5 Jingles That Were Secretly Written By Celebrities

It would've made sense to nab some intern, hand them a lyric sheet, and order them to make "I'm lovin' it / is this the place to eat? / Since I don't cook / I'll just rock to the beat" sound convincing. But instead, McDonald's hired three big stars to create two different songs, and their powers combined made the company richer (and the world fatter) than ever.

The above rap was written by Pusha T, one half of the famed rap duo The Clipse. He kept quiet about it until recently, since it's hard to maintain street cred when pushing food that tastes like the bottom of a sandal. But in June 2016, during an interview with Hot 97, former record exec Steve Stoute revealed that Pusha T wrote and performed the original song (no word on whether he had a hand in "McNugget Love" years later). With the cat now out of the bag, Pusha confessed on Twitter shortly thereafter.

Pusha T / Twitter

McDonald's, for their part, deny Pusha had any role in the song, because good luck selling Happy Meals if your campaign is built around a guy whose gentler lyrics include "Hines Ward of the crime lords / Running through this money screaming 'encore' / Spending nights with the prime whore / But that's the bitch that you're blind for." One listen to the guy's voice, though, and there's no denying it's the same one who paid the bills with burger pillow talk.

And the other two artists I mentioned? In that Hot 97 interview, Stoute outed Pusha because the DJ had credited Justin Timberlake and Pharrell Williams as the McD's writers, and Stoute was not about to let that slide. Thing is, they did write the jingle! Just in a different way. See, months before McDonald's started bleating "I'm Lovin' It," JT and Pharrell wrote their own song called "I'm Lovin' It." Complete with the "ba-da-ba BA BAHH" hook.

What a crazy, lawsuit-ripe coincidence, no? Well, no. McDonald's commissioned Not-Joey-Fatone and the Happy Minion Guy to write the tune (which had nothing to do with fast food, at all), and tattoo the catchphrase onto America's collective subconscious. After a few months, Ronald and company would swoop in with their campaign, featuring a riff and phrase everybody was already used to. Call it reverse engineering or a viral campaign -- it clearly worked, judging by the half-dozen triple bacon cheeseburgers I just polished off between jokes.

And to anyone who still doubts that Pusha T wrote anything: In 2007, Timberlake flat-out said, "I regret the McDonald's deal." And yet here's Pusha, happily admitting he sold out once and evolved into Patty Pusha T. If that's not proof that he actually did it, I have no clue what would be.

That catchy ditty, made up of 10 percent chords and 900 percent hype, is "Roundball Rock." You probably know it better by its other name, "The NBA On NBC Theme," one of the most iconic and recognizable themes in all of sports. Even people who think basketball is actually named Roundball get pumped for some hardcore sportin' within five seconds of hearing it. And John "Granny's Favorite" Tesh wrote it.

According to the man himself, he was touring Europe in 1990 when a fun melody popped into his head -- much like how when I tour Europe, fun euphemisms for penis just come to me. Before he pulled a Tenacious D and forgot everything, Tesh called his answering machine and scatted the melody into it. Then, when he returned home, he sat his ass down at the piano, set his ba-ba-bada-ba-BAH's for 122 beats per minute (what he deemed the speed of a "fast break," or how a basketball team rushes down the court to score before the other team remembers to tie their shoes), and turned it into "Roundball Rock."

Margaret Norton / NBC / Getty Images

He then spent $15,000 of his own money (this was back when musicians made money) to record an orchestral version, which he sent to NBC. They loved it, played it before, during, and after every NBA broadcast until 2002, and paid Tesh shitloads for the privilege. He made over six figures a year just on that song, whose primary purpose is to remind you to grab a beer and rush to the couch because the Bulls are back on.

Because Tesh never got public credit for "Roundball," many people still don't know he wrote it. Which is why he tells them at every show he plays. He'll tell the story of how the song came to be, play the original answering machine recording of his hums, and then fucking jam:

There is not a moment of John Tesh performing "Roundball Rock" live that isn't the greatest moment since the Earth cooled. Does he start by dribbling an imaginary ball so poorly that even the worst imaginary benchwarmer would steal it in seconds flat? Of course he does! Does the orchestra have shit-eating grins on their faces because finally they're not snooze-fiddling their way through "Song For Jennifer"? Hell yes they do! Does the crowd sit on their fucking hands like, "Cool story, babe, now make me a sonata?" Well, yes, but at least Tesh and company are having fun.

You can clearly see where Foster's knack for "happy tune, depressing message" came from. This song, called "Spring Break It Down," is ostensibly about Muscle Milk and how it'll make you all muscly in time for Daytona Beach. The video is colorful and wacky, featuring dancing girls, hot guys, underpaid extras in dancing manatee costumes, and wet T-shirt contests. Oh, and no Muscle Milk shown until five seconds before the two-and-a-half-minute video ends. Great product placement, everyone!

