Gary Numan - Unreleased 7-UP TV Commercial Music!

In 1982, American-based 7-UP got in touch with a UK agency to get a 30 second tune made by someone who was "happening" at the time to advertise their drink. So the agency contacted Gary and offered a £10,000 deal so he recorded 3 pieces of music with lyrics supplied by them. When the recordings were sent to the Americans they had not heard any music like this, and they were expecting something in a punk style as that had just arrived over there so these recordings were never used.

Category:

Music

[ZeroCorpse]

This is good enough to be one solid, stand-alone tune regardless of the sponsorship. He should have put it on an album, and just changed the word "7UP" to something else (Bowie does it all the time when he uses a song for a soundtrack and then re-purposes it for an album).

[aliveinsound]

@ZeroCorpse I agree the song could've been used elsewhere but he didn't write these lyrics he'd want to write his own words on own records.

[JarrodCook93]

Where did u find this?

[aliveinsound]

One of the fanclub recorded autobiography LPs from the 80's, I was surprised that it came up!

[plasticvideo]

Looks like 7-Up had gold and didn't even know it.

[990racle]

Did he purposely make this song really fucking weird so they wouldn't play it? If that's the case, I like Gary even more.

Having said that I like the song, it's more tubeway-army style. Minus the lyrics, of course.

[luiggighetti46]

I will certainly buy more 7-Ups if they out these songs on their commercials.

[winglb53]

Thank God it wasn't Mountain Dew

[telekonable]

The company head brass at 7-UP blew it by passing on this jingle.

[leonakita]

lol @ Numan, even considering doing an ADV in 1982 at the height of his popularity....what a stupid ass move...commercialization is a career killer! I agree tho.. the material is good enough to have been morphed into a Numan song. I believe it was at this time that Numan started throwing everything and the kitchen sink into his 'schtick' to save his dwindling popularity. In the end, it failed.... but hey.. theres always Numanoids!

[ParadoxIncarnate]

@990racle

I totally agree about it sounding like Tubeway Army. The riff and rhythm is a lot like "Bombers".

[ParadoxIncarnate]

This is hilariously awesome. I can imagine Gary onstage in a futuristic looking green uniform, singing about 7-Up while dancing like an android, then picking up a bottle, taking a drink, and looking at the camera with his trademark serious facial expression. He might be the only person in the world who could ever do such a thing and make it work well.

[Achtungmiche]

lol

[djmusicjac]

SILLY AMERICANS have no clue about new wave, bet they kicking themselves now, gary newman deserves MBE from her majesty queen for his contribution to new wave and british music

[PeasGraveny]

I'm not unfamiliar with Gary's work but for the first time when listening to these 'jingles' I became aware of Gary's apparent influence on Beck.

[KingOfUm]

@Thecuregalore94 It's not that they don't 'get' it, it's just that it isn't what they suspect the major public will get into. So even if Numan was huge in the UK, back then in the US customers who heard the potential jingles wouldn't have been able to relate to the artist, so it wouldn't have struck so heavily.