeitgeist to ensure their memorability,  this continuity of spirit entails a critical divergence of form.  Advertisements measured in stanzas would naturally have been considered on par with the other merry tunes of a jongleur, but a modern critic would never lump catchy mercantile melodies in with radio pop.

Yet what is the difference between, say, the $5 Footlong song from Subway commercials and the latest Rihanna single?  The latter shows little novelty from one iteration to the next, just as the former is presented from spot to spot as variations on a theme, and neither one consists of more than ten seconds of original material.

I don’t mean to belittle the condition of the mainstream here; on the contrary, I wish to extol the substance of the modern jingle.  Chronically overlooked or perennially belittled, the songs that fill the gap between 7-minute stretches of primetime television are never given a chance, but gosh darn it if they aren’t music just the same as what plays between traffic reports on evening rush-hour radio.

Earworm moves product in any domain.  Miley Cyrus wants kids to keep singing her song until they can’t help but pay for her whole cd.  State Farm made their slogan (“Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there”) more memorable by putting it to a tune so that insurance shoppers will think of them first and check them out more often.  From an irregular perspective, we could say that mainstream songs are 200-second jingles advertising themselves as the product – and that notion has some merit!

It inspires me that we have reached a point in television advertising when some companies have abandoned mere sung slogans in favor of developed 30-second tunes that convey their message less succinctly, if at all.  Consider, for instance, this favorite Dunkin’ Donuts spot of mine.  Approachable melody, diverse percussion, thoughtful arrangement – a recipe for success! – and yet nothing in the lyrics pointing to breakfast.  Visuals and a voice-over draw your attention to the product.  If the song is part of the commercial but doesn’t advertise by itself, do you feel less dirty thinking of it both as a jingle and as music?

Let me focus now on a true paragon of melodic marketing: the Free Credit Report Band.  Their namesake website has elevated the art of music in advertisement by employing those rarest of performers, the live-action virtual band.  Honoring the tradition of Alvin and the Chipmunks and, more recently, Gorillaz and Dethklok, the Free Credit Report Band consists of characters not truly responsible for the sounds you hear.  When I search my trivia lobe for non-animated virtual bands, I can only offer Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, who would fit the bill if they ever played before an audience, or the Partridge Family, who maintained a thin veil between who its members were in fact and in fiction.

From their start in a pirate-themed restaurant, the Free Credit Report Band has managed to explore a dynamic set of rhythms and styles without reinventing their sound.  That is, the classic triumvirate of rock instrumentation appears across the boys’ takes on pop, 80′s synth, porch-front acoustic, western, and more.  Each of these genres is so firmly established as to allow a formulaic approach, of which these singing salesmen take shameless advantage.

As I implied earlier, cranking out a “new” hit need not require more than a chorus’s length of freshly-minted melodies.  When verses can be modified versions of the chorus or even three raw chords and a drum tick, it truly is that simple.  That much novel songwriting is regularly featured in FreeCreditReport.com ads.

I’ve said it enough, then: jingle artists who do a common thing well give us plentiful cause to label them musicians.

Beyond earning credit as artists, there is something more I hope to see commercial singers accomplish in the near future.  Just as Billy Mays earned America’s trust and spent a decade and a half coaching our purchases with his charismatic assurance, I want one marketing artist to perform their merchant ditties for a slew of reputable endorsers.

The Free Credit Report Band plays commercial-length songs that tell stories of misfortune that could be prevented by paying for the product at hand.  If only they would show up on a Sears commercial overriding my appliance price-comparison work!  How wonderful if they would caterwaul about a competitor’s weak 3G coverage!  That is my dream for the future.

If that goes through, only one step will remain for us to reach jingle perfection: imagine the Free Credit Report Band… then imagine Bartholomew… then imagine them together, backing the same company.  The jingle artist cross-over: coming by 2025.  Mark my words.

This is Grant’s half of the Pinkerton point-counterpoint review. Read Dan’s half here.

Pinkerton is the sound of a band afraid to become great.  Representing a comeback after the hiatus Weezer took in response to their debut album’s surprise success, it doesn’t so much as reinvent the band as push their less desirable attributes to the forefront.  Weezer’s early work embraced its quaintness and made no effort to appear polished, but much of Pinkerton turns the aw-shucks charm into something far worse—childishness.  The album sounds unfinished, amateur, and slight, a noble effort from a high school garage band, but not one with such a devoted following.  That’s not to say that it doesn’t have its moments—it does—or that Rivers Cuomo forgot how to construct a tune—he didn’t—but that it has a horrible tone and message, and even the better songs convey annoying problems.

Said debut album, Weezer (rechristened The Blue Album because of its cover) was a critical album in emo’s transition from Rites of Spring-style punk to 1990s power pop and careening vocals.  But it’s Pinkerton that seems to anticipate the rash of wimpy, whiny bands that subsequently sprouted up under the term’s guise.  The melodies are by and large listenable, but there’s an effeminate undercurrent to everything, both in the slight and repetitive music and, more importantly, in the lyrics of Cuomo, who sings as though he’s been castrated.

