Entertainment
Kids Today Will Never Understand Waking Up To This Commercial At 2 AM
By Jonathan Klotz
| Updated
Everyone who lived through the 90s had the same experience. You were watching Rhonda Shear’s Up All Night movie, or playing Final Fantasy 7, and you fell asleep on the couch clutching the remote. You groggily wake up around 2 AM, and there it is on the TV, the commercial that means you’ve made a terrible mistake: Pure Moods. Wondering where you are while the opening of Enigma’s “Return to Innocence,” or Enya’s “Orinoco Flow” (you know it as “Sail Away Sail, Away Sail Away”) is blasting you for 30 seconds was a rite of passage. Kids today don’t know what those direct order CD commercials were like, and they’re missing out on the majesty of Pure Moods.
A New Age Wake Up Call
Back in the day, before streaming music, companies would put together oddball compilation CDs and sell them directly via a phone number you could call. The commercials all followed the same formula. A scrolling list of tracks on the album with the one currently playing highlighted in yellow as it goes by, and a clip from a music video or, in the case of Pure Moods, a relaxing scene straight out of the videos dentists used to have playing in their office. Monsters of Rock, Classical Thunder, Greatest Love Ballads, all of them followed the same playbook.
Pure Moods originally hit the airwaves in 1994 and turned New Age music into an overnight success. Airing a commercial when ad rates were the absolute cheapest possible meant saving a ton of money, and they went directly to a sleepy, groggy, susceptible audience that heard Vengelis’ “Chariots of Fire” and thought, “This is pure fire.” The re-release in 1997, with an updated track listing that included “The X-Files Theme (DADO Paranormal Activity Remix)” was even more successful. It’s creepy, but cool and memorable, and besides, in 1997, who didn’t love The X-Files?
If you were already awake when the Pure Moods commercial hit, it was the sign to go to bed. Back in the 90s, television had an end. Stations didn’t run content 24/7, usually, after the final late night show signed off there would be one or two infomercials, or a local access show from the affiliate that aired, or if you were lucky enough to be in Philadelphia or New York, ECW Hardcore Television. After that, the station would go dark and all you’d see was static on the TV until it started up again around 6 or 7 AM. Pure Moods airing was a sign.
America’s Brief Love Affair With Direct Order CDs
The success of the first two volumes of Pure Moods lead to music company Virgin releasing over a dozen other Moods compilations, including Cinema Moods, Romantic Moods, and the two surprise breakout hits, Gregorian Moods and Celtic Moods. For a brief period of time, America was obsessed with Gregorian monk chanting, and then River Dance, and you know, there’s really no explanation for either other than the same reason every kid wanted Crossfire, those commercials were very effective.
Streaming has changed the television landscape and now, you don’t get ridiculous direct mail CD commercials. You can fire up Spotify. YouTube, or Apple Music and find microtargeted AI playlists for everything from “Men Who Move In Silence” with cover art ripped from Peaky Blinders or “Music To Heal Your Heart After You’re Left On Read” featuring a Polynesian beach. The magic of catching snippets of songs that burrow their way into your head and convince you to try out a whole new genre of music is long gone. I say that as someone who will publicly confess owned Pure Moods, Classical Thunder, and Monsters of Rock. Laugh all you want over the New Age soundtrack of the 90s, but that album slapped.