Music Monday: A Hidden Gem Discovered in a Geico Commercial

ads, Blogging, business, humor, lessons learned, music 3 Minutes

As I have written many times before, unlike most people, I am a fan of commercials. I love the skill that is required to put together a meaningful message in 30-60 seconds.

And sometimes you get lucky, like I did this week when I dug a little bit into the background of a recent Geico commercial. The YouTube version of the commercial goes for 53 seconds, but the actual commercial is only the first 30 seconds:

Like most Geico commercials, there’s a good dose of humor, but this one also had some great singing.

I did not know how Lisa Loeb was, so I decided to see if she had music videos on YouTube, and I discovered that she has her own channel, with nearly 60,000 subscribers and more than 30 million views. As I scrolled through the videos, I found one titled “Stay (I Missed You)” from 10 years ago that had over 18 million views! I was not familiar with the song, so I listened to it and it was wonderful.

As I read further, I discovered that the song is from the film Reality Bites, and played during the closing credits. The song ultimately went on to become a number one hit on the American charts. When her song hit number one, Loeb earned the distinction of being the first artist to top the Hot 100 before being signed to any record label.

Right after I watched the video for the song on YouTube, YouTube automatically started playing a video of when she sang the song on the David Letterman show with her band, Nine Stories. It was her first live TV appearance.

After watching the video and watching the commercial again, I finally got her reference to “Stay” at the end of the commercial.

I then went on to read about her on Wikipedia, and I became even more impressed. Lisa is a true polymath, a woman of multiple talents.

Here are some excerpts from her Wikipedia bio:

  • Lisa Loeb is an American singer-songwriter and actress. She started her career with the number 1 hit song “Stay (I Missed You)” from the film Reality Bites, the first number 1 single for an artist without a recording contract. Her studio albums include two back-to-back albums that were certified gold; these were Tails and Firecracker.
  • Loeb’s film, television, and voice-over work includes guest-starring roles in the season finale of Gossip Girl, and two episodes, including the series finale, of Netflix’s Fuller House. She has also acted in such films as House on Haunted Hill, Fright Night, Hot Tub Time Machine 2, and Helicopter Mom.
  • Loeb has released children’s CDs and books such as Catch the Moon, Lisa Loeb’s Silly Sing-Along: The Disappointing Pancake and Other Zany Songs, and Songs for Movin’ and Shakin’, Nursery Rhyme Parade! is her album and long-form video of over 30 children’s favorites. In 2016, she released her children’s CD Feel What U Feel, which won Best Children’s Album at the 60th Annual Grammy Awards.
  • She co-wrote the lyrics and co-composed the music to Camp Kappawanna, a family musical that was premiered in New York in March 2015 by the Atlantic Theater Company.
  • In 2010, she founded the Lisa Loeb Eyewear Collection, which is based on her own designs.
  • She created The Camp Lisa Foundation, a non-profit organization that sends under-served children to camp. It is funded by Loeb’s own organic and fair trade coffee, Wake Up! Brew. She was honored as the 2015 Camp Champion by the American Camp Association (ACA).
  • She constructed a crossword puzzle with Doug Peterson for The New York Times, which was published on June 6, 2017.

So to summarize, she is a singer-songwriter, an actress, children’s author, composed a play, started her own eyewear company, her own coffee company, and a Foundation to send underserved kids to camp.

And now she can add “star of a Geico commercial” (given my recent foray into editing Wikipedia pages, I was tempted to add her Geico commercial to her Wikipedia bio. I will give it another week…)

So who would have thought that a Geico commercial would have led to discovering such a multi-talented, successful, and generous individual. I look forward to listening to more of her songs.

 

Published by Jim Borden

A 60-something guy trying to figure out the world, and his place in it. Happily married for 40-plus years, three wonderful sons. Accounting teacher, fitness enthusiast, blogger, reader.

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55 thoughts on “Music Monday: A Hidden Gem Discovered in a Geico Commercial”

  1. cool, what an accomplished person she is. like you, i am a fan of commercials as well. i consider them to be mini-movies. p.s. i am most impressed by her nyt puzzle construction, a dream of mine

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    1. it is amazing the variety of her skills and interests. And I gree with you about commercials are like mini-movies, with the added pressure of trying to sell something. I’ll keep my out for the NYT puzzle from you…

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  5. The Geico commercials are brilliant. I admire the comedy and ingenuity that goes into making them. I have enjoyed Lisa Loeb’s music for quite some time and understood the joke the first time I saw the commercial. Usually, I’m the one who thinks, “I know I’m supposed to know who this is…”

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    1. the Geico commercials are almost always the best out there. And from reading the various comments, it seems like I must have been living under a rock in the mid-90s not to have heard of her. But I guess better late than never…

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  7. She does sure have a lot of accomplishments! My daughter and I watched all the seasons of Gossip Girl, I must confess. LOL!
    Can’t deny that Geico does have funny commercials! Unlike some that totally make me roll my eyes and think, really, you all are getting paid for a commercial like this??

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    1. she is quite impressive.

      I don’t think I have seen an episode of Gossip Girls, but I did enjoy the Gilmore Girls 🙂

      and when I see those bad commercials, I wonder how it got past probably layers of approval…

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      1. Oh yes Gilmore Girls is very good! You probably couldn’t handle Gossip Girls, my husband and son would groan when they would walk in the room. LOL!

        Thinking that some people were probably drinking when they gave their approval on some commercials!

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  11. I was privy to Lisa’s early success in music, but lost track of her after her music no longer charted. It was wonderful to learn all the great works she has been up to. Well researched and written, Mr. Q!

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  14. Jim, very surprised that someone who follows music as much as you do had not heard of Lisa Loeb. She was really big! BTW, she headlined the Haverford Music Fest in 2016 and was great.

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    1. It seems like most commenters have heard of her; I must have been a fog in the mid-90s… I wish I had known about her back in 2016; it would have been wonderful to see her at such a venue…

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  17. First, re this commercial and artist, for some reason I’ve always equated Lisa Loeb with the character of Lisa Loopner. The latter was created by Gilda Radner for The Nerds sketches performed by Gilda and Bill Murray on Saturday Night Live way back in the 1970s. In fact, I thought the fabulous Gilda had created the nerdy Lisa based on the real life Loeb. When I checked the date of Radner’s passing, though, I discovered that this confluence would have been impossible. If you’re not familiar with this character you can look her up and see if you agree with me about the similarity.

    Second, re the song. Wikipedia notes that the film Reality Bites has in the years since its initial release achieved cult status and has been singled out as one of the films that captured the zeitgeist of the early 1990s grunge scene among young adults, while also bringing attention to various issues that plagued young Americans at the time. I was the mom of two toddlers when the film was released so I didn’t see it then. Furthermore, based on this info, I have no interest in ever seeing it! I mean, it’s pretty dated and, being a baby boomer myself, I probably would not get any of the Gen X references for which I believe it may be both loved and reviled.

    Third, the geico commercials are much better than most of the other insurance company commercials. Not only that, but any sponsor of Jeopardy, which geico is, is a cut above the ordinary in my book.

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