It’s my guess that most people over the age of 20 know the 2007 commercial that Sarah McLachlan made for the ASPCA using her song “Angel.” The song was first released on Ms. McLachlan’s 1997 album, Surfacing, and then released as a single in 1998 and placed on Billboard’s Hot 100 at number 4 in 1999. The song, according to Ms. McLachlan, is about drug addiction, and on its own elicits an emotional response, but once paired with the ASPCA commercial with visuals of abused and suffering animals, it became an out and out tearjerker; making even the most hardened cynic break down and cry. It also made the commercial a huge fundraising success. In 1995, Bill Gates paid The Rolling Stones millions for the use of their song “Start Me Up” for use in a Microsoft commercial that put Microsoft on the proverbial map. The song provoked a different emotional response than “Angel,” but the outcome was the same to the success of the commercial.
In Perfect Harmony…
The 1971 Coca Cola featured the song “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing” that was written specifically as a jingle for a commercial ad campaign and then later became a hit for The New Seekers. This commercial featured a youthful, multi-racial choir singing about love, peace, harmony and, of course, Coca Cola. The song, itself, has more of an emotional bond with the 1985 song “We Are the World” and very little to do with the king of soft drinks, other than expressively branding it as part of the “now” generation of 1971. Popular songs used in conjunction with commercial advertising campaigns are nothing new, and every artist from The Beatles to Taylor Swift has taken part in a commercial undertaking with their songs. For the artist, the rewards are financial, and for the products, it’s the attachment to an emotional moment, even if it may sully the meaning of one’s favorite song.
In 1986, Buddy Miles sang the iconic “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” for the California Raisins, an animated, fictional R&B group selling, that’s right, Sun-Maid’s California Raisins. While I would rather remember the song as sung by Marvin Gaye or Gladys Knight, it is hard to escape the emotional bond formed between the product and the song. Movies like “The Big Chill” utilized a plethora of songs from the baby boomer generation to create an emotional bond with the audience, but boomers do not have the corner on the market when it comes to songs in movies. Popular songs in cinema have been used as emotional tie-ins from Judy Garland enchanting us with “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” in 1939’s Wizard of Oz to Kendrick Lamar and SZA performing “All the Stars” in 2018 for Black Panther or Lady Gaga singing “Shallow” from A Star is Born the same year.
Music in film is meant to elicit emotion, and we are all triggered by the movie music that often tells us to be afraid, concerned, happy or sad for any given scene. Great movie themes such as the ones written for The Pink Panther, James Bond, Star Wars, The Godfather and Titanic are bound to elicit one emotion or another upon listening. Of course, great music that produces an emotional response is not limited to film and commercials. Live concerts are supposed to be more than a nice musical experience, as they too are intended to be an emotional event with the music enhanced by lights, video and of course audio.
Clinical or Emotional?
A show is intended to take the listener on a journey where there are high points and low points. Part of the live musical event experience is for the audience to be manipulated into feeling emotionally charged in one way or another. It can be through an exciting rhythm, a heartfelt ballad or the opening chords to the band’s big hit song. What makes any of it work is that the band is using the music to emotionally connect with the audience and the engineer is then required to capture the emotion of the live performance. I have witnessed and played a part in shows that had less that satisfying mixes, but I have also seen and taken part in many great mixes. While it is imperative that engineers know their trade and are technically proficient, it doesn’t always ensure that the technically well-mixed show is an emotional mix as well. It’s easy enough to identify a poor mix, but when a mix is good, it’s hard to identify the moment when it jumps from a great technical mix to the amazing emotional mix until it goes there.
Of course, it’s all technical, because that’s the medium in which we work. Just the slightest change in EQ or imaging can improve the mix in the same way that a bit more or less reverb or compression can elevate the mix to the next level.
Emotion seems at odds with the technical and one either has the knowledge and skill to build a mix or they don’t, but just like the musician who has honed their skills, their instrument becomes a tool with which they can express an emotional experience through technical expertise. In the same way we, the engineer, do the same thing although it isn’t always so apparent.
Sure, we can technically mix any band or show, but if we don’t feel it, there’s a good chance something will be missing, much like a good musician on an off night. It’s not bad, but it’s not transcendental, as it might be on a good night. We have to bring something not tangible to the mix; a feeling that can elevate a show to the next level, and this is not necessarily a learned skill. Granted, the technical competence has to be there to make it all work, but to get to the next level, we need to convey something through the digital circuitry that is at once palpable yet imperceptible.
We have to bring emotion and artistry to what we do. Technique dazzles, but emotion sells it; that’s the special sauce.
Contact Baker Lee at blee@fohonline.com.
