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.