Stuck on Band-Aids

Posted by Bob on February 17, 2006

In Reply to: Stuck on Band-Aids posted by Smokey Stover on February 16, 2006

: : : : : : : : I have a coworker who's originally from Romania, and she's trying to increase her vocabulary and exposure to American / English words and phrases. I've explained ti to her as best I can. but can someone give me a decent definition of "stuck on you"? Everything I see on the web points me to Lionel Richie.

: : : : : : : The phrase means that you are attached to someone emotionally, possibly in love with that person.
: : : : : : : Happy Valentine's Day.

: : : : : : As sung by Elvis:

: : : : : : ...I'm gonna stick like glue,
: : : : : : Stick because I'm
: : : : : : Stuck on you...

: : : : : Not that a dyed in the wool rocker like me would know...but "Stuck on you" was a bigger hit for Lionel Ritchie...or so I've been told by the sort of person that would listen to anything other than METAL.

: : : : : WH

: : : : Somehow I've got the old Band-Aid jingle stuck in my head now. "I am stuck on Band-Aid/cause Band-Aid's stuck on me", sung off-key by what I assume were adults voicing-over footage of cavorting children. I hope it goes away soon.

: : : It's been a while since I've seen (and heard) that commercial, but my memory is of children's voices. The way you can tell? No vibrato, clear tonal quality. Men and women trained in singing use "cultured" voices, with vibrato and a somewhat covered tone. How about men and women NOT trained in music? Try listening to the Once More with Feeling episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, also called Buffy, the Musical. Believe me, you can hear adults not trained in music singing away, along with some adults trained in music, most notably the man playing the Devil. SS

: : Impressive sums of money are earned by those few people who can convincingly speak and sing as children in voice-over work. That is to say, some gifted people can sound like children, but with the adult abilty to follow directions and endure take 38. (It's another one of those "easy" jobs that everybody believes they could do, but can't.)

: Oh, Bob, you can be so cruel! How can I ever again respond warmly to the sound of children's voices in a commercial. I hope you're not going to tell me that that girl who says, "Thanks, Mom," for treating her wart is just lip-synching. SS

Not likely; adults will sub on radio and off-camera. But when you're talking about those little creatures who can actually perform on camera, the field narrows considerably, and the terrain gets a little weird. The kids are professional, the stage mothers are hard-edged and/or desperate, and the casting process has enough anxiety to make the walls tremble. I was casting a tv commercial in Los Angeles that required 4 kids, all with speaking parts. This meant, as the locals advised me, hire 6, because at least one would freak out or freeze up when the cameras rolled, and you had to have a sub right at hand. (They were correct, as it turned out.) On the opposite end of the bell curve was a little moppet who auditioned: about 6 years old, who looked familiar. I asked her if she got much work, and she told me she had appeared in 180 television commercials and/or episodes of tv shows.