Age: 34.
Appearance: Red lips, strong eyebrows, big hair.
Profession: Car salesperson.
Hard times, eh? I remember when she was a judge on that TV show, The Choice. The Voice.
That’s it. Whatever happened to that? It’s coming back in 2017, on ITV. Faith has yet to confirm or deny her participation.
Didn’t she also used to be a pop star? She still is. She won a Brit award for Best Female Act just last year.
So she’s just flogging a few cars to make ends meet? Not quite, but her song Ready For the Good Life was used in an advert for Eastern Western Motoring Group, among others.
What others? Simply Be and Dixons PC World. In addition, her version of INXS’s Never Tear Us Apart has been deployed by both John Lewis and Calvin Klein’s Eternity.
In that case she probably is Ready For the Good Life. More than likely she’s already living it: that song was the most used track in adverts, video games, trailers, TV shows and films last year. A study of 800 adverts found Faith’s voice to be the most effective for selling stuff.
She could get a job selling PVC windows over the phone. She could, but she might want to stick to doing ad soundtracks. The industry earned UK record companies £22.7m last year – 41% of the songs were by UK artists.
Who else is coining it? Besides Faith, Jess Glynne, Charli XCX and Foxes were big.
I suppose it doesn’t matter that I’ve never heard of any of those people. If you’ve watched ads for Emporio Armani, Coca-Cola and H&M, then you’ve heard their music.
Do advertisers think I’m so suggestible that a stupid pop song will make me buy something? Evidently. At a time when CD and download sales are declining, the business of syncing music to ads grew by 13.5% year on year. Apple alone licensed 23 tracks in 2015.
Although now you’ve mentioned Coca-Cola, I quite want one. And an iPad. Cheers. Don’t thank me. Thank pop.
Do say: “If selling out to advertisers is the only way for an artist to make money, so be it.”
Don’t say: “I’ve never really liked your music, but the Nissan Micra is working out great.”
