I can’t front; I really couldn’t think of anything to write about this week. I’ve been listening to the usual amount of music, it’s just that nothing really grabbed me; I’m not that passionate about anything at this very moment.
So I decided that I was just going to go though my collection, randomly pick out an album, and try to defend it. But then I heard something that got me thinking.
I’m a fan of jingles. I think that jingles and television themes are American art forms that should get the same respect that jazz gets. In fact, I’m such a huge fan of jingles (and TV themes) that I’ll never forgive TVT for branching out from compilations of themes and jingles and giving Lil Jon a career.
Given that I’m a fan, I’m really sort of glad that cotton is still the fabric of our lives. I love that jingle. I love the fact that it’s been around for two decades and that I’m still not tired of it.
I don’t know why the people behind Cotton Inc. felt the need put together a jingle. It came out in 1989, and with disco being dead I can’t imagine that polyester was killing cotton in sales. I really don’t know what the climate was like for fashion in the late ’80s, but something spurred the folks at Cotton Inc. into an aggressive ad campaign that’s still around today.
And that’s what got my juices flowing. I was watching Conan on Hulu and I heard one of the new Cotton Inc. commercials. I thought that the voice sounded familiar and then I was like, “No, it can’t be her.”
But it was.
It was Zooey Deschanel.
I don’t know why, but initially, it rubbed me the wrong way. I think it’s because I sort of want to keep her talent with music a secret. She & Him flew under the radar for most people and I liked that it was kind of a secret that I shared with a select few. But a national ad campaign tends to put you in the spotlight.
And while I know that she’s married now, I didn’t think that she’d have to do commercials.
Still, the jingle is a classic, so I’m not really that mad at anyone involved. Cotton Inc. gets some indie cred and Zooey gets some money and probably some fine American-made garments.
Call me old-school, but I prefer the Aaron Neville version above all others. It’s probably the only Aaron Neville song that I actually enjoy and his voice is forever linked with that jingle.
Ok, and it’s linked with that huge mole.
It strikes me as sort of sad that it’ll probably be the last great jingle. It’s a dying art. We may get the occasional catchy jingle, but I really don’t think that we’ll get another truly great one any time soon.
(Wow. Even I never really knew how much I actually cared about the jingle. I mean, sure, last year I paraphrased it for my National Novel Writing Month project, but the fact that I could actually throw a column together around it is sort of astounding to me.)
Well, I guess I’ll have to justify my purchase of Eminem’s The Eminem Show in a future column.
Darn.
