It’s that time of year again. Let’s talk about the John Lewis Christmas advert.
Yet again music is being used as a way into feelings and connections that are hard to put into words. This year we’ve got a son who buys his dad Where Love Lives, a 1990s hit, on vinyl, prompting a bit of a flashback scene about the dad’s own younger years followed by a moment of connection with his son.
Presents are a wonderful way of showing you care about someone, and we often put a lot of effort into thinking ourselves into the other person’s shoes, wondering and anticipating what they might like, and doing our best to show our care. Quite a fundamental of the social glue that brings people together and makes them feel good.
It’s really well known that music connects generations and that within families people share key songs that mean a lot to them. Perhaps one of the most iconic adverts to draw on this theme was the French Bouygues Telecom advert in 2018 where the now-adult son buys his dad a phone with the ringtone of Redbone’s Come and Get Your Love – a song from the early 1970s that the dad had played to his son all through his childhood. John Lewis themselves have been unashamedly using cover versions of older songs to prompt nostalgia in their now-adult midlife prime market for quite a few years, and this year’s is only a break from tradition in that it’s an original rather than a cover (at least at the beginning, before we get the emotional reveal).
I’m always interested in how music gets used to evoke emotions, bring people together, and generally do good things, and I’ve written about the science behind Christmas music before. This year I’m struck by what is missing in that music-emotion-people connection.
As soon as the dad puts the record on he’s transported right back to rave culture and an earlier time, although he’s just the same age in the dancing clip. Then we can only suppose he remembers it was a present from his son, who appears in slo-mo across the dancefloor and then, somewhat ominously, fades to black. The fellow ravers all disappear too – “I’m not a young man anymore”. Cue a younger version of his son coming in for a cuddle, then baby son, and the dad remembers he has a family and that his son still cares for him and wants to make him happy. Finish with soft cover version of the song, with mum and daughter in the background (doing important housework), and dad and son embrace.
What’s interesting here, apart from the literal message that “music can connect people where words are harder” and the commercial nature of a Christmas advert pushing people to the shops, is that there is NO inkling of shared musical memories between the dad and son. At the start the son is obviously listening to something – probably music – on his own headphones, and the dad goes off to a separate space to put the record on. The son doesn’t join in or show any signs of liking the music at all. It’s purely there as a cipher for the perfect gift – simply something the other person wants. And there the narrative of reconnecting is simply on the basis of “you bought me something I like, thanks”. For this reason I don’t think this year’s ad is going to be as successful as previous campaigns, as it feels a lot more commercial and the emotional connections through music are quite superficial.
The other point I spotted which is pretty similar to the Bouygues ad is the cringeworthy dad dancing in front of his son (in this case, right at the end). Maybe that’s the true spirit of Christmas!
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