While we love it when a classy oldie gets the chance to run out in front of a new TV audience for the few minutes that an ad is on air, we’ve long ceased to expect that the track in question will inevitably make a re-appearance in the Top 200.
It’s invariably down to the imaginative quality of the film and how much it grabs the attention of the viewing public, of course. So we shouldn’t be too surprised to see Stevie Wonder’s 1968 smash For Once I My Life enter the charts at 151 for the last week of July thanks to a clever Sky Sports spot starring half a dozen David Beckhams relaxing at home, breakfasting in a traditional London pie and mash café and then on a film set. A few more and we could have seen Becks in the park having a kickabout with himself…
It will be particularly interesting to see if this memorable Sky campaign has helped For Once In My Life develop the sort of traction needed to attain a second chart life of its own or whether it will fade away as soon as the ad comes off screen.
Finding that sweet spot, the tipping point where a sync becomes a bona fide hit is never easy. When the licensed track is by a completely unknown artiste on an independent or even DIY label then it becomes doubly difficult to second guess how it will perform.
This month we have seen syncs by a pair of American indie acts who fall into that category scrabbling to gain a foothold in the UK hit parade. Most prominent has been Edward Sharpe And The Magnetic Zeros. Their Rough Trade release Home is the piece of alternative singalong country rock which underpins Peugeot’s surreal desert film See The City in A Different Light.
This ad was first aired at the end of June and Home made its chart debut a week later at number 149 before jumping to 65, 58 and then 50 in week 30. And there, at time of writing, it has stalled. So time alone will tell whether the 12 piece band from Los Angeles, who already have three albums to their credit, will be able to point to Peugeot for breaking them successfully into the UK market.
Compatriots Wild Cub have been less fortunate. They are the Nashville-based outfit – which established screen composer Keegan DeWitt runs in his spare time – from whom headphone and loudspeaker specialists Bose have licensed the polyrhythmic Thunder Clatter for their Better Sound Makes Everything Better clip. Some three weeks after the ad was first broadcast Thunder Clatter entered the chart at 113 and then leapt to 59 in Week 30. Sadly any hope distributors of their label Big Light Recordings might have of Wild Cub following in The Lumineers footsteps were scotched when Thunder Clatter mirrored its second week performance by falling back to 101 for the third.
Otherwise July’s charts gave us little more to report beyond the fact that June new entries Blurred Lines(Robin Thicke) and I Love It (Icona Pop feat Charli X) are still the sync sector’s top performers saleswise and that, almost a year since it was first released Ho Hey has finally dropped out of the Top 50. Whether that means it will suddenly drop off a cliff or else slide equally gracefully down the charts and still be in the top 200 this time next year remains to be seen. Anybody fancy opening a book on it?
