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.
Like the Dude in The Big Lebowski, I never was a fan of The Eagles. But as an 80’s kid, the solo work of Don Henley and Glenn Frey are permanently etched into my childhood. Frey’s “The Heat Is On” and “You Belong To The City” ruled movie and television show soundtracks. Henley made some noise of his own – with “All She Wants To Do Is Dance” and, more notably, “The Boys Of Summer”.
It’s been many years since the last time I heard this song. Coming back to it, I have a renewed appreciation for the songwriting craft. Henley wrote the lyrics, but the music was composed by Mike Campbell from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Every important music institution from the Grammys to Pitchfork agree that “The Boys Of Summer” is a fantastic song. Together, the song’s opening snare rim clicks and synth riff created one of the best song intros of the 80’s. But what makes the song so good – even after all these years – are Henley’s lyrics and the guitar work.
“Out on the road today I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac. A little voice inside my head said, ‘Don't look back, you can never look back’.”