"I want my baby back, baby back, baby back."
Is there anyone who doesn't know this incredibly catchy jingle? (I'm guessing Chili's sold a lot of baby back ribs because of it.)
Well, the actual footage from its recording was posted on YouTube last year by Alvin Chea of the a capella group Take 6, the gentleman who were paid to sing the song. It's kind of a trip to watch since the ad has only been an auditory experience before.
Also, there's an amusing story behind the jingle. The ad man who wrote it, Guy Bommarito, told Vice in 2015:
I only did it when we got into a situation where we had done a campaign that did so poorly they were going to fire us. We went up to Dallas and we begged them for a second chance. They said, "We need a spot for baby back ribs in about six weeks, and we want it to be music in the restaurant."
I was too embarrassed to go back to my department and give them the assignment, because it was really an awful assignment. This was a time when really good agencies would send out Christmas cards that would have a blank before the word "bells," like "___ bells, ___ bells," and when you'd open it up it would say "We don't do jingles." That was the feeling at the time, that jingles were the lowest form of advertising and the lowest common denominator. Our department didn't even do them, so I just did it myself so that no one would have to mess with it.
I wrote it in, like, five minutes. I presented it to the client, I just sang it to them, and they said, "Yeah, that sounds fine." I called a friend of mine in Dallas—Tom Faulkner—and I asked if he would put it together for me. He recorded me over the phone and made it sound like a professional had actually done it. So it ran, and we thought that it would go away. And then months later, it ran again, and then after a couple of years, I had left the agency, and I got a call saying, "You know, your song is going to be in the new Austin Powers movie in two weeks." And I said, "What song?" I've been totally blown away by the popularity of the song and all of the places it's appeared. It's not so much that I'm angry about it, I'm kind of just like, how did this happen, why did this happen?
"Thanks" for the earworm, Guy.
(reddit)
