The 5 Best Jingles By Classic Artists (Even Better Than Barry Manilow's State Farm Ditty)

Many of the best and best-known jingles ever to appear in a commercial were written by rock and pop stars, such as Barry Manilow's 1971 State Farm jingle that everyone still sings today. Musicians found a way to apply their gifts to earn a paycheck and hone their skills before their big break, while others were already famous, and advertisers sought them out to write their ad music. Either way, it totally makes sense: Pop songwriters know how to write a hook or a memorable melody or lyric, and that's essentially what a jingle is all about.

It's not surprising that the jingles written by the musicians who found the most success and acclaim elsewhere in the music industry are the ones that tend to be the catchiest, as well as those that were used the longest. Indeed, some of the most enduring ad songs have been used for years, if not decades. 

We think these are the best ad jingles written by classic artists, since they serve their purpose and can stand on their own as decent musical compositions. Not only do these succinct and straightforward musical pieces sell a product in a way that we think is clever, catchy, and in tune with the musical trends of the eras from which they came, but they also just plain rock. So much so that here we are, praising the songs and the legends who made them, however many decades later.

Barry Manilow's No. 1 hit from 1977, "Looks Like We Made It," is a sad affair, and he doubted that his 1978 single "Copacabana" would be successful, but the master of soft '70s pop knew that his commercial work would get the job done. After proving he could handle the work by writing "like a good neighbor, State Farm is there" for the insurance company, the agency asked him to write a similar short and snappy tune for Band-Aid brand bandages. Manilow came up with a 12-note melody and lyric. "I am stuck on Band-Aid/ 'cause Band-Aid's stuck on me."

Effective and efficient, the jingle utilizes wordplay — making a statement and then reversing it — while also expressing the product's benefits. In this case, that Band-Aid was a bandage that would remain affixed to the skin, or "stuck," thus encouraging repeat buying. Manilow's payment for his work, which was played thousands of times on TV over the decades, was only $500.

Famously one of the longest-lasting and most important bands in the history of rock music, the salacious, bluesy, hard-charging Rolling Stones had only taken three songs onto the U.K. pop charts by June 1964 — when its Rice Krispies commercial premiered on British television. All things considered, it's essentially a real Rolling Stones song that's just very short and that functions as a jingle. The J. Walter Thompson ad agency commissioned the song, paying the band £400 (worth around $9,000 in 2025 money). Written by guitarist Brian Jones and recorded in a session overseen by the Rolling Stones' preferred producer, Glyn Johns, the song boasts a powerful wall of instrumentation blasting through a melody at breakneck speed.

While utilizing Rice Kripsies' famous "snap, crackle, pop" motif — the sound of the cereal slowly breaking apart under milk — the Rolling Stones' jingle is akin to the electric blues style that the band would pioneer and popularize. It opens with lyrics about waking up in the morning and assessing the situation, before finding an immediate solution to the problem. "Wake up in the morning," singer Mick Jagger shouts, detailing the "snap around the place," the "crackle" in his face, and a "pop" that makes him think of Rice Krispies. "It's nice," Jagger concludes, when he finally gets a bowl of cereal with milk.

As Randy Newman is remarkably talented at writing melodies that can stick in the brain, as well as playful and clever lyrics, it makes sense that an advertising agency sought out his services to write a soda pop commercial jingle. After he'd released a few critically acclaimed albums, but before he found success with wry, satirical tunes like "Short People" and "I Love L.A.," Newman contributed to a 1974 commercial for Dr Pepper, made to look like a campy, old-fashioned dance number from a big-budget Broadway spectacular. Newman's collaborator on the project was Jake Holmes, a prolific jingle writer who also wrote the druggy hard-rock song "Dazed and Confused," as made popular by Led Zeppelin.

Newman and Holmes called the semi-serious, semi-self-aware jingle parody "The Most Original Soft Drink Ever." Another ad veteran with pop-chart success helped Dr Pepper move product with the power of song: Barry Manilow, who sang the version of the song — Dr Pepper's first — used in the TV commercial. Newman and Holmes, and by extension Manilow, did an admirable job trying to explain the idea of Dr Pepper while also making it sound mysterious and attractive. The musicians describe the beverage's unique, tough-to-pin-down taste as "not a cola," and also "not a root beer," but boasting plenty of "innovation" and "variation."

One of the most-heard bands of the 1950s, Captain Stubby and the Buccaneers, originated one of the longest-used jingles of all time. For over 70 years, Americans with a specific plumbing issue have called their local Roto-Rooter, the best-known brand in its industry because of its enduring jingle: "Call Roto-Rooter, that's the name, and away go troubles down the drain." The original debuted in 1954, played by Captain Stubby and the Buccaneers during a live broadcast from Chicago radio station WLS.

"Away Go Troubles Down the Drain" has been adapted into different styles of music and used in hundreds of radio and TV commercials, all of them variations of the original by Captain Stubby and the Buccaneers. A house band on WLS, the group supplied the music for the nationally broadcast weekly hit "National Barn Dance." It scored several hit singles and toured extensively, but the song the band would be best known for was "Away Go Troubles Down the Drain."

It's become tradition at Barry Manilow concerts for the musician to indulge in a medley of jingles he wrote and/or performed in the early 1970s. Often included is the 1973 spot he wrote and performed for Stridex, paper pads soaked in anti-acne medicine. "Give Your Face Something to Smile About" is jaunty, upbeat, and still gentle, with Manilow really going for some high notes when he isn't delivering a string of "doo-doo-doo" nonsense lyrics. 

In other words, it's instantly recognizable as the kind of song Barry Manilow would take to the top of the charts just a few years after the jingle debuted. Manilow gave the manufacturers of Stridex multiple variations on the same melody that it could use in different broadcast media, but it's all essentially an identical tune. Manilow demonstrated that he knew what commercial music was all about. He needed only a few seconds and a handful of words to deliver the name of the product and suggest it's a solution to a common problem via a catchy tune.