Bookmarks: Some stuff to read on the internet: Twee

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure I agree with the Creative Review's definition of 'twee music' (Woody Guthrie? Twee? Really?) but their interview with Dan Stevens, a director at music PR and management company, Darling Department; Parv Thind, sound designer at Wave; and Peter Raeburn, founder and creative director of music production company, Soundtree about the gentle soundtracks to current advertising is still worth a read:

Yes, it does seem like the Balls ad was the first to have that folky, acoustic sound. Actually, the ad featured a combina­tion of image and sound that together blows you away because you’d never seen or heard an advert like it. It’s really powerful and that definitely has a knock-on effect.

People saw that ad and thought, ‘what a great formula’ and when people see a formula that is clearly working it’s easy for them to say ‘let’s do something like that’. That’s the power of advert­ising! It has the power to start trends (and sell records). Before Balls, there was a trend for finding quirky old tracks from the 1930s that no one had ever heard of. The music that was on PlayStation Mountain is a great example. There was a Wrangler ad with Follow The Yellow Brick Road on there. It’s a trend that’s still ongoing.