May 10, 2006

Horse 546 - All Around The World

Katja reports that AT&T advert campaign using Oasis' "All Around The World" the has begun in earnest; apparantly to the point of annoyance. I downloaded a copy of the advert this afternoon and somehow I think that AT&T have been majorly ripped-off or allowed themselves to be dudded. The maybe 3 seconds of audio actually accounts for less than 1% of the song's total length.

All Around the World is the 10th track from Be Here Now. Be Here Now was a really really massive record. It holds the record for the most number of sales in one day being 423,000 copies on the first day of release alone, moving 695,761 copies in the first week and over 1 million within two weeks. Be Here Now went on to sell 8 million copies worldwide. It also topped the charts in 28 different countries - however, the the USA it only made it to #15 on the Billboard charts.

Why then would AT&T use the song in their adverts? The rights to use the song are reported to be somewhere in the region on £1m, which isn't too bad for a song which was released all the way back in 1997. And what's even more amazing is that they didn't use very much of it either.
All Around the World is the longest track on an already behemoth album. The track itself lasts 9 minutes and 20 seconds long; not surprising it also holds the record for the longest single ever to appear at number 1 on the UK charts. Suffice to say that radio stations shyed away from playing it. The album itself is a 72 minute affair which like every Oasis record up until Don't Believe the Truth under Dave Sardy employs the technique of recording all tracks and then turning up the volume to 11 for the final mix.

The film clip for the song was also an extravagant affair, it was reported that it took 24 animators nearly 6 months to come up with a clip that resemble the Beatles' Yellow Submarine. Also like Yellow Submarine, Be Here Now contains a "reprise" of the song which itself is 2 minutes and 8 seconds long, or if you will for the whole album 11 minutes and 28 seconds. Pretty long eh?

The song itself features a double string quartet, embellished horn pieces, two harmonicas, as well as the usual line up of two guitars a bass, drums and Liam Gallagher delivering his famous Mancunian whine. Meg Matthews and Patsy Kensit, sang backing vocals for the song.
Oh for sure it's a rich tapestry to listen to, but the problem with producing such a song in this modern impatient "pop-tart, we want everything done yesterday" world is that the critics have looked at this unfavourable probably due to impatience. Truth is that it's a very very big song in an equally huge album. Maybe AT&T are also impatient?

It's a bit early in the midnight hour for me
To go through all the things that I want to be
I don't believe in everything I see
Y'know I'm blind so why d'you disagree?


Maybe being over 9 minutes has something to do with it?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Naturally, it has everything to do with the words in the lines they chose, which imply a world-wide communication thing going on. The rest of the song, and dare I say it, even the band, isn't important to them.