"I'D LIKE TO BUY THE WORLD A COKE"

heard on npr a little while ago that the composer of that little jingle from 1971 died last week. his name was billy davis.

god, i hadn't thought of that song in so long. i've had "love will keep us together" get stuck in my head a few times since 1971 but not the coke song.

pop songs bring back memories of course. i don't know why that is exactly but we sometimes precisely associate them with an event, often a romance. such-and-such was "our song, "etc.

significantly this song brought back a mood, a happy, light mood that was in stark contrast to it's era. arthur danto has written that the 1970's were a cultural dark age, as dark as the 10th century. for all of us who came of age in that decade: ouch. but think about it; it's hard to argue with that. the 70's was the era of gerald ford, jimmy carter, disco, the captain and tenille, leisure suits, barry manilow, and baseball uniforms with shorts.

i have written here previously that of course what we mean by a cultural era of this decade or that decade is not defined by a 10-year span. the turbulent, violent 60's didn't begin in 1960. i would argue that they began on november 22, 1963 and lasted until nixon's resignation in 1974.

the goofball, culturally bankrupt 70's began then and lasted, probably till reagan's election with it's "it's morning in america" theme and the start of the "me decade."

"i'd like to buy the world a coke" therefore properly belongs to the sixties. it was a utopian song that went along with some of the utopian "philosophy" of the time, peace symbols, flowers in your hair and all that. in fact, it sounded like it was sung by peter, paul, and mary or the mammas and the pappas, two quintessentially sixties pop groups.

the npr report reminded me that that damn little song was sung ALL OVER THE WORLD. it really did have universal appeal. it made everybody sing and smile. it was also turned into a hit single, the references to coke being replaced by "to sing."

npr's classical music critic said that there are similarities between "coke" and beethoven's "ode to joy," now the anthem of the european union.

classical-pop similarities are always suspicious--you know, basketball to ballet--but in this case the comparison rang true. both "songs" are emotionally soaring. you FEEL joy when you hear "joy" just as we did everytime we heard "coke."

whoever-he-was also pointed out that there are structural similarities. the first "part"--i don't know what it's really called in music--in both pieces ends with a "musical question" that is "answered" in the second part. and of course the answer is a resounding affirmative: yes to joy, yes to happiness, yes to hope, yes to our dreams.

the npr guy also said that the lyrics to "joy" were taken from a poem by shiller, some of the lines of which, man's brotherhood for example, are extremely similar to those of "coke's" mankind "holding hands."

so here's to billy davis; he wrote something that lept the bounds of advertising into american popular culture and then soared over those bounds to all the civilizations of the world when that world looked like it could be blown up at any moment.

here's to billy davis. have a coke and a smile.

-benjamin harris