Carly Simon -- Anticipation

Wikimedia Commons
via EEIM

Welcome to another edition of Reminiscings of Youth where I present some of the non-Japanese songs that I grew up with as a kid, teen or even young adult. And this time, I would like to go with another example of a negative being turned into a positive...at least, where marketing of a product is concerned.

When it came to condiments, I think that there were a fair share of people who couldn't stand having to wait for mustard or ketchup to slowly drag itself out of the bottle and onto the hamburger or hot dog. For me, that was indeed the case until I learned the inertia method many years later. However, the good folks at Heinz Ketchup took that logistical weakness and made it into something to be savored...anticipated, you might say.

Yes, it was the waiting that was part of the joy of having some of that ketchup on your burger or dog, and what helped it was the usage of a classic 1970s pop song, appropriately titled "Anticipation" by Carly Simon. What I was surprised about was that "Anticipation" had been released so early in the 1970s...November 1971, to be exact...since those Heinz commercials were more of a late 1970s/early 1980s phenomenon. However, listening to "Anticipation" a few times, I can now understand that it was an early 1970s tune with the laidback rhythm and piano.

"Anticipation" reached No. 9 in Canada while in the United States, it hit No. 13. The original song may have been about the giddy and nervous feelings about how a romance might play out, but for me, it'll always be about the ketchup. So, now I've got a Bond movie and a fabric softener plus a ketchup ad that has helped me cotton onto Carly Simon.

At the Japan Record Awards that were handed out at the end of 1971, there were two songs that won for Most Popular Kayo.

Koji Tsuruta -- Kizu Darake no Jinsei （傷だらけの人生）

Masaaki Sakai -- Saraba, Koibito （さらば、恋人）

Carly Simon -- Nobody Does It Better

 

Welcome to another Reminiscings of Youth to start off Thursday. Y'know...I mistakenly thought that Carly Simon's big hit "Nobody Does It Better" had been used as a commercial jingle for Heinz Ketchup when it had actually been Fleecy Fabric Softener which got the song (strangely enough, it was Simon's "Anticipation" which got the ketchup gig). There was some vague remembrance that "Nobody Does It Better" was used to hawk some household product, and I think that it was the first time that I had ever listened to the hit.

I can imagine that as a kid I must have done a double take when I found out that "Nobody Does It Better" had actually been a theme song for the third of Roger Moore's James Bond outings "The Spy Who Loved Me" which was released in July 1977 in the UK (August in the USA). The first 007 flick which I ever saw on the big screen was Moore's final outing as the superspy, "From a View to a Kill" in the mid-1980s so anything before that was simply through reruns on television. With the usual rule of motion pictures finally hitting TV perhaps three years following their initial run at the theatres, it would have been around 1980 that I finally got to see "The Spy Who Loved Me", so maybe around the same time that I first saw the Fleecy ads. It's ironic then that a song that was used to hawk softener had once been used to advertise a spy whose hidden weapon often...well, you get the picture.😱

Getting back to "The Spy Who Loved Me", it has remained my favourite of the Moore Bond outings, partly because of Simon's theme but also because of 007's Lotus Esprit, the final battle against villain Stromberg, Jaws, and that opening sequence before the credits. I heard that British audiences had gone absolutely gangbusters when the parachute opened up into the Union Jack.

"Nobody Does It Better" was released as a single in the same month as the movie by Simon with lyrics by Carole Bayer Sager and music by Marvin Hamlisch. It's been one of the better-received Bond themes and it's one of my favourite Bond songs as a work that has been reflective of how a lot of those 007 themes were going for the more contemporary sounds of that decade compared to the swinging jazz of the 1960s including the James Bond theme itself. The combination of piano and strings of that time, which was also part and parcel of "Nobody Does It Better", has always struck me with the label of "POWER BALLAD OF THE 1970s" and I think that Japanese pop music picked up on that, too.

Apparently though, somebody did it better than "Nobody Does It Better" since despite the fact that it had been nominated for awards such as an Oscar and a Grammy, it didn't win anything. Still, I cherish it much more than those winners. It hit No. 2 on both the charts in America and Canada.

So, what was getting out in July 1977?

Momoe Yamaguchi -- Imitation Gold （イミテイション・ゴールド）

Hiromi Iwasaki -- Nettaigyo（熱帯魚）

Nanako Sato -- Subterranean no Futari Botchi（サブタレニアン二人ぼっち）in "Funny Walkin'" (June 25th 1977)