The 5 Worst Jingles By Classic Artists

Rock music has always existed at the intersection of art and commerce. While there remain those rockers who have steadfastly refused big paydays to promote products, there are also many who have succumbed to the financial temptation. A partial list includes Bob Dylan (who appeared in a somewhat baffling commercial for Victoria's Secret lingerie), David Bowie and Tina Turner (who teamed up for a 1987 TV spot for Pepsi), and even John Lydon, with the erstwhile Johnny Rotten performing a Sex Pistols-style cover of "Route 66" to sell Mountain Dew. Then, of course, there have been songwriters who've utilized their talents to write commercial jingles — and, in hindsight, some of these now sound embarrassing-bordering-on-cringeworthy.

While he went on to become one of the music industry's biggest stars, Barry Manilow began his career by writing jingles for the likes of McDonald's, Band-Aid, and Manilow's all-time greatest hit, the still-used jingle for State Farm. Listening to those jingles today, it's clear that Manilow had a real knack for it.

That hasn't always been the case. When we considered the most terrible jingles produced by rock artists over the years, a few emerged as being the absolute bottom of the barrel due to various factors, ranging from musical clumsiness to sheer weirdness. From the heavy metal pioneers who sang about anti-perspirant to the rock legends who pocketed a few bucks by shilling for breakfast cereal, read on to discover the five worst jingles by classic artists.

Over the course of a career spanning seven decades (and counting), The Rolling Stones have been responsible for so many indelible rock hits it's difficult to even attempt to catalog them all. However, it's safe to say that the band's 1964 jingle extolling the virtues of Rice Krispies is not among this hallowed pantheon.

One reason is that the song was not written by the band's crack songwriting team — frontman Mick Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards — but by guitarist Brian Jones, who reportedly penned the jingle at the behest of the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency. It's certainly a peppy little number, so fast-paced and frenetic as to be jarring. Meanwhile, it's also more than a little bizarre to hear Jagger's distinctive vocals tackling dreck like "Wake up in the morning there's a snap around the place / Wake up in the morning there's a crackle in your face." Of course, when exploring the untold truth of The Rolling Stones, it speaks volumes about the band's lowly status at the time that the Stones were paid a not-so-whopping £400 for recording the song.

Interestingly, recording that jingle marked the first time the band worked with engineer Glyn Johns. They would later work with Johns on "Their Satanic Majesties Request," "Beggar's Banquet," and "Let It Bleed," while Johns went on to record classic albums with the likes of The Beatles, The Who, and Led Zeppelin.

During the 1960s, British band The Moody Blues recorded not one but three different jingles for Coca-Cola. The first of these was a 1965 jingle written and sung by Denny Laine. As it happened, Linda McCartney was a huge fan of that one. "I remember they did this incredible Coca-Cola commercial. I always thought it would make a great single," she recalled in a 1976 interview with Sounds.

After Laine's exit from the band in 1966, The Moody Blues expanded their musical ambitions by embracing a more orchestral sound, evident in such hits as "Knights in White Satin" and "Tuesday Afternoon." That's the feel of a pair of subsequent jingles the band created for the soda brand. One of these was titled "Chasing the Sun," which wouldn't have sounded out of place on one of the band's albums from that era.

The other, though, is an overwrought, bloated tune with lush orchestration creating a jarring juxtaposition with the banal silliness of the lyrics: "I'll take you for a ride in my pleasure machine/ Into my world of summer green / Lift you up to heights you've never seen / While enjoying a Coke or two / Ah, and I'll say sweet things to you." Speaking with Classic Rock, Hayward's memories of that jingle were not fond when he was asked to single out one Moody Blues song he never wanted to hear again. "A Coca-Cola advert we did in '68," he responded.

In the late 1960s, Iron Butterfly took the concept of heavy psychedelic rock and ran with it. That ethos is evident in the band's most memorable song, the epic 17-minute freakout "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida." While some pondered the hidden meaning of Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida," an advertising executive who'd heard the song became convinced the band could play a key role in selling anti-perspirant to hippies.

The result of this weirdly unfortunate confluence of psychedelic rock and advertising is a 1968 TV commercial for Ban deodorant. While the commercial itself leans into humor (the spot opens with a moustachioed dude costumed as an elderly woman), the contrast of the band's heavy, plodding sound and the product-shilling lyrics are more rattling than entertaining: "Ban won't wear off as the day wears on / Ban gets you through the longest day / Ban has the stuff to stay and stay."

It would be easy to assume that a jingle for anti-perspirant would be the most ridiculous thing in Iron Butterfly's history, but that assumption is dead wrong. Among the band's more notorious antics in pursuit of fame included bassist Lee Dorman's infamous appearance as a contestant on "The Dating Game." Dorman miraculously charmed the sole female contestant when she asked him to reveal his favorite quotation, and he solemnly declared, "Life through a visual feeling is life itself." Dorman emerged victorious, with him and his date sent on a trip together to San Francisco.

As a founding member of KISS, Paul Stanley was prone to singing about his desire to rock and roll all night, and party every day. Yet the 1990s saw the band scrambling for relevance — even making an ultimately failed attempt at ditching their iconic makeup, and thus joining the ranks of rock stars who tried to reinvent themselves but flopped. In 2000, Stanley took an even more baffling left turn when he signed on to star in a commercial for Folgers coffee that can charitably be described as bizarre.

"This is your wakeup call," a makeup-free Stanley croons at the start of the spot while delivering a cup of java to a female trapeze artist in a circus tent. "Time to reach, go for it all," he continues, while the woman rehearses her trapeze routine. As she soars through the air, Stanley concludes the sappy song by singing, "Limit is the sky / Hey world, watch me fly / The best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup."

Oddly, the commercial never actually aired (focus groups reportedly had no idea who Stanley was without his Starchild face paint), but eventually surfaced on YouTube. "Life is strange!" Stanley shared (via the KISSanity Facebook page) about how he came to sing a coffee jingle in a TV commercial. "I got a call asking if I was interested in singing a Folgers commercial. And like many other things, I thought, 'Why not?'"

After 1967's famed "Summer of Love" brought psychedelia to the mainstream, San Francisco became ground zero of this so-called flower power movement. Among the San Fran bands to ride that wave to the top of the charts was Jefferson Airplane, fronted by singer Grace Slick. Slick's quasi-operatic vocal style drove such memorable singles as "White Rabbit" and "Somebody to Love," and was also front and center in a 1967 TV commercial promoting Levi's new line of white jeans. 

For the band, this wasn't akin to selling out, given that they proudly wore Levi's. Plus, they were given carte blanche to create four different jingles — just so long as the product was mentioned. These included a cacophonous bit of spoken-word weirdness, in which a male voice intones, "The most beautiful girl is the girl from old Twig City, and her boyfriend wears stretch Levi's..." More musically inclined was an Indian raga-influenced ditty in which Slick sings, "Right now, with your white Levi's / White Levi's come in black or blushing bravo blue / I love you." 

At the end of the day, this odd combo can be considered a win-win for all concerned. Levi's got rock cred for its jeans, Jefferson Airplane maintained the artistic freedom it was promised, and listeners can still listen to what are easily the weirdest commercial jingles in the history of advertising.