BETC Releases Happy Song for C&G baby club

BETC's ECD Rosie Bardales (L) and senior art director Ciara O’Meara talk to shots about creating the song and why it was the appropriate way to promote the brand. Find out more about the Sound of Happy here.

How did the idea for the Happy Song come about?

Rosie Bardales (RB): This is the first work for C&G baby club so it was quite important for us to do something that was both stand-out and innovative, but also shareable. We wanted to be able to give as many parents and families a wonderful tool of joy and happiness, which is where the idea for a song came from. But I absolutely knew that we needed to find the right collaborators that had an absolute genuine interest in what we were trying to do to make it possible. 

And what was the selection process for bringing the psychologists and Imogen Heap on board?

RB: We knew that this project required experts in psychology and science, as well as someone to write the song and help co-create it. We started researching and that’s how we found each other.

What was the inspiration for the music video (above)?

Ciara O’Meara: Seven families took the song home for a week after it was completely finished and we let them have fun with it on their GoPros and iPhones. That experiment was a chance to see how they would use the song in the real world and whether there would be any differences from what we’d experienced in the testing room. We received hours of footage and wanted to make a storyline out that related to the lyrics – ‘up in the sky’; ‘whee down the slide’. We wanted parents to know that the song can be a positive change to their daily lives, which is what C&G baby club set out to do. 

RB: Something that Imogen made sure to reference in the lyrics was the challenges of being home alone with a young baby – particularly with the line, 'You oo oo little monkey who’s staying up late.'

Tell me a bit about the production process – how long was it?

RB: We’ve been working on the project for about a year and brought on the psychologists and Imogen about six months ago. I think what kept everyone on the rails was the fact that we stuck to the concept of happiness; that was super important to us. We wanted the song to be as pure as possible so that it was really true to what we were setting out to do.

And Golsmiths psychcologists Caspar Addyman (L) and Lauren Stewart also weigh in on the act of bringing the song to life and talk to shots about some of the difficulties they experienced in the intense six-month production process.

How did you approach working on the Happy Song?

Lauren Stewart (LS): The motivation for this was to create an alternative to a nursery rhyme; something a bit more contemporary. This tune bears repeated listening; it's [hopefully] not something that parents will go crazy at but that they can sing along to. The parent’s voice is really salient and is actually really important to the whole experience because when babies are learning how to map what they hear onto what they do, they mostly focus on the shape of the mouth when they’re in the developmental stage. We're looking at the relationship between musical environments at home and the later development of language milestones. We think musical experiences at home can teach babies about the sounds of speech through the song because it’s highly engaging, involves focusing on the mouth and joining in.

Caspar Addyman (CA): We know that parents often focus on things that are going wrong when actually there are so many lovely little moments throughout the day, but it can be easy not to focus on the happy stuff. It's exhausting – but this song will hopefully remind parents that that smile is what makes it all worthwhile.

What was the casting process like?

LS: It was quite open; we definitely didn’t want this song to be something that you needed musical sophistication to enjoy. Most of the parents came from C&G baby club although a few also come from Goldsmiths, so their backgrounds could be anything.

How did you test which sounds were most effective for use?

CA : We went through a few different stages, initially testing out some melodies and finding out which one worked best on the children. From there, we found one to build the song around. We knew we wanted it to have lots of interactive elements – like the ‘Up in the sky’ lyrics; Imogen added them in so parents could lift them up. All the babies reacted differently; some of them were dancing, while for others, it took a bit of time. But by the fourth listen, they were all really into it. 

LS: Which is just how adults experience music; the more we listen to spmething, the more we like it, because our brains learn to anticipate what's coming next. And babies probably need that even more because they're more of a blank slate musically. The difference in reactions depends on a child’s age too. All the babies were between six months and two years old so their physical capabilities were quite different. But we generally assessed them on laughter, smiling and general gawping – which is actually a sign of positive engagement… at least in babies.

What were the biggest challenges in creating the song?

LS: A lot of the sounds contributed by the parents included whole experiences – where they might have been tactile as well as sound-led, like blowing a raspberry on a child’s belly. It was quite an iterative organic process – it took just as much of Imogen's song writing expertise as our background psychological knowledge. We offered some guidance to Imogen based on what we knew engaged young listeners; like elements of surprise, anticipation, pauses in the music and the use of silence which they find really engaging. She took a lot of what we told her on-board; we kept saying that less is more. She’s usually uses a lot of synth sounds and overlays them, which can sound very rich. So we made sure she stripped some of that layering back because we didn’t want it to obscure the melody. And we also had to make sure there was enough of a balance between repetition and variation to keep the babies (and parents) engaged.