Being the 53 year-old fogy that I am, most of the catchy, bouncy rock tunes they use as background music in commercials these days does not, shall we say, “ring a bell” in my brain.
Well, imagine my (pleasant) surprise when, just minutes ago, I’m at my desktop browsing the Dope and one of my all-time favorite tunes starts playing on the TV in the corner. It’s a Mac commercial! The song is Two of a Kind, the fairly obscure title tune to a fairly obscure album released c. 1960 featuring duets by Bobby Darin and Johnny Mercer with Billy May’s orchestra supplying the music. I love this album – it’s definitely one of my “desert island discs!” Not a clunker in it! (Okay, maybe one.) Darin and Mercer are two of my favorite vocalists, and here they are together, song after song.
Btw, most people who know Johnny Mercer know him only as a songwriter – and he was a great one – but he was also a top-notch singer too, with a respectable recording career in the 1940s and 1950s. His rendition of Baby, It’s Cold Outside with Margaret Whiting (words and music by Frank Loesser) is, in my opinion, the definitive version.
I wish I knew the guy who suggested the song for the commercial. I’d buy him a drink.