The good ol' days

I was pleased to see Auletta describe the 1971 McDonald's jingle, "You deserve a break today," as a "classic of manipulation," because I was the person who sang the jingle.  Auletta rightly chalks up that ad's success to Keith Reinhard's copywriting talent, but credit should also go to the late composer Sidney E. Woloshin, who helped to make its music so memorable.  Woloshin was one of the many gifted composers who made jingles a part of our lives.  I had a thirty-year career singing amazing little songs like that one, and I think that advertising lost something when the industry started to deemphasize creative and original music in favor of pre-recorded pop songs [TC: que lastima, how artificial!] that bear no relation to the product.

That is a letter from Arlene Martell, to The New Yorker, issue of 9 May 2005.