25 years ago Kate Bush did Fruitopia commercials

25 years ago, one of the least likely events in the history of music happened.

Kate Bush, someone generally acknowledged as one of the exemplars of artistic integrity and independence, created the music for a a series of commercials for Fruitopia, a brand of fruit-flavored drink from Coca-Cola, intended to compete with Snapple.

Two people from the advertising agency Chait/Day, creative director Marty Cooke and executive producer Andrew Chinich, had the idea of kaleidoscopic images of fruit. They made a rough version called an animatic and put various pieces of music to it. Kate's music seemed to click.

They contacted Kate and she agreed to create 10 short pieces of music in a wide variety of styles. The commercials were created at a top studio Click3X, directed by Greg Ramsey of Farenheit Films. It was animated using Softimage and finished in Flame.

Interestingly, Kate's music was not used in the UK versions of the ads which had music by the Cocteau Twins.

Raspberry Psychic Lemonade

 

The most recent episode of the Kate Bush News podcast is a special on the commercials.

Podcast - Kate Bush News

 

Pink Lemonade Euphoria

 

Lemonade Love and Hope



(This one has the Shelia Chandra like "drum talk")

 

Cranberry Lemonade Vision

 

Citrus Consciousness

 

Fighting Fruit



(This music has always reminded me of Ryuichi Sakamoto, so a Japanese version of the commercial seems right.)

 

I can't find all of them in a version that will allow embedding.

 

By the way, if anyone involved in the creation of these ads has a top quality copy of them they could share with me - DigiBeta, BetaCam SP or whatever, I'd love to have it.

From Graeme Thomson's excellent Kate biography Under The Ivy:

Kate accepted a commission to write several brief pieces of music to accompany the $30m US TV ad campaign for the launch of Coca-Cola’s new fruit drink Fruitopia…. It seemed an incongruous move. Bush had consistently turned down advances of this nature….

The motivation for her changing tack wasn’t clear but was probably varied: far from the commercial ingenue she sometimes appears, certainly the financial rewards would have been extremely significant; perhaps she liked the tone of the ads, which were relatively innovative and visually stimulating and over which she was given complete artistic control. She may also have recognized an opportunity to cast the net of her music a little wider, while also finding a home for all the melodic waifs and rhythmic strays that had never quite found a home in her “proper” songs. ... [each melody hinted] at a longer piece, several reminiscent of the kind of odd, rhythmic, electronic pop she was making around the time of The Dreaming.
​

Also, Kate's own video for Eat The Music is awash in a sea of fruit.

 

I really have no comment, but @Chris DeVoe looked like he was getting lonely, so I thought I should post!

 

These commercials surely make these drinks look like they already came pre-spiked!

 

...and not with alcohol!

 

On one hand, my mind is blown, simply because she is definitely a cult act in the US, and these didn’t even run with her music in the UK. I don’t remember these ads, but they fall right in line with a lot of the “alternative” styled media of the time. This might have been the most exposure anyone in the States (unwittingly) had to the work of Kate Bush.

On the other hand, Microsoft had Brian Eno working on the Windows 95 sound right around the same time - would wager that the most anyone knew of him (in the pre-Internet mainstream anyway) was as one of U2’s producers.

Both now indisputable legends of pop (and pop art), even if they’re still kind of cult acts to most.

 

Was it even known at the time that these were her?

 

“And to cool off, nothing beats Fruitopia! The iced tea brewed by hippies but distributed by a heartless, multi-national corporation!”

 

I remember Fruitopia! I liked it.

 

I was a keen KB fan back then as a lot were ,especially here in the UK , I had no idea she was doing advertising work . In fact this is the first I've heard about it . They do sound nice pieces though.

 

The three I have checked out are all in the same key.

Cool anyway!

 

I think we need a box set...

 

Don’t you mean a “juice” box set?

 

Liz did it better

 

We definitely knew on the Kate Usenet newsgroup rec.music.gaffa and it's companion mailing list Lovehounds.

 

Well, that's it - Kate and I are so done!