Here’s something you probably weren’t expecting to hear this bright early autumn morning: Justin Vernon, aka Bon Iver, has written an advertising jingle for meatloaf dippers.
Strange but true. The singer has written and recorded this jingle for the Minnesota restaurant Howard’s Bar, which was opened in 2023 by the local musician Caroline Smith. The song’s ad is accompanied by animation by the illustrator Nick Stokes and – as you can tell – it’s as catchy and more-ish as the deep-fried comestible it’s promoting.
All together now: “Meatloaf dippers at Howard’s in Stillwater/Meatloaf dippers can be a whole meal or starter/Meatloaf dippers, oh so light and yummy/Go on and warm your tummy, with dippers.”
You may be unaware of it, but there is a noble tradition of rock musicians writing advertising jingles. And often it’s been the most unlikely, hippest names that have got themselves involved in penning those crunchy tunes that grease the wheels of capitalism.
Incredibly, in the mid 1960s the Rolling Stones – then the coolest band on planet Earth - recorded a jingle to advertise… Rice Krispies. The tune was apparently one of the few penned by the group’s original leader Brian Jones.
The music from Coca-Cola ads has reached Number One in the UK on two occasions (The New Seekers’ I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing in 1972 and Robin Beck’s First Time from 1988) so it’s somewhat strange that Jack White’s Coke song, What Goes Around Comes Around, has become a genuine White rarity.
The ad was produced in 2007 but supposedly was pulled after just one airing on the UK’s Channel Four and the song has never cropped up on any subsequent White release.
And then there’s Justin Hawkins of the Darkness. Before the group emerged in the early 2000s, Hawkins’ day job was as a TV jingle writer. The singer composed the music for ads for Mars Bars, Tango and this effort for IKEA:
Indeed, Hawkins once boasted to the Guardian that the Darkness wouldn’t have got off the ground without his ad work: “That's how we paid for the first album. It was TV adverts. I did HSBC, Tango, Mars bars, Irn Bru, the Sunday Express gardening supplement TV ad – I've been running a jingle company for the last 15 years."