The band keeps things moving on tracks like “Tired of Sex,” but Rivers cobbles together an embarrassing set of lyrics that threatens the dignity of almost every song.  Conveying an even greater sense of immaturity than the music, he whines about the impossibility that girls could ever like him, punctuating the theme with “What could you possibly see in little old three-chord me” in the otherwise charming “Falling for You.”  Likewise, when he whines “Why bother? It’s gonna hurt me / It’s gonna kill when you desert me” on “Why Bother,” one can’t possibly agree with him that it’s a crying shame that he’s all alone—it’s what he deserves, especially if two bad break-ups have sucked the life out of him.

Rock bands from here to eternity have sung about relationship problems, but of all the avenues from which to approach the issue, the I’m worthless-so-what’s-the-point one conveys the greatest immaturity.  Even “Tired of Sex” runs into this problem.  Songs such as The Cure’s “Siamese Twins” have described feelings of regret over sexual encounters, but they’re more credible when addressing a specific situation.  When Rivers simply says “I’m tired of having sex,” without any more context or elaboration, he sounds, well, prepubescent.  This sentiment, when combined with the rejections of relationships expressed elsewhere, leads to one simple thought: Grow a pair.

Because of this feeling, when he switches course and later extolls the glories of shakin’ booty or touching yourself, he sounds patently ridiculous.  By that point in the album, he’s lost credibility with the listener on the topic.

Sonically, Pinkerton songs rely heavily on similarly tossed off, amorphous shards of guitar that don’t sound heavy enough to be so caustic.  Weezer, on this album and their debut, don’t exactly exude sonic beauty, which makes their albums sound much better in small doses.  Several of the songs are hummable (“No Other One” especially), though the band tends to fall into predictable, vague grooves.  Cuomo nails the bridges of  “Falling” and “Across the Sea,” but if that makes you pay attention to his lyrics—both of which, interestingly, center around the word “Goddamn”—you’ve lost the war.  “The Good Life” has the album’s best melody, but, again, with his chorus he sounds like a little kid.

Pinkerton isn’t a difficult listen by any stretch—only “El Scorcho” is truly unlistenable—so long as you don’t expect much and ignore the lyrics.  Yet it’s so caustic after ten tracks that you’re searching for a way out.  Rivers wrote a few reasonably catchy melodies, and “Pink Triangle” is a perfect summation of Weezer at their pre-Make Believe best—off-center but endearing—but the specter of childhood looms over every moment.  Listening to Pinkerton, one hopes that Rivers and company will grow up, both in their playing and in their minds.

This is Dan’s half of the Pinkerton point-counterpoint review. Read Grant’s half here.

I have this funny image in my head of Rivers Cuomo, the bespectacled frontman and songwriter of Weezer, performing the music of his first album in neatly trimmed suit with a smile. Then, just as the fans start yawning “novelty” and move on with life, he goes into Incredible Hulk mode, and starts smashing his guitar and all of the band equipment.

Pinkerton, the sequel to their self-titled debut smash, is basically Rivers revealing all of the humiliation he feels in his life. It’s a sad, emotional album, but also a perversely hilarious one. It’s like when a friend tells you his most embarrassing story. Part of you wants to laugh at him, and part of you wants to comfort him. And both parts of you have a point.

Those dual extremes of Pinkerton gel incredibly well with a psycho pop metal sound to become Weezer’s masterpiece. The guitars range from fuzzy to jangly, but are constantly loud and melodic. There’s also an off-the-cuff feel to the music that’s the opposite from the polished, rehearsed feeling to Weezer’s debut.

Really, though, the album’s success hinges on its ten songs. Each one is mix-tape good on its own, but as a package, they’re mesmerizing. The flow between comedy and tragedy — often both simultaneously — is incredible.  Consider one ten-second clip of El Scorcho when Cuomo compares affection first to professional wrestling then to Cio-Cio San’s doomed love in the opera Madam Butterfly. Brilliant.

With these songs, Weezer pioneers the ‘emo’ genre, but does the style better than any future band could hope to. There’s a pathos and self-loathing here, as would become the sub-genre’s norm, but Cuomo is at heart too funny and charming for the angst to become a burden. Whether he admits it or not, it’s clear he’s having some fun here: “I’m dumb, she’s a Lesbian, I thought I had found the one” — sorry, Fall Out Boy, but emo rock  peaked with that one line.

Any notion from the debut that Weezer was simply a novelty act, not a ‘real’ band is dispelled quickly: There’s so much cooperation on a deep level here. This is a band with a mission and a vision and real chemistry. You can’t fake the sweeping notions and gestures that fill Pinkerton: The Good Life’s pulverized pride, Across the Sea’s lonely lament, Butterfly’s ashamed absolution.

But the most enduring charm of Pinkerton is that its emotions and motivations are ambiguous enough that it’s impossible to take the same thing away from it each time I listen to it. How much of this is genuine pain, how much of it simply acerbic wit? It’s a fine line. When Cuomo rhymes “Jello” with “cello” in El Scorcho, there’s clearly some playfulness. When he climaxes the song with “Maybe you’re scared to say ‘I’m falling for you,’” I doubt there is any. For rest of the song, it varies with each listen. The flux in tone — from sad to silly to self-parody — constantly shifts.

You can debate whether the sound of Pinkerton is as enjoyable or interesting as any of Weezer’s other albums, but what makes Pinkerton their best album is that it’s their most personal and honest. Despite its angst, it connects with me in ways most other albums can’t. Most days, I can’t think of twenty albums I value more than Pinkerton, and some days, I can’t think of five.