Christmas ads 2021: the musical view, part two

Waitrose

Because I’m woefully out-of-step with, well, everything, apart from Viking metal and entry requirements for secondary school places in the London Borough of Wandsworth, someone had to explain to me what ‘a Karen’ was the other day. 

Anyway, assuming Karen isn’t yet cancelled I think this might be Karen in this ad? It’s a wonder Karen has any friends to lie to about her mince pies given her rapaciousness and self-centred attitude towards food. F*ck off back to Watford Karen, you’re not welcome here! 

Nothing left in the budget for music presumably hence employing this stock library sounding ‘jam’ on John William’s Carol of The Bells. 

Sainsbury’s

Of all the big four (or do we count Aldi and Waitrose amongst supermarket royalty these days?) Sainsbury’s win on style this year with a beautifully executed, frozen-in-time visual trick, although Amazon executed this exact treatment on this campaign a few years ago, so no points for originality here. 

Etta James’ At Last provides the soundtrack, things together nicely. I wonder if they discussed re-recording this in a more contemporary style with, maybe a softly delivered, female lead vocal and stripped back instrumentation? 

Probably, but W+K being W+K have the good sense not to seeing as EVERYBODY else has stripped that carcass of its every sinew. 

And you can’t beat Etta James. Fact.

Argos

We all have those songs we absolutely cannot bear because they occasion any measure of irritation, rage, vile upchuck and fantasies of slow deaths for their creators. Such is the power of music folks! For me there’s many, many of these: Savage Love, Dance Monkey, Freed From Desire, My Heart Will Go On, anything by Ed Sheeran and, Live is Life by Opus. 

To make matters worse, Argos and team have decided to ‘contemporise’ this vile canticle with Ad-Trap /noun [æd-træp], the artless massacre by the advertising industry of any song older than nine years by re-imagining or remixing with groupthink and cheap beats.

Tesco

And the winner for best supermarket ad this year goes to Tesco! 

Funny, heart-warming dynamic, artfully crafted and a little reminder that to be vaccinated is to be free… sort of. (But seriously, if you still haven’t, stop being a dickhead and go do it now please.)   

Delighted to hear that Queen’s original 1978 recording is employed (again) rather than attempting a seasonal re-record. See marketeers, it’s OK to use old music sometimes?

ALDI

Kevin the Carrot makes his return in a pun-stoppable piece mostly about a banana but ultimately about being kind at Christmas. It’s a very nicely executed piece of film, possibly their best yet? Who knows, there have been some egg-cellent efforts previously! Sorry.

Another fine recording from comrade G. Farley (aka the Father Christmas of seasonal ad music). The Pogues have seen this one synced every year for the last 12 on the trot now. Which goes to show that for brands it's challenging to claim 'ownership' of a Christmas song without long-term commitment to it.