Twenty Thousand HertzClient Information
21 February, 2021Print
Twenty Thousand Hertz Releases "I'm Lovin' It": The Story Behind the McDonald's Jingle that Took Over the World
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On today's brand new episode of Twenty Thousand Hertz, the podcast about the world's most recognizable and interesting sounds unravels the wild saga behind one of the best-known melodies in the world: the McDonald's "I'm Lovin' It" jingle. Nearly two decades since its launch, the phrase "ba da ba ba ba" remains the fast food empire's longest running, most successful marketing campaign of all time, a pop cultural staple ingrained in our collective consciousness. But as host Dallas Taylor reveals, the tumultuous months it took to finally arrive at those five iconic notes required billions of listeners, 3,700 different audio mixes, celebrity controversy and so much more you'll have to hear to believe.
Listen to "I'm Lovin' It" Here
Through interviews with the original "I'm Lovin' It" creators, Tom Batoy and Franco Tortora, Dallas Taylor begins the story from the very beginning. In the early 2000s McDonald's stock price hit a seven-year low, so the company hosted an international idea contest in search of a solution. The competition led to an impromptu melody that Batoy and Tortora recorded after a long night and lots of wine...and then the real work started. As McDonald's first-ever worldwide ad idea, Batoy and Tortora needed to make it fit every musical style and context imaginable, so it would resonate with customers around the globe. Alongside record executive/businessman Steve Stoute, they helped turn the jingle into a four-minute single - first a hip-hop track featuring an unnamed star, but ultimately a pop hit from Justin Timberlake and The Neptunes. The song was mysteriously "leaked" months before the ads started rolling out in 2003, and now "I'm Lovin' It" has endured across multiple generations, including renditions featuring Pusha T, Destiny's Child, Donkey from Shrek and the Despicable Me minions, meals for Travis Scott, J Balvin and more.
With "I'm Lovin' It" Twenty Thousand Hertz continues a streak of its most popular, masterfully-produced and imaginative episodes to date. In the past year the podcast surpassed 15 million lifetime downloads, won its third consecutive Webby and furthered its mission to elevate our sense of hearing to the same level of appreciation and attention as our other four senses, through stories on the Netflix "Ta-Dum," audio deepfakes, the sounds of dinosaurs, Star Wars, Seinfeld, outer space, the future and beyond. Find all 117 episodes here: https://www.20k.org/archive
Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced out of the studios of Defacto Sound, a team of sound designers led by Dallas Taylor, whose work spans blockbuster film trailers, broadcast TV series, ads, games and thousands of other projects for brands like Disney, Google, National Geographic, Netflix, Nike, Ford and more.
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