You hummed them in the car. You slow-danced to them at weddings. You sang along every time they came on the radio. But a surprising number of the songs you grew up loving started life as something far less glamorous, a 30-second pitch for soda, beer, or chewing gum.
Here are nine songs that began as commercial jingles before finding their way into your heart.
“No Matter What Shape (Your Stomach’s In)”
This one goes all the way back to an Alka-Seltzer commercial. Sascha Burland composed the fully instrumental track to assure viewers that the product worked for people of all shapes and sizes. Producer Dave Pell saw an opportunity. He hired studio musicians The Wrecking Crew to record a full-length version, and it worked. The song climbed to number three on Billboard’s Hot 100 and hit number one in Canada on the RPM Play Sheet.
“Music to Watch Girls By”
Encouraged by that success, writer and producer Bob Crewe set out to pull off the same trick. His instrumental had originally backed a 1965 Diet Pepsi ad. The Bob Crewe Generation released their version the following year, and it charted on both the Easy Listening charts and the Billboard Hot 100. Andy Williams covered it in 1967 with similar results. The song later turned up in a 1999 Fiat commercial and a 2005 Samsung ad.
“I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing”
This one has one of the more winding roads in pop history. The melody first appeared in Susan Shirley’s 1971 song “True Love and Apple Pie.” It was then reworked into “Buy the World a Coke” for Coca-Cola radio and television ads. The jingle was a hit, and Coca-Cola has continued using it in marketing for decades.
Radio stations started getting requests to play the full song. The songwriters responded by releasing a proper full-length version, recorded by both the Hillside Singers and the New Seekers. Both versions ranked highly on the Billboard Hot 100.
“We’ve Only Just Begun”
If you danced to this at a wedding, you were dancing to what started as a bank commercial. Crocker Bank wanted to connect with younger customers just starting out in life. Advertising agent Hal Riney hired songwriter Paul Williams and composer Roger Nichols to write a song around the slogan “You’ve got a long way to go. We’d like to help you get there.”
The song caught the attention of Richard Carpenter, who had seen the commercial on television. He reached out for the rights, and the team fleshed out the full song from the original two verses. The Carpenters’ version was a major part of them winning the Grammy for Best New Artist in 1971. The song was later inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998 as a recording of lasting qualitative or historical significance.
“When You Say Love”
Not every jingle story has a tidy ending. Steve Karmen won a Budweiser contract in 1970 for his jingle “Budweiser/You’ve Said It All,” which ran in beer commercials for the next decade. But its melody also appeared in “When You Say Love,” recorded by both Bob Luman and Sonny and Cher in 1972. Karmen had received neither credit nor compensation. He sued for copyright infringement, and won.
“Times of Your Life”
In 1975, Kodak wanted a song to anchor commercials full of weddings, children, and graduation days. Roger Nichols and ad executive Bill Lane wrote “Times of Your Life,” and Paul Anka recorded it for the campaign. The ads were a big hit, and Anka loved the song so much that he recorded a full-length version and named his eighteenth album after it. He kept performing it in concerts for years. It eventually returned to advertising in a 2021 Downy commercial.
“Driven By You”
Queen guitarist Brian May says this song came together at a swimming pool in Los Angeles, where an ad executive asked him to write something for Ford built around the slogan “Everything we do, we do for you.” He wrote it quickly, with verses about Ford’s reputation and a chorus about putting the customer first.
The timing was difficult. Queen’s future was uncertain because Freddie Mercury was battling AIDS. But when May played the song for Mercury, his bandmate encouraged him to release it as the start of a solo career. May did just that, releasing it as a single with fewer Ford-focused lyrics. The song later appeared on Queen’s Greatest Hits III and was re-released in four versions for May’s Back to the Light album.
“Inside”
The Scottish rock band Stiltskin was actually formed in 1994 specifically to create a song for a Levi’s Shrink-to-Fit jeans commercial. The ad showed young women from a pioneering family drawn to an attractive man in the jeans, with the music rising in intensity alongside the scene. The band recorded a full version of the song for their first album, and the single became a massive hit, climbing the UK charts and spreading across Europe. The band broke up in 1996.
“Forever”
In 2007, Wrigley hired Chris Brown to put a fresh spin on their 1960 Doublemint jingle, the one built around “double your pleasure, double your fun.” Brown wrote a full-length version of the song and released it on his album Exclusive under the title “Forever.”
Here is the twist: unlike every other entry on this list, Brown’s team released the full song before the commercial. Ad executive Mr. Stoute told the Wall Street Journal that this was intentional, the goal was to make sure the jingle was already embedded in popular culture before anyone connected it to the ad campaign. Some consumers felt that was manipulative. But both the song and the jingle found their way into pop culture just the same.
So the next time one of these songs comes on the radio, you can impress whoever is in the room. That beautiful melody? It started by trying to sell you something.