A one-hit wonder is the musical equivalent of capturing lightning in a bottle. While the initial success might feel effortless, recreating that success can turn out to be impossible. Moreover, there is no definitive formula for what will (or won’t) make a hit single. For example, in the case of the 1971 one-hit wonder, “I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing (In Perfect Harmony)”, the secret hit-making ingredient was soda.
Before there was “I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing”, there was “Buy The World A Coke”. The latter song was in a Coca-Cola commercial by New York City ad agency McCann Erickson. The ad featured a group of young people on a picturesque hillside, singing together. It was an attention-grabbing campaign with an earworm melody that got stuck in the heads of Americans nationwide.
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In fact, the public reception of the Coca-Cola jingle was so positive that the original songwriters, Roger Cook and Roger Greenaway, rewrote the song without references to the soda and released it as a pop song. Amazingly, it worked.
This One-Hit Wonder Had Coca-Cola to Thank for Its Success
It’s not often that a commercial jingle can translate to the pop world. Sure, the J.G. Wentworth opera song is catchy. So was the Education Connection jingle, circa the late 2000s. But it’s hard to imagine either song, no matter how infectious, breaking into the Top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100. However, in 1971, the Coca-Cola jingle did just that.
The vocalists behind “Buy The World A Coke” (later “I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing”) were The Hillside Singers. The ensemble was less than one year old, having only been formed because the British folk group McCann Erickson wanted to do the jingle, The New Seekers, were unavailable. The Hillside Singers performed both the commercial jingle and a subsequent version of the song with new lyrics. Their rendition hit No. 13 on the Hot 100, which would become the group’s only successful pop single.
Interestingly, The New Seekers also ended up releasing a version of the song, although they hadn’t been able to record the ad jingle. The British folk group’s version of “I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing” hit No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the charts in the U.K.
The Hillside Singers just barely broke into the Hot 100 the following year with “Move Closer To Your World”, eking into the chart at No. 100. After that, the group fizzled out, leaving behind a one-hit wonder legacy sponsored by Coca-Cola.
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