What's That Song From the Holiday Inn 'Stay You' Commercial?

Posted on Jul 26th 2010 12:30PM by Pat Pemberton
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'You Always Make Me Smile,' Kyle Andrews

Though Kyle Andrews wrote 'You Always Make Me Smile' during a rainy week in Nashville, the feel-good tune has made his future much brighter -- even it did make for a very wet six minutes in Utah.

The song, which began airing on Holiday Inn commercials this summer, was written by Andrews and his roommate Neil Mason, a drummer for the band American Bang, who challenged themselves to write a sunny song on a not-so-sunny day. Andrews, an unsigned act originally from Chicago, performed the indie tune.

With its upbeat melody and chirpy lyrics, multinational ad agency McCann Erickson figured it'd be a good single to back its Holiday Inn commercial, which features regular people doing things that characterize them -- a "vocal" woman sings karaoke; a "determined" man barbecues in heavy rain (a somewhat different version of the advert is concurrently airing in the UK). The commercial's theme: At Holiday Inn, you can be you.

The song's national prominence is a testament to the changing nature of the music industry, where lucky artists don't need record deals or radio airplay to get national exposure. In Andrews' case, the exposure won't end with the commercial spots. According to Billboard, both Holiday Inn and McCann are handling the commercial release of the song. Meanwhile, PR firm Stache Media will handle promotion.

Holiday Inn and McCann call their partnership StayU Music, which they describe as a "label" even though right now it's a label with just one act. But it does have money -- the hotel chain is paying $100 million for its ad campaign -- and a built-in audience: To help beef up the song's recognition, Holiday Inn plans to use 'You Always Make Me Smile' both as hold music for its reservations calls and wake-up music for those who don't trust alarm clocks.

McCann also orchestrated the making of an official video for the song, which was filmed July 24 during a historic water balloon fight. Hoping to break a record set at the University of Kentucky, nearly 4,000 students at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, launched over 120,000 water balloons at each other during a soggy, six-minute battle. As the melee took place, Andrews played guitar in the middle of two warring factions as cameras filmed the monsoon.

As he continued to get pelted by water balloons, Andrews eventually attempted to use his guitar as a shield before giving up and joining in with a few balloon tosses of his own.

The BYU students did break the water balloon record. Meanwhile, Andrews' record will appear on an upcoming EP, 'Kangaroo.'

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Can't find that song from that commercial? Send the commercial, movie or TV show to us at whatsthatsong@aim.com.