I’d Like to Teach the World to Buy Edition Part 2

That damned jingle! In that infernal commercial trying to sell you cars, sneakers, soda, gum! Can’t get it out of your head? Well, what if we made it longer, had a famous singer perform it, and put it on the radio? How would you like it then? A surprising number of hits across chart history got their start in advertisements: the Carpenters song that was originally a promo for a California bank. The ’70s country-pop smash by a character who didn’t exist, and was selling you sliced bread. The Sting song that began as a Japanese beer jingle. The Chris Brown song that sneaked a chewing-gum slogan into the chorus. And that’s beyond all the songs and artists whose trajectories were changed by an ad placement—whether it was the R&B classics licensed to sell you Levi’s jeans or the indie-rock songs anointed by Apple to make iPod-wearing silhouettes bop. Join Chris Molanphy as he explains how Madison Avenue finds its way into the Hot 100’s penthouse. We may think we don’t want the hard sell—...