Bespoke Music

For centuries, music composers have laboured to produce music that moves them, sometimes just for the sheer joy of creation, but more often to earn a living from some wealthy benefactor who gives them what they need to live on in exchange for the compositions. For a long time it was The Church for western composers, and that gave way to affluent bluebloods and merchants trying to buy royal court respectability.

In modern popular music, the impetus for songwriting has, to a certain extent, reverted back to the idea that the composer should be composing for themselves, and if they do a great job their works will be so popular they'll earn huge benefits from them. Once they do, however, the modern bluebloods and merchants come out of the woodwork looking to commission their own customized popular songs. All the time I was growing up, songwriting for hire was considered 'selling out' and was frowned upon enormously. Pop songs written for products were few and far between; the only example that springs easily to mind is "I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing." This song was inspired when an ad agency guy was stuck in an airport with some songwriters and it began life as a song that failed to achieve significant radio play, but became a hit when it was released following its use in the Coca Cola TV ad "Hilltop."

I've spent quite some time now working in the ad business and periodically get the brief that the soundtrack for a commercial should 'sound like a hit song on the radio.' I'd like to mention that achieving this is not as easy as it sounds, although we have a good record for it so far. Also, the stigma associated with having one's song used in a commercial has done a 180, and now it's considered a mark of success to be invited to sell out in this fashion. Is this another symptom of The Corporatization Of Everything? I invite opinions...

The exception to the 'sellout' rule, of course, was movie soundtracks; but it takes a certain kind of mindset to switch over from writing for yourself to writing a custom song, often with title already a requirement. Probably the best example of this over the years has been the James Bond movie franchise; the popular songwriters of the day were commissioned to write the title track for the current movie, and elements from John Barry's original arrangement of the Monty Norman motif were sometimes incorporated into the new song's arrangement. There have been some successes, "Goldfinger" was a Top Ten hit, and after Paul McCartney opened up the tradition to encompass composers other than film score specialists there were a handful of Bond hits for Macca, Carly Simon, Sheena Easton, Duran Duran and Adele, among others. But the one that stands out for me in its loopy 60s glory is John Barry's masterpiece, "You Only Live Twice," which,  period warts and all, suits the Bond style more perfectly than any of them: