The latest episode of Twenty Thousand Hertz, the podcast about the world's most recognizable and interesting sounds unravels the wild saga behind one of the best-known melodies in the world: the McDonald's "I'm Lovin' It" jingle.
Nearly two decades since its launch, the phrase "ba da ba ba ba" remains the fast food empire's longest running, most successful marketing campaign of all time, a pop cultural staple ingrained in our collective consciousness.
But as host Dallas Taylor reveals in the episode , the tumultuous months it took to finally arrive at those five iconic notes required billions of listeners, 3,700 different audio mixes, celebrity controversy and so much more you'll have to hear
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| Art by George Butler |
Through interviews with the original "I'm Lovin' It" creators, Tom Batoy and Franco Tortora, Dallas Taylor begins the story from the very beginning. In the early 2000s McDonald's stock price hit a seven-year low, so the company hosted an international idea contest in search of a solution.
The competition led to an impromptu melody that Batoy and Tortora recorded after a long night and lots of wine...and then the real work started. As McDonald's first-ever worldwide ad idea, Batoy and Tortora needed to make it fit every musical style and context imaginable, so it would resonate with customers around the globe.
Alongside record executive/businessman Steve Stoute, they helped turn the jingle into a four-minute single - first a hip-hop track featuring an unnamed star, but ultimately a pop hit from Justin Timberlake and The Neptunes.
The song was mysteriously "leaked" months before the ads started rolling out in 2003, and now "I'm Lovin' It" has endured across multiple generations, including renditions featuring Pusha T, Destiny's Child, Donkey from Shrek and the Despicable Me minions, meals for Travis Scott, J Balvin and more.
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