Muscle Milk

But then you listen to the words, and you hear the lamentations of a total loser who fails at everything except Spring Break. Tell me these lines aren't a bigger cry for help than anything in "Margaritaville":

"Yo, Spring Break's resickulous / I'm never sad / I funnel drinks / I miss my Dad."

"Spring Breakin' It Down / And pumpin' our fists / I should probably see a doctor / When I get home from this trip."

"I'm an eighth-year senior / Still know how to get wild / So what if I'm 30 / And stuck in denial?"

"I'm out on the water / The wind's in my sail / This is the greatest trip ever / I'm in a Mexican jail."

Muscle Milk

So basically, Mark Foster called out Spring Break bros as pathetic losers who can go fuck themselves, but because he wrote "Sippin' on some Muscle Milk / and headin' to a beach town," ten seconds in, it passed the commercial sniff test. This makes me wonder if "Just for the taste of it, Diet Coke" sneakily accuses Nixon of killing Kennedy halfway through the third verse.

Also, Mophonics' thing is to have their jingle writers compose whole songs, which the company then sells snippets of to various other companies. This means that, in another universe, parts of "Pumped-Up Kicks" are being used to hawk some back-to-school sale, and that is just wonderful.

In the 1970s, right around the time he was proving that you can write lyrics like "we're rednecks / and we don't know our ass from a hole in the ground" and still be considered a pop singer, Newman found himself with an offer to write a tune for Dr Pepper. Newman accepted, and taking inspiration from Pepper's "The Most Original Soft Drink Ever" campaign, he wrote a jaunty tune called ... "The Most Original Soft Drink Ever." Hey, it was a jingle -- he didn't have to be the most original songwriter ever.

Dr. Pepper

Outside of the occasional TV spot, "Most Original" was confined to the radio, and many variations have not survived. To hear one YouTube uploader tell it, Newman arranged the ditty in all sorts of crazy ways, from a rock opera to country hoedown, which honestly sounds like something Randy Newman would do. Another thing he did was bring blues musicians to play the song, and a couple of those still exist. Here's BB King recording his version of the Pepper song, because while the thrill may have been gone, the bill collectors weren't:

After a minute of BB King telling his life story, which is still more fun to hear than half the shit the '70s put out, he launches into "Most Original." It's a fine blues number, only with talk of lost love and broken dreams replaced by "It's not a cola, it's much, much, much more / It's not a root beer, there are root beers by the score." Just focus on BB kicking ass on the guitar if the Dr Pepper shit bothers you that much.

There's also this radio rip of Muddy Waters doing the song, imploring you to "drink Dr Pepper every day," which you probably should not do:

By all accounts, Newman wrote the one Pepper tune, and then disappeared back into actual songwriting right after. Others, however, enjoyed the jingle game so much that they made a whole career out of them ...

Kentucky Fried Chicken, Stridex, Dodge, McDonald's ... you'd have to be a monk to not have used at least a couple of products Manilow played a hand in selling you. Shit, some of his jingles make watching TV less fun today, such as "Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there" and the musical tour de force that is "Band-Aid's Stuck On Me." They'll probably last as long as civilization will ... so five years, tops.

Like John Tesh before him, Barry Manilow enjoys playing his jingles live in concert. But since he has so many, he condenses them into what he calls his "Very Strange Medley." You know you want to listen:

Unlike the Tesh crowd, Manilow's fans are into this. When he sings "c'monnnn, c'monnnn, get a bucket of chicken / finger-lickin' good" you can practically hear the crowd dancing, which they probably only do at home if they want the kids to move out early. Then it's onto State Farm, and even before he gets to "like a good neighbor," they're already applauding. They actually remember the rest of the song! I wonder how playing the song makes Manilow feel inside, since he sold it for $500 in the '70s and hasn't received a penny of royalties since. An $80 million fortune can only provide so much therapy, after all.

Harry Wad / Wiki Commons

For Band-Aid, Manilow has his lady backup singers cover for him, because his days of being able to sing like a child who's boo-boo doesn't hurt anymore are long gone. One of the girls then sings the "Bathroom Bowl Blues" for Bowlene Toilet Bowl Cleaner, which must suck urinal cakes, because I've never heard of it. Dr. Pepper follows, because who needs BB King and Muddy Waters when you've got Barry Manilow?

Finally, he ends the medley with McDonalds' "You Deserve A Break Today," complete with an extended lady falsetto at the end that busted my speakers. And with that, this article's come full circle. Enjoy your day, drink Dr. Pepper, and let's hope that Bowlene Toilet Bowl Cleaner actually works, because my colon is not "lovin'" those bacon burgers.

Nobody pays Jason to shill for anything, so he'll just shill for his own Facebook and Twitter instead. Half-price to follow, this week only!

Learn how Ben Franklin started the myth of the 'Jersey Devil' in 6 Urban Legends That Were Totally Made Up By Celebrities, and check out a bizarre song made by boxing's greatest in 6 Celebrities You Didn't Know Had Ridiculous Music Careers.

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