Sing along with the Kiwi jingle man

The brain behind many popular ad jingles, music producer Mikey McCleary, has now created 10 songs that are an extended version of his jingles for the album, TV Dinners

Mikey McCleary stands apart from the current set of music producers in the industry not just because he is a New Zealander living in Mumbai composing for Bollywood but because of his way of re-looking at film music.

Music producer Mikey McCleary. Pic/Atul Kamble

McCleary is popularly known for his Bartender series of albums where he gives a jazzy twist to old Bollywood songs (think Khoya Khoya Chand from the movie Shaitaan) and is also the music producer for Lucky Ali’s albums. What people outside the industry would not know about him is his genius behind popular ad jingles for brands such as Vodafone (Little Things You Do), Durex (Do The Rex) and Levi’s (Chase Every Dream).

“A lot of people would ask — who is the artiste behind this jingle? Is it a part of a whole song? That’s when I decided to do the extended versions and picked on jingles that didn’t have any (ad) jargon and could work as songs on their own. I worked on the compositions and now the songs feel complete,” he explains. Ten such songs will comprise his new album, titled TV Dinners, six of which also feature vocals by McCleary.

The first video for the song that has been released is for Chase Every Dream and features people from different fields be it actors Ranveer Singh, Shraddha Kapoor and Kalki Koechlin or hair stylist Sapna Bhavnani. “Everyone has a different dream, and I wanted to show different faces of diversity for the video,” says Mccleary, who has also directed the video.

McCleary’s recent projects include that as music producer for two songs for the movie Kuku Mathur ki Jhand Ho Gai, and he is also working on three films by Bijoy Nambiar and Rohan Sippy’s Sonali Cable for which he has produced a Ganpati song sung by musician Vishal Dadlani. Ask him to pick a favourite and he says, “I like the songs where I have both written the lyrics and composed the tune for. Among jingles, the song featuring Katrina Kaif for a watch ad is one of my favourites.”

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