Lyrics are generally regarded as being one of the key features of a song right? Therefore within the field of music in advertising, we could also assume that the song's lyrics chosen would be somewhat related to the product being advertised?
However the results of an academic study conducted 2005 yielded opposite results: They applied the theory of Cognitive Dissonance - the notion that the music and visuals portray different meanings to one another (for example an advert about life insurance and using an upbeat song about happiness).
An example used within their study was the following advert, published by Allied Dunbar using the soundtrack of Nat Cole King's "Let's face the music and dance".
Cole Porter's lyrics describe the romantic ideal, where we deliberately ignore problems because we are wrapped up with the one we love. The TV commercial, on the other hand, used a script which suggested the opposite: Allied Dunbar's message was quite morbid, reminding us that we could die any minute and needed get life insurance right away.
The explanation was that for most people there was no contradiction. it is all in the melody. The words hardly mattered, because what people heard was melody and tempo, and that's what gave the images their meaning. Most people heard the 'headline' in the music, "There may be trouble ahead", and that was the message the advertisers left us with. All the rest is background - "aural wallpaper" the study called it.
Reference
Croft, Robin, Gill Allard and Krzysztof Kubacki (2005), Songs and Pictures: Cognitive Dissonance in the Music of Advertising, Proceedings of Academy of Marketing Conference, Dublin Institute of Technology, ISBN 1-905824-00-9
