We adore you, Otto Braitmayer

Ah yes, the treachery of the brain, in particular that part responsible for remembering shite songs and triggering the humming reflex when the soul would otherwise be at peace.

We are all familiar with those little pieces of cultural shrapnel that lodge in the subconscious and linger there for weeks, sometimes even years. One particularly ingrained melody for me used to be ‘Hotel California’ but it was supplanted 14 months ago by ‘McKC’, a corporate anthem. Somebody sent me an email with an attachment: “listen to this, it’s gas.” Now, in the car, waiting for the bus, while on hold or staring blankly out the window, I often find myself singing, ‘We are McKC, McKinsey Knowledge Centre, Na na naaaa na ni na-na-na ni na-na-na ni na.’ For this reason, I advise that the world of corporate anthems be approached with caution because though you can check out anytime you like, you may never leave.

The best repository of these things is at Chris Raettig’s site www.znet.co.uk/specials/2002/it-anthems. The kind of entertainment we’re talking about here is the so-bad-it’s-good type, so there is a kind of squared irony when they backfire and fuck with your karma. Listening to ebusiness company Asera’s anthem, ‘Asera Everywhere’, you get this violent urge to stab the computer through the keyboard with a wooden stake and rush out to find some kind of equal and opposite catharsis – like drinking Absinthe or saying mass or going paraskiboardbugiskiing… something, anything to purge the soul.

How these songs came to be tends to be shrouded in embarrassment and disavowal. Were they a misguided human resources tool? A misguided marketing tool? Who wrote them? Who recorded them? Circumstantial evidence would suggest that they are simply the violent collision of a bloated promotional budget and a bad idea, final proof of the insidious evil of capitalism. A press release on Raettig’s site says:

“Some of the anthems are clearly done with tongue in cheek, but the majority come across as genuine attempts by these companies at ‘aural branding’. The fact that these tunes never become publicly available (discounting the corpanthems website) suggests that they create such anthems in order to rally the troops, or as branding exercises, then realise how cringeworthy they are and attempt to bury them.”

One notable exception is ‘Ever Onward’ from IBM which is more of a historical curiosity than a marketing fiasco. Taken from the 1931 edition of the IBM songbook, it is one of over one hundred paeans to the computer company, all written expressly as troop-ralliers – you’ll find the full book at http://homepage.ntlworld.com/barryf/sbindex.html. This from the preamble:

“In appreciation of the able and inspiring leadership of our beloved President, Mr. Thos. J. Watson, and our unmatchable staff of IBM executives, and in recognition of the noble aims and purposes of our International Service and Products, this edition of IBM songs solicits your vocal approval by hearty cooperation in our song-fests at our conventions and fellowship gatherings.”

What follows is some serious veneration of founder TJ Watson and his crew of apostolic executives. The tribute to manufacturing vice-president Otto Braitmayer’s begins unambiguously with “We adore you, Otto Braitmayer,” and goes on to list the qualities of TJ’s right hand man. ‘Ever Onward’, which you can listen to on the site, is a march, no less, complete with brass band and full-throated male voice chorus, but my personal favourite has to be ‘Our IBM Salesmen’. It’s sung to the tune of ‘Jingle Bells’ and the first line is: “IBM, happy men, smiling all the way.” Class.

Now to the aforementioned ‘Asera Everywhere’. Once upon a time, a talentless, soulless white guy bought an eight track recorder, a sequencer and a rap dictionary. Late at night, as his wife fretted alone in their bed, he toiled away in his basement, putting together a work of soul-wincing, bottom-clenching awfulness. There the tale should have ended. But he took it to his company’s board of directors and despite the fact that their names are rapped out in the lyrics, they took it to their hearts. “Asera’s crib is the place to be… our crew is hot, def, dope and fly.” This song is an aural car wreck. Though you know that it will haunt your nightmares for weeks, you can’t help but listen.

Compared to ‘Asera’, the rest are merely bad. Take Deutsche Bank’s ‘Global Technology’ a track which reeks of expensive folly. It starts with a Dire Straits wash of synthesiser with some tinny guitar dicking around in the background before sliding into a soap opera signature tune type thing. The male/female duo, who can certainly hold a tune, do their best to drag a little syrup from a tuneless verse and a hookless chorus but they fail every time. As the whole thing rolls to its overblown final chorus, every trick in the book is dragged out to try and give the impression that it’s anything other than a sow’s ear: there’s a brass section, a key change and quadruple-tracked vocals…

Of course there’s an ineffable pathos in all this. You can’t help thinking of the starry-eyed kid journeying from the American mid-west to Hollywood to become a big star and ending up in porn movies. No kid, you would hope, wakes up one morning and decides that all they want from life is a shot at singing for an investment bank.

KPMG’s ‘Our Vision of Global Strategy’ is another effort that sucked up a few quid before somebody copped on and began the cover up. Awful, certainly, but a well crafted awful. As proof of the particular humourlessness of the company itself, they recently instructed Chris Raettig to remove the hyperlink to KPMG.com on the site since “we have been unable to locate records that correspond with an agreement that permits the linking of our two web sites.”

Chances are however that despite their denial, the song will live on for years, deep in the rich seams of irony that spread to every corner of the web. Right now, it’s in its second week at number one in Raetigg’s Top 20 Site with over 14,000 downloads.