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By David Gates
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Back when Volkswagen was plotting the U.S. ad campaign for its top-of-the-line Passat, the visuals were a nobrainer: winding road in stunning scenery, power-suited babe with devil-may-care hair ... in short, a car ad. But what background music could possibly-in the words of VW marketing director David Schembri-"convey the smooth performing and secure feeling of our new products"? Then someone at VW's ad agency went to see "Patriot Games" and flipped for the soundtrack song "Harry's Game": a moody 1982 piece by the Irish group Clannad, in which the Celtic Twilight meets the New Age. Except for the "fol de day" chorus, the song-about how "all things will pass"-is in Gaelic. That's a plus, Schembri says, because "it didn't get in the way of our ad copy."
When the commercials began to air late last year, thousands of people called the 800 number given at the endsome, surely, asking breathlessly where the nearest dealership was and what time it opened, but others wanting to know where they could get hold of that neat music without the voice-over sales pitch. As of last week, Clannad's album "Anam," on which the song appears, had sold more than 250,000 copies-up from 45,000 in November. (Passat sales increased, too, by about 25 percent.) Folksy background music has tickled the mass fancy before: fiddler Jay Ungar's "Ashokan Farewell," from an obscure 1984 album, served as the theme for PBS's 1990 Civil War series; the soundtrack has sold some 400,000 copies. A less lofty analogue is the 1966 hit "No Matter What Shape (Your Stomach's In)," based on an Alka-Seltzer ad.
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Clannad is a family band from County Donegal, with roots in traditional Irish music and branches in synthesizer pop; it consists of lead singer Maire Brennan, her brother Ciaran and their twin uncles Padraig and Noel Duggan. (Brennan's sister Enya, who once sang with the band, has had the No. 1 New Age album for 48 weeks with "Shepherd Moons.") They've scored a few hits in Europe, including "In a Lifetime," lead singer Brennan's 1986 duet with U2's Bono; " Harry's Game" was originally written for a three-part BBC TV documentary on Northern Ireland. But, as Brennan puts it, " Our music isn't that easy to get across on American radio."
What is? As New York Times critic Stephen Holden noted last week, appealing but unconventional music, from Paul Simon's "Graceland" to Linda Ronstadt's "Canciones de Mi Padre," catches on largely by reviews and word of mouth. Now Atlantic Records is trying to amp up the buzz on Clannad, copromoting "Harry's Game" with VW as the "Volkswagen song." Tower Records, urging customers to "Shift Gears With Your Ears," is giving away a Passat in a nationwide drawing. Yet the simplest move may prove the most cost efficient: Clannad now gets a credit at the end of the Passat commercials. Maire Brennan, meanwhile, is doing her best to stay bemused. "It's not an ad for shampoo or dog food," she says, "and it shows the countryside." It's anybody's guess why Brennan draws the line at such humble and useful products as shampoo and dog food-arguably less decadent than $21,000 automobiles-but when art meets commerce, dignity is where you find it.
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