Sounds of Capitalism

Advertising, Music, and the Conquest of Culture

Taylor Timothy D.

From the early days of radio through the rise of television after World War II to the present, music has been used more and more often to sell goods and establish brand identities. And since at least the 1920s, songs originally written for commercials have become popular songs, and songs written for a popular audience have become irrevocably associated with specific brands and products. Today, musicians move flexibly between the music and advertising worlds, while the line between commercial messages and popular music has become increasingly blurred.

"The Sounds of Capitalism" is the untold story of this infectious part of our musical culture. Here, Timothy D. Taylor tracks the use of music in American advertising for nearly a century, from variety shows like "The Clicquot Club Eskimos" to the rise of the jingle, the postwar rise in consumerism and the more complete fusion of popular music and consumption in the 1980s and after.

Taylor contends that today there is no longer a meaningful distinction to be made between music in advertising and advertising music. To make his case, he draws on rare archival materials, the extensive trade press, and hours of interviews with musicians ranging from Barry Manilow to unknown but unforgettable jingle singers".The Sounds of Capitalism" is the first book to truly tell the history of music used in advertising in the United States, and an original contribution to this little-studied part of our cultural history.

About the Author

Timothy D. Taylor is professor in the Department of Ethnomusicology at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of several books, most recently "The Sounds of Capitalism", also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Reviews

"In 'The Sounds of Capitalism', Timothy D. Taylor presents a rich and compelling story about music's emergence within the broad fields of US advertising and consumer culture. With great clarity and critical acumen, Taylor charts a complex history of the various ways in which advertisers have relied on music in order to sell consumer goods, employing strategies which, over time, have produced a complex semiotics blurring distinctions between the auditory and the material, between taste in music and desire for purchasable things. Taylor's book is stunning in its exhaustive accounting of a vast, unexplored territory in US cultural history. And as we read through the tale, we gain something even more: a startling realization of how deeply intertwined our musical values and practices of consumption really are. The book promises to become a major text in the history of consumption as it establishes a new foundation in the study of US popular music" – Ronald Radano, University of Wisconsin-Madison

"Today, in a business where everyone knows everything, Timothy Taylor has written a scrupulously researched, thoroughly enjoyable history of the wild world of advertising music. 'The Sounds of Capitalism' is the engrossing story of how the musical face of America's economy has evolved through the generations; told in the words of those who were there. This is a landmark book" – Steve Karmen, "King of The Jingle"

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