When a song becomes a jingle which becomes a song and another song…
So I was listening to the ‘70s radio station this morning and the song “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony)” came on.
It’s weird because to me — and most kids from the ‘70s — it’s a Coke commercial.
If you’ve watched the Mad Men series finale, you might be convinced that Don Draper came up with this idea while meditating. He didn’t, but ya know… that’s Hollywood.
The true story is arguably a bit stranger.
So it’s 1971. You’ve got this ad exec, Bill Backer. He’s stuck at an airport during a forced layover and notices people drinking Coke and laughing.
His travel companions are songwriter Roger Cook and jingle writer Billy Davis. Backer comes up with the line “I’d like to buy the world a Coke.”
Cook and Roger Greenaway (yeah, there’s a lot of Rogers and Bills in this story) had recently written and released a song called “True Love and Apple Pie,” sung by Susan Shirley.
Well, the four of them (the two Bills and the two Rogers) reworked the lyrics for that song and made it into a radio jingle for Coca-Cola.
“Buy the World a Coke” was recorded by British pop group The New Seekers and hit the airwaves as a radio ad in early 1971 as well.
Then they reworked the radio jingle into a full TV commercial — the one with the multicultural teenagers holding Coke bottles and singing on a hilltop in Rome.
At the time, it was the most expensive TV commercial ever.
And people started calling radio stations asking to hear the song.
Yes. Asking radio DJs to play a song that was really an ad.
It became popular enough that they decided to make it into a real song. Like, not a commercial for Coke, but a song that would subliminally remind us all of Coke.
They expanded the song with extra verses and rewrote the lyrics to remove the references to Coke.
The New Seekers said no. Not a chance. Stupid idea.
They said they didn’t have time to record a full-length version (and more likely didn’t want to), so the job went to a group of studio singers thrown together as The Hillside Singers — which is also what they called the kids from the commercial.
But now The New Seekers were feeling severe FOMO. Probably kicking themselves for saying no in the first place.
They wanted back in on the action, so they recorded the song too.
That’s right. Two versions of the same song, recorded at virtually the same time, that sounded pretty much identical.
We’re not talking about a scenario like the Sex Pistols covering “My Way” (perfect anthem for The Rebel) and making it totally different from Frank Sinatra’s version. To the untrained ear, these songs were the same.
Both versions spent the next few months battling it out on the charts. By early 1972, they were both Top 10 hits on the same charts at the same time.
I’ll be honest. I don’t know if the version I heard this morning was The New Seekers or The Hillside Singers. And I’m not sure it matters. But I suspect it was The New Seekers, because their version was generally considered the better of the two so it’s more likely to stand the test of time.
The fact that you can make a song into an ad into another ad into another song and another song is kind of mind-blowing.
But that’s the power of writing.
And also the power of adaptability — taking one thing, switching up the context, and turning it into new content.
None of this would have been possible without writing that captured public admiration, and ideas that pivoted on the fly.
As cheesy as the song might sound in retrospect, it was gold at the time (and at least The New Seekers version did hit gold record status too).
I’ll bet if those songwriters had done the Writing Personality Test, they would have been Visionaries, who see beyond the status quo to create possibility. Or maybe Empaths, who tap into universal harmony and really would want to teach the world to sing.
Although maybe it’s more about re-engineering structure into something successful. That’s The Mechanic at work.
If you’re not familiar with your Writing Personality Type, you can find out in 90 seconds or less.
Go ahead and uncover your writing superpower.
Write on,
Heather Vale
Helping you UnVALE your superpowers and navigate the Writerverse
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