The Persistence of Memory

Abstract

Though out of vogue in the twenty-first century, the jingle was a mainstay of radio and television advertising in the late twentieth century. What made it so popular was its affinity with popular music with which it was contemporaneous. This chapter draws upon linear diagram analysis to highlight the structural similarities of commercial jingles with American popular songs. Citing works on form in American popular song by Allen Forte and John Covach, and the “beginning-middle-ending” paradigms of William Caplin and Kofi Agawu, the chapter demonstrates how the musical structure of jingles such as “See the U.S.A. in Your Chevrolet,” “Like a Good Neighbor, State Farm Is There,” and others resemble American popular songs of their time. The success of these jingles lies not only in their structural similarity with these popular songs but also in the audience’s ability to reimagine the complete structure of the tunes and to draw upon a collective cultural memory of intertextuality—what Papson calls “alreadyness”—to these advertising texts.