So while my computer was broken, I was stuck with what I had uploaded to my MP3 player, which turned out to be this wonderful Otis Redding box set. Over the course of a few weeks, I spent at least 36 hours listening to those four discs, over and over and over, and I never got tired of it. Otis Redding was an amazing performer, and if I ever get time machine access, he's one of the top ten concerts I'll be attending with it.Case in point -- soda commercials don't have to be great. Especially if the song's already written, and you just have to teach your band the chords and half-heartedly sing it, then whole-heartedly cash the check. But listen to this: it's 90 seconds long, and the product isn't even mentioned for the first fifth of it. If you're not listening carefully, or expecting a commercial, it just sounds like a classic Redding song. Otis and the band worked up a huge arrangement, and wrote a whole new framework around a pre-existing jingle, and Coke approved it. Coke's ad agency was full of geniuses; compare with this ad by Ray Charles. They hired every pop singer they could, and that's one reason they built such a large market share.
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