The relationship between entertainment and advertising is long standing. But beginning in the 1950s, as described in an introduction to The Wonderful World Of Industrial Musicals, “Business and Broadway had a baby”.
“This mutant offspring, glimpsed only at conventions and sales meetings, was the industrial musical. Think Broadway show, except the audience is managers and salesmen, and the songs are about how great it is to be working at the company.”
It may sound horrific, but some consider the writing and music quite good—it is by any measure entertaining.
The album cover above (courtesy of American Standard and Bathtubs Over Broadway) is one such work…
Listen here to American-Standard’s The Bathrooms Are Coming! (WFMU)…
Another example of the genre is the Chevrolet Sales Convention Musical…
Purely by happenstance, in May of 2019, NETFLIX began streaming Bathtubs Over Broadway…
The Bathtubs Over Broadway website…
A more formal definition of Industrial musicals Wikipedia)…
A sampling of industrial musicals and corporate recordings (Discogs.com)…
Recruit, Train and Motivate: The History of the Industrial Musical (Jonathan Ward)…
Coke’s Industrial Musicals: Bottling Goes Broadway (Coca-Cola)…
Thanks to Jim Green for pointing us to it.
Posted in MAY 2019 / Chuck Green is the principal of Logic Arts, a design and marketing firm, a contributor to numerous magazines and websites, and the author of books published by Random House, Peachpit Press, and Rockport Publishers. Copyright 2007-2019 Chuck Green/Logic Arts Corporation. Contact.
Thoughts?