This month on Twitter, @sotachetan hosts #BrandedInSongs – which is a head-on collision of my personal world of music and my professional world of branding and advertising. The challenge is to simply pick a song with a brand name in its lyrics or title. I added one more criteria to my picks, which is this: the songs themselves must be as iconic as the brands they mention. No filler here.
There was plenty of buzz going around about the new R.E.M. record. Up until that point, the band had already recorded several landmark albums. But the most recent one “Out of Time” was considered sub-par by their own lofty standards. Automatic For The People was a significant return to form, widely considered to be one of their best – resolutely R.E.M. even with its wide commercial appeal. Pulling that off was quite a feat in itself. And “Man On The Moon” is one of its many standouts.
R.E.M. is in their sweet spot here. Mid-tempo, jangly pop with non-pop lyrics. Substitute Stipe for another lead vocalist, and it’s just not the same song anymore. His unique sound gives the track its character, from the verse’s doldrums to the yearning chorus refrain. Midway, Peter Buck’s guitar solo teases the listener with a potentially monstrous guitar riff that becomes suddenly subdued and snuffed out by Stipe’s vocals. And I just love how the song ends. So perfectly R.E.M. down to the last, somewhat abrupt note.
“Let's play Twister, let's play Risk, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.”