Coke Is Shit

You may not have heard The Anthem, but you soon will. Thanks to some sprightly sampling it’s been chosen by Coca Cola to soundtrack their Olympic commercials. The Anthem will be the beat that ate Beijing. So is Onra, the French producer behind the track, rolling in Cola cashola? Nope. Uncleared samples and a meddling musicologist have left him with just a co-writing credit and enough change to buy “the new iBook or a MPC5000.” After the jump Onra tell us his side of the story…

Onra – The Anthem [mp3] [Buy]

So how did the Coke deal come about?

Onra: “I first heard about the Coke Commercial a few months ago. I received an email directly to my inbox, I don’t even know who gave them my address, from an English agency who said they were working for Coca Cola. They were interested in using my song The Anthem from the album Chinoiseries for the Coca Cola Beijing Olympic Games TV worldwide commercial. I was really excited when I got this mail, I thought everything was gonna be simple.”

But then there was a problem with the samples…

“There were issues with the sample because I hadn’t been able to clear it. It is from a Chinese song from the early 1970s. The label doesn’t exist anymore and as I don’t read Chinese I wasn’t able to find the original author. When Coke knew I couldn’t clear the sample they chose to remake the song using a musicologist. He rerecorded the guitar, the Chinese wood drums, the violin, the flute. He even added the crackling vinyl sound. But he needed to make a few changes to make it legal, so it’s a little different to the sample I first used.”

And then what happened?

“They sent me what the musicologist had done and I worked on it the same way I’d worked on the original Chinese sample. So the original version and the second one really sounded alike because I used the same drums and bass on both. Finally, a few days later, the agency sent me the advert and my drums were missing. Coke wanted it softer so the musicologist reworked everything I’d done. Nothing I did appears in the music you hear in the commercial.”

How do you feel about Coke now?

“I feel like they are silly rabbits! All I have now is a co-writer credit. I didn’t get a big cheque. Enough to buy the new Ibook or a MPC5000. I mean, Coke make billions…”

And what’s next for you?

“My plan is to get on tour more and more. Make more music, keep on releasing small projects, and hopefully work with talented artists. I don’t know about making music for commercials, but at least this may be another opportunity for me to get my music heard. At the end of the day, I don’t even know if I will gain exposure from this, and even if I do, people will think my drums suck.”

01.08.08.