verhymezon
Posted by hajipaji
See what I did there? With the title? Thats because I’m pretty brilliant with the word thingys. Well, that, and because the following tracks were songs specifically made for Verizon commercials about three years ago. They were both produced and made by the request of my homeboy, Steaknife. You may or may not know him from the Universal recording group, Rehab.You know who Rehab is, right? They did the song “ Bartender .” No? You never heard of ‘em? Dang, you need to get out more.
Neither song was ever given a proper title. So, for the sake of cataloging, we’ll call them :
Here’s the skinny. Steaknife used to get work orders to produce tracks for a myriad of reasons. Verizon commercials being one. Either way, when it was time to add sultry vocal stylings to his rhythms, who do you think he turned to? Yup, me. The goose with the golden butt-babies. And I let him down every single time!
I think The Juke Song may have been a contest, Im not really certain. It was for the release of their, then new, Juke phone. He told me that a few other people were sending in submissions as well, and Verizon would select from those. The idea behind the song (as written in the instructions) was to create the new dance, a la Watch My Feet. Most importantly, throughout the song, the words “Check it out” were of the highest importance. While I did employ the requested phrase, my song failed to evoke the squiggly feet motion. Mission: Incomplete. Here’s a look at the commercial, aired with the selected rendition. Juke.
The Pirateship Song was my favorite. It was made for a cross promotion between Verizons Vcast phone and Disney’s newest Pirates of the Carribean movie. The script for the commercial was off the hook. In short, this is how it was supposed to happen:
A man goes to an all female baby shower with his wife. He’s bored. The mother-to-be opens the gifts (rattlers, bottles, etc…) and when she opens his…she finds a skull. Camera looks at the man, and voice cuts in, “Wish you were somewhere else?” Camera cuts to a pirateship (Black Pearl) and there’s pirates shooting dice, dancing, drinking, women in hot tubs, gold everywhere…and his friend is on the ship trying to call him. (I promise to everything I love Im not making that up!)
The best part is what the treatment called for. It asked the artist to “Rap like a gangtsa pirate…If Jay-Z were a pirate, what would he say?” It was a must that I reference Jack Sparrows ship, “The Black Pearl” and “A Pirates Life.” So, I crammed in every possible pirate reference I could I could think of…and the result was another commercial that never made it to the big screen. Whomp. While Verizon okayed the song, Disney pulled out of the promotion at the last minute. Disney ruins everything (See Muppets & Marvel Comics). Oh, the singer on the track, I forget her name, but she was on some real diva biz. Everybody had to be removed from the studio room, so she could do thirty seconds of “La La La” in private. Get a freakin grip! Aarrrgggh!
Not a total bust tho, because now you can download these songs for yourself. And now, anytime a Verzion commercial comes on, you can totally mute the screen and turn my jams on. BING!
May 29th, 2010 at 10:06 pm
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