Jingle Writing
Seven Things About Me: Connie Song
#4 or #6 might surprise you
This is not the game of two truths and one lie. Everything here is the truth about me.
- I am obsessed with scribbling flowers on any blank sheet of paper in front of me. My notebooks are filled with them. While I’m waiting to be connected to a call, I unconsciously sketch them. While you’re talking to me, telling me about your fun weekend, you have my full attention but somehow my hand moves of its own volition, drawing wildflowers on my paper napkin. I think it’s connected to relaxation, pleasure, and creativity neurotransmitters in my brain, but I’m not sure about that.
- My sophomore-year college professor asked me to tutor fellow classmates in grammar and expository writing. It was a tough assignment, since I was exhausted from my part-time job in retail, while carrying a full load of classes. I did it for a few semesters.
- I went on to have a discreet love affair with that professor. My mentor. He came with a lot of baggage. We parted ways. Amicably. I think I am still infatuated with that man.
- Writing poetry and song lyrics seem normal to me, like breathing or eating. But my secret passion was to write a successful commercial jingle. Any product would be fine, suntan lotion, laundry detergent, soda pop.
- I never got the dream job that I had no formal training for — advertising copywriter’s job at Olgilvy & Mather (and it was really ballsy that I applied for an intern position there) so I gave up rather quickly to pursue my master's degree, got licenses to teach English Literature to middle grades and secondary education.
- I sent in an audition tape to participate in a TV pilot for a show pitched to CBS called Jingles, to be hosted by Gene Simmons (who we know from Kiss) along with a panel of judges including a successful jingle advertising superstar wunderkind named Linda Kaplan Thaler (one of my advertising superheroes) who co-wrote a jingle you may have heard of— “I don’t wanna grow up, I’m a Toys R Us Kid.”
- Coincidentally, she co-wrote that jingle with author James Patterson, back in the days he worked with her in advertising. (A story for another day.) Sadly-Sadly-Sadly- I heard the TV pilot project for Jingles was scrapped and the whole deal must have fallen through. (I don’t know any details, since I was just in the preliminary auditioning contestant category stage.)
7.Here’s a song I wrote, words and melody, that my musician friends and I put together. It was originally intended to be a jingle for a suntan lotion product (notice we didn’t call it sunscreen back then) or for a particular brand of sunglasses, that shall remain nameless. It’s a jingle so I tried to make the tune catchy and the lyrics super simple. The original title of my jingle is Where the Sun Don’t Shine.
Question…. I was wondering if any of you gave up on a passionate dream to face reality instead so you could pay for basic room and board, plus three meals a day? And four wheels, plus unleaded. You can let me know in the comments if you like.
Every writer needs an oasis, a sanctuary, and I feel I have found it here at Reciprocal publication. Thanks to the editors and the writing community here.
Here are three pieces I enjoyed reading on Reciprocal.
© Connie Song 2022. All Rights Reserved.
