That’s a little more like it! Every one of the five chart weeks covered by the latest edition of adbreakanthems boasts a Number One hit single which has featured in a TV commercial.
What a way to celebrate our new arrangement with the Official Charts Company which now allows us to survey the Top 200 best selling titles every week and so keep closer track of those which have brightened up the breaks?
Coming back to earth a little, both Blurred Lines, the Robin Thicke and Pharrell track which headed the hit parade for weeks 22-25, and Icona Pop’s I Love It, which knocked it off the top spot seven days later, always had smash hit written all over them. And so probably didn’t need any extra sync action to help them reach the pinnacle of pop success in the UK.
Indeed the Swedish duo’s electroteenypop title has been going gangbusters all over the US, where it has reportedly racked up more than a million sales for Atlantic over the last couple of months. But every little bit helps, to coin the Tesco phrase, and the clever Danny Kleinman-directed Samsung S4 clip – of an American football team synchronizing their mobile phones immediately before a big match – ran for at least three high profile weeks before I Love It was released. So if that doesn’t spell ‘taster’ then we don’t know what does!
By comparison, the Robin Thicke spot, for a trendy loudspeaker system by Beats By Dr Dre, was rather more viral and internet-facing. It starred the man himself clearly having a great time in the company of a handful of lithesome ladies wearing little more than scanty silver panties and see-through cellophane tops. Not quite Robert Palmer and his all-girl band from the iconic 1986 promo for Addicted To Love, perhaps. But we’re certain that the dapper Mr Thicke won’t mind the comparison.
Technically we should also claim that Brit-awarded newcomer Tom Odell is another adbreak alumnus. His debut single Another Love, which shot into the Top 10 in Week 25, was, after all, used by BBC 1 as a Love 2013 trailer back in December. But that was rather a long time ago and, unless we’re hugely mistaken, the track wasn’t commercially available at the time.
Looking further down the charts – and passing over The Lumineers and Imagine Dragons releases which have clearly adopted squatters’ rights in the Top 30 – it would appear that the best rights holders can expect from a top TV license is a brief flirtation with the bottom half of the Top 200.
Of course there is no questioning that Ellie Goulding’s Explosions, which briefly appeared as a single around the launch of her second album Halcyon last Autumn, received a mighty fillip when ITV 1 used it in a Where Drama Lives trailer in January. It subsequently peaked at number 13 in March but has clearly refused to go away and was seen hanging on in there at 190 in week 26.
Meanwhile a Littlewoods spot for Mylene Klass swimwear did little to propel Naughty Boy and Emilie Sande’s Wonder any higher than 181 for a couple of weeks. But then that had been a Top 10 hit at the end of last year so the label management team at EMI were probably satisfied to rack up few extra sales.
But should we have expected more of Frank Sinatra’s My Way – which entered the charts at 150 in week 24 and has slipped approximately 10 places a week since – on the back of a less than reverent Honda car spot? Not when Run, the anarchic soundtrack to Samsung Viera’s full-tilt Charge film, by One Little Indian signed indie band Kill It Kid, seems incapable of climbing into the Top 100.
