Gabrielle Aplin: The Power of a Christmas John Lewis advert?
Will this year's cover of "The Power of Love" bring chart success for its singer?
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Your support makes all the difference.Last year John Lewis’s 30-second Christmas advert featuring a little boy jiggling his legs in frustration, staring out of the window and harrumphing in the agony of anticipation for his present (wait for it!) to his parents to be given was as successful a commercial for the department store as for the music it included.
Who could forget the melancholic strains of Slow Moving Millie’s cover of The Smiths' “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want” that made even the hardest hearts melt?
It rocketed the 29-year-old singer, real name Amelia Warner, from obscurity to a peak of 31 in the UK Singles Charts and elicited 3 million YouTube hits. Slow Moving Millie’s success followed the boost in sales for Ellie Goulding when her cover of Elton John’s “Your Song” featured in John Lewis’ 2010 Christmas commercial, subsequently reaching number two in the charts.
So marked has the interest in John Lewis’ music choices been that the department store released an album Reworked in November 2011 featuring all the songs used in its television ad campaigns.
And today the musician behind this year’s John Lewis advert was named as Gabrielle Aplin ahead of the launch of tomorrow's 2012 Christmas campaign.
The singer from Bath, 20, has recorded a “haunting” reworking of Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s “The Power of Love” which will be released tomorrow as a single in conjunction with the ad.
Having previously gained attention with cover songs that she published on YouTube, Aplin had been about to release her debut single with a record label “Please Don’t Say You Love Me”, but has postponed it to February “so that the single can get the attention it deserves” .
“For those of you who know me you’ll know that I’m a massive fan of the adverts. I started crying in Tesco when I found out [I had been chosen]. It was a big deal.”
The single, which is already being tipped for chart success, was co-produced by David Kosten (Bat For Lashes, Everything Everything) and Mike Spencer (Emeli Sande, Alex Clare) and is coming out coincidentally 28 years to the day since “The Power of Love” was originally released.
Following a series of 10-second “teasers” this year's John Lewis commercial, a 90-second epic called The Journey, will be premiered at 9.10pm (during Derren Brown's Apocalypse) on Channel 4 tomorrow 9 November.
"The Power Of Love" video will be on on Vevo from 9am tomorrow and will be available to buy at (yes, you guessed it) John Lewis and via download.
Will this year’s John Lewis ad dictate further chart success? Leave your comments below.
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