Car Commercials That Drove These Catchy Songs Up The Charts

A hit song can emerge from all kinds of unlikely places — even a well-placed song in a commercial for a car, truck, or SUV can wind up trekking up the music charts. At any given time, so many artists (and their publicity teams and record labels) are competing for the finite attention and dollars of the public with their latest singles that they'll get them to discerning ears in any number of novel ways. Thanks to the ubiquity of commercials, landing a song in one ensures millions of people will hear it — or at least its most exciting or emotionally impactful 30 seconds. For some stand-out tunes, dazzled TV viewers flocked online (or, historically, sought out record stores), figured out what the song was, and downloaded a copy or added it to their streaming library. And just like that, a previously unidentified melody from a TV ad became a hit song in the making.

Because car commercials are particularly voluminous, as they have been for decades, the songs used to hype would-be consumers on an automobile purchase have frequently broken out of their status as glorified jingles into pop sensations. Here are some memorable and affecting songs from car commercials that didn't sell vehicles as well as they sold themselves — and sped up the charts.

X Ambassadors sent its 2014 single "Jungle" to No. 10 on Billboard's Hot Rock Songs chart, and the emo-meets-alternative-meets-arena-rock group had recorded a couple of EPs before it headed into the studio to make its first full-length album, "VHS," which was released in June 2015. While it was still in production, representatives from Jeep approached X Ambassadors' label about creating a song to support a marketing campaign for the Jeep Renegade.

Two months before the LP would be commercially available, "Renegades," with its chugging picked acoustic guitar riff, a "hey hey hey" chorus, and a satisfying stomp, hit the television airwaves as the music for a 60-second Jeep commercial. Thanks to the ad's widespread exposure, X Ambassadors enjoyed its biggest hit to that point. "Renegades" was a smash, peaking at No. 17 on the Hot 100 in November 2015 and spending 11 weeks at No. 1 on Billboard's Alternative Songs chart. It was later certified quadruple platinum by the RIAA for sales of 4 million copies.

In 1998, U.K. electronic act the Wiseguys released its second album, "The Antidote." It included an upbeat and hook-filled track called "Start the Commotion," powered by horns, jazz flourishes, and vocal and instrumental samples, including one from "Wild Child" by the Ventures, a band that captured what '60s surf rock was all about. It wasn't even initially released as a single and remained obscure until 2001, when Mitsubishi selected the song to soundtrack a TV commercial for its Eclipse model.

The public's interest was piqued, and the primary way to purchase "Start the Commotion" at the time was by acquiring the full "The Antidote" album, causing its sales to jump 15-fold from 100 to 1,500 per week by June 2001. Along the way, the nearly 3-year-old deep cut was landing on the playlists of major radio stations around the U.S. On the charts, "Start the Commotion" was an unlikely entry, peaking in the Top 40 of Billboard's Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart.

Fame and success came quickly in its native U.K. for Dirty Vegas, at the time an electronic music trio. After DJs Ben and Paul Harris, along with singer-songwriter Steve Smith, released the moody and hypnotic club jam "Days Go By" in 2001, it only took a few months for the group to make its way into the Top 30 of the U.K. pop chart. However, the song didn't make a significant impact in the United States until 2002, when the advertising agency Deutsch LA approached the group with an offer to feature "Days Go By" in a TV ad campaign for the latest edition of the Mitsubishi Eclipse.

While aware of the conventional wisdom among bands of the time that allowing music in a commercial constituted selling out, Dirty Vegas didn't mind. "We saw what Mitsubishi was doing with a very forward-thinking, contemporary campaign," Smith told Billboard. Impressed by how Mitsubishi had made good use of "Start the Commotion" by fellow British dance act the Wiseguys, Dirty Vegas signed on.

After running in an advertisement that received heavy American television airplay, "Days Go By" sold a lot of copies. The single reached No. 14 on the singles chart, while Dirty Vegas's self-titled first album hit the Top 10 of the Billboard album chart. At the 45th Grammy Awards, "Days Go By" even won the prize for best dance recording.

In 1991, the story of Queen guitarist Brian May took a turn into the world of commercial jingles. The Ford Motor Company, having launched a campaign called "Driven for You," asked May to develop a song for its television commercials. May devoted his highly recognizable guitar technique and seldom-heard vocals to an almost on-brand song called "Driven by You." Soaring, propulsive, and self-consciously inspirational, it's a lost gem of early '90s hard rock, radio-friendly and even a little patriotic.

There'll never be another band like Queen, and they're so beloved in the U.K. that May's ad song quickly hit No. 6 on that country's main pop chart in late 1991. It took longer for the track to take off in the U.S., but in February 1993, "Driven by You" entered Billboard's mainstream rock chart and was peaking in the Top 10 within two weeks.