I am not a Target shopper.

Target's advertising, as a means of getting me into any of their stores, is wasted on me. But, I am the kind of person who becomes fascinated with whatever it is about a catchy ad that makes it catchy (see, e.g., Deconstructing the Heineken draught keg commercial and Deconstructing that creepy McDonald's filet-of-fish commercial), and congratulations, the upbeat tenor of Target's most recent campaign (and more), caught my attention enough to merit a write-up. Except, it's really not the campaign at all, but the song, and the song is not an original Target production (or even Target ad agency production) but a piece of found art as it were. Okay, I admit it, the girl coming around the corner at the end of that first commercial blows my mind, but mostly it's the song.

The song is called "Brand New Day" (not to be confused with the not-bad Sting song and album of the same name, and scads of others -- which makes for plenty of variations to be grafted onto this node) and is by a 22-year old wisp of a performer named Tim Myers, joined by indie songwriter Lindsey Ray.

Target only incorporates the chorus, a nice hook, but I'm kind of surprised they don't use other parts of the song. The whole thing has a sort of materialistic bent, naming many things that could undoubtedly be purchased at Target.

The opening lines, which basically just describe waking up in the morning and going through morning hygiene routines, refer to making the bed (i.e. linens), coffee, soap, a toothbrush (and, we can guess, toothpaste), and a radio. But then we hit the chorus, that charmingly uplifting chorus:
Oh oh oh oh
This is a brand new day
Oh oh oh oh
And it's getting better every single way
Oh oh oh oh
This is brand new day
Oh oh oh oh
And I'm feeling better when you say
La la la la la la la love (repeated three times, with differing tonal arrangments)


Well, you really have to watch/hear to get the beat of it all, but just from watching the commercial I didn't realize that the word "love" capped the ending trio until I listened to the whole song on its own. That just didn't stand out in the advert.

The next verses toss in the TV, a blanket, a tall glass of milk and cookies, but then after a few more repeats of the chorus, the song surprisingly cuts straight to the moral firmament of the message:

Simple things
Is what life's made of
Happiness
Is not that hard to find
I'm in love
And I'm so unmoving in this sand of life


In its rendition of the mundanities of life, punctuated by the declaration of the celebration of love, this song is reminiscent of Dido song Thank You -- except that that song never really rises from a sense of depression, and this one never really falls into one. Trite? Maybe. Commercial? Totally. But bouncy enough to lift this jaded heart o' mine anyway.

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