McDonald's $1,000,000 Menu Song (1987)

Info

• Artist:: Various Artists
• Album:: McDonald’s $1,000,000 Menu Song
• Year:: 1987

Track Ratings

#	Title	Rating
A	McDonald’s $1,000,000 Menu Song

Log

2018-08-26

not an album but i listened to and rated this so i should probably talk about it a bit.

1. it’s corny. so, so corny.
   1. the fact that there’s complimentary adjectives in the song kinda hurts. also the “i love mcdonald’s” part.
      1. according to the internet, a lot of 80s kidz learned this song all the way through? you could probably incapacitate most of them now by reciting the first line and then steal their wallet as they blast through the rest.
2. they make you listen to the song—on your record player, which you somehow still have in 1988—for a chance to win a million bucks.
   1. it had to be a record player because it’s far too easy to copy cassettes, and i’m guessing because cds were still too expensive to distribute on a mass scale.
3. there was one winning track among 80 million pressings.
4. if you don’t have the winning track, you’re forced to listen for like two minutes for an aww, sorry, you lose.
   1. that’s like two minutes of wasted time (plus setup) for each go, and another time you’re forced to listen to the song. i guess it’s brilliant from an advertising perspective—maximize those impressions—but i can’t help but see it as obnoxious.
5. the only evidence we have of a winner is a small newspaper column talking about a woman buying a store with the money.
   1. or, vice ran an article about a kid who won the money. his mother was the one who had to claim the reward and then used that money to buy the store.
6. because there was only one winning track, nobody will ever get to hear the song all the way through. apparently the winner doesn’t even have the winning copy anymore either. so it’s lost, forever, unless somebody buys the mcmaster tapes (if they even kept them around).

while in line at the supermarket i was floored upon realizing how disgustingly brilliant the share a coke campaign is. as you walk past the lineup you’re bound to see your name or the name of someone you know. instantly you think of them, but you’re also thinking about coke in that same time. it marries the brand with the deeply personal contents of one’s biography. they seriously hacked the human psyche with that one.

whereas this campaign just proves my belief that if you have a big enough megaphone it’ll find plenty of people who are willing to lap up your shit. and ain’t that mcdonald’s right there.