Ad: I'm Ready by Sam Smith with Demi Lovato
Targeted: No
I've cheated a little today and picked an ad from the Spotify desktop app and not my phone, since I was sitting at my laptop listening to Spotify anyway (I'm listening to this album that last.fm recommended to me - it's not bad).
The first ad I got today was a message from Openreach, reminding me that their engineers are doing essential work to keep us connected during the lockdown. It makes me sad that they've had to start putting these ads out - I work for a telecoms provider so my job is reliant on Openreach continuing to provide their services, and the conspiracy theory about 5G causing the current virus outbreak has been problematic for them. Despite the fact that 5G is the mobile data network and not part of the Openreach telecoms network (not to mention that it hasn't caused the pandemic!), there have been reports of telephone poles being damaged and Openreach engineers being attacked while they work. I wish people would think seriously and at the very least, leave the engineers alone - after all, what they do is reconnect people's phones and broadband so that they can work from home or call 999 if they fall ill, which are services that are particularly critical at the moment. Anyway, this ad is informational and not trying to sell me anything, so lets move on
The second ad in this break was a musical one, recommending 'I'm Ready', the new single by Sam Smith and Demi Lovato. I'm not really a fan of either of these singers. I couldn't stand Sam Smith's big hit 'Stay With Me' which was ubiquitous a few years ago, although I didn't mind 'Dancing With A Stranger' which came out last summer. I liked Demi Lovato in Camp Rock when I was a teen but find the media narrative about her addiction and personal life really irritating. However, the clip in the ad sounded alright, so I added the song to my queue.
Looking at the artwork, it seems likely that the pair were intending this song to be a big hit in time for the Olympics this summer, which of course have been pushed back a year. It's an uplifting song with the pair each taking a verse and they sound pretty good together, but this is one of those songs that could be performed just as well by one artist and not as a duet. In fact, this feels like a team-up of two moderately successful singers in order to procure as many streams as possible from a combination of both artists' fans. The song itself is fine and the chorus in particular is strong and will be stuck in my head for a while - it's the sort of modern pop song that BBC Radio 2 will play a lot and my mum might end up knowing. In that respect it sounds like a lot of current pop music, at least the family-friendly variety; the intro hints at something a bit more edgy but it quickly becomes the sort of safe song you could sing in the car with little kids.
Overall I think 'I'm Ready' is fine and will probably be all over the radio for the next couple of months but I don't see it occupying 'song of the summer' territory (I wonder what will be the song of the summer when we have to spend it indoors...). I'm not saving it to my Spotify Liked Songs list but I think I can put up with hearing it a few more times before it gets annoying.
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