What’s the name of the song used in the 2014 John Lewis Christmas advert and who sings it?
The music to this years John Lewis festive ad comes courtesy of English singer-songwriter Tom Odell, covering the John Lennon track ‘Real Love’.
The song was originally written and sung by Lennon around 1979 but wasn’t widely heard before being used on the 1988 documentary ‘Imagine’. Later Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and George Harrison added their voices to a 1996 release of Real Love as a single and as part of the Beatles Anthology.
How the Tom Odell version compares, we’ll leave for you to decide. To date, the 23-year-old’s biggest hit in the UK has been his 2012 creation ‘Another Love’, which reached number 10 in the singles chart after a 2013 digital re-release.
As for the advertisement itself, the 2014 video features the retailers latest cold weather character Monty The Penguin, who seems far more interested in romance than the arrival of snow. Luckily for Monty, this behaviour doesn’t go unnoticed by his owner, and luckier still, John Lewis happen to sell fluffy female penguins called Mabel. Seriously they do, though by the time this advert gets broadcast on national television, you’ll be as lucky as Monty to find any in stock. A twist to the ending the ads writers chose not to go with.
The 2:10 video took the conveniently round figure of £1million to film, with the companies overall Christmas promotion adding up to £7million. The ad premiered on our TV screens during the first break of Channel 4’s Gogglebox on Friday the 7th of November. At the time of writing this, just two days after the official video was uploaded to YouTube, Monty The Penguin has already received over 5 million views. That’s viewing figures most TV shows and music videos can only dream of.
Though possibly better than last years Lily Allen cover of ‘Somewhere Only We Know’, I still think John Lewis peaked in 2012 with the snowman’s journey set to Gabrielle Aplin’s version of ‘The Power of Love’.
