Salt-n-Pepa, Melissa Etheridge & More Talk Their Favorite Songs in Advertising at the 2015 CLIOs

Natalie Weiner
·2 min read
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The CLIO Awards, held Wednesday night at Manhattan’s American Museum of Natural History, are meant to recognize excellence in advertising — but what about excellence in advertising song choice? Billboard asked some of the experts in attendance at the ceremony about their picks for the most memorable (and thus, most effective) songs in commercials — see (and listen to) some of their picks below.

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“There’s so much good music in advertising — it’s made for it,” said Matthew Weiner, creator of the advertising-centric Mad Men, whose soundtrack ended up almost as influential as the drama itself. “The eToys ad with Israel [‘IZ’ Kamakawiwo’ole]’s version of ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ — or the Aaron Neville version of that song [called ‘Cotton’] for cotton” were his picks for most important musical moments in advertising. “Anything that gets me emotionally!” he added.

Melissa Etheridge‘s selections skewed more toward the world of rock: Lenny Kravitz‘s “Fly Away” Nissan ad — “it made that song huge” — and Jet‘s “Are You Gonna Be My Girl?” iTunes ad. “That just blew my mind,” Etheridge said of the latter. “It was the most perfect use of music in a commercial — just beautiful.”

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For some of the evening’s guests, the answer was easy: their own songs, made even more influential by placement in high-profile ads.

According to X Ambassadors drummer Adam Levin, “Renegades” by X Ambassadors is “the best song in any commercial of all time” (not that they’re biased!). Jokes aside, the group brought up the McDonald’s “I’m Lovin’ It” jingle as one of the ads that “always got stuck in [their] heads.”

“All I know is, ‘Ahh, push it’ — it’s one of my favorites by those girls, Salt-n-Pepa?” Pepa (a.k.a. Sandra Denton) told Billboard, alluding to the group’s classic hit “Push It,” which was featured in a Geico advertisement late last year.

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“I notice they’re bringing a lot of the old-school stuff back,” Salt (a.k.a. Cheryl James) added. “Maybe ‘Push It’ had a lot to do with that! The most recent one I heard was ‘I Can’t Wait’ by Nu Shooz [in a Target ad]. It just sounds right! It’s like, classics,” she added.

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