Barry Manilow Once Joked That This Peculiar '70s Jingle Was A 'Low Point' In His Career

Barry Manilow honed his skills and paid the bills making music for ads — commercial jingles — in the '70s, and he was quite prolific and successful. One Manilow jingle from 1972 features one of the most iconic lines in commercial history, and it's also one of Manilow's catchiest jingles. However, writing a jingle for a bathroom cleaning product in the 1970s is the self-confessed absolute career low for Manilow, or so he once sort of joked.

In 1975, Manilow wrote a jingle that's still embedded in our subconscious today, the iconic "I am stuck on Band-Aid / 'cause Band-Aid's stuck on me." He's proud enough of it and many other famous ones that he's often performed a retrospective jingle medley at his live shows, reminding fans that they're even more familiar with Manilow's music than they thought. He'll even toss in a piece of a little-known work from this career era: a jingle for a product called Bowlene. It's surprising that he calls out that moment, because Manilow is at least vaguely embarrassed by it. Here's why Manilow thinks the music he made to sell toilet cleaner Bowlene represented a personal and professional bottom.

Bowlene is a little-remembered and now obscure toilet bowl cleaner, which arrived in stores in the form of a ghastly green goo. As a paid celebrant of the stuff, Barry Manilow created a Broadway-style show tune in miniature, a bold, bluesy, and brassy 30-second showstopper about the transformative powers of Bowlene. It soundtracks a commercial that opens on a sparse and dreary set suggesting a bathroom, where a woman dressed in a stereotypical maid get-up admits to procrastinating on cleaning a toilet bowl, because it's "the low-downest, bluest job in town." After some rapid-fire flashes of a Bowlene bottle, the woman is transformed into a glamorous nightclub performer, her "bathroom bowl blues" forever cured.

During an appearance on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," Barry Manilow discussed his somewhat secret career as a 1970s jingle writer. After listing some highlights, like his work for State Farm insurance and Band-Aid, Manilow got a little ominous. "There were some low points," he teased. "Like 'The Toilet Bowl Blues.'" The musician explained that he needed the money, so he took the gig. "This is the act of a desperate young man, how could I say no to that?" he quipped.