Native Music on Composing IKEA’s Cringeworthy Earworm

This year, IKEA chose violence. 

In the era of endless scrolling, the brand’s recent campaign from Mother and director Eros V went head-to-head with streaming platforms who see sleep as their biggest competitor. Engineered to keep you hooked, lit up by their blue glare all night, they’ve been cashing in on the attention economy; but IKEA is using its comfiest mattresses to fight back – physically.

The series of films see influencers from thirst trappers to hustle bros conducting their content creation business as usual… until a hefty IKEA mattress swoops in to send them flying, banished to a streamer-shaped hole in the wall. 

The one that’s really stuck in our heads (after all, it’s designed to) centres around a TikTok dancer, busting her trending moves to a cringeworthy but unfortunately catchy tune. The culprits behind the track? Native Music.

It’s the epitome of the modern pop, social media snippet sound, paired with unsettling lyrics from Mother like ‘never, never sleep, scroll til the end of time’. Ominous.

To find out how Native Music and Mother created an earworm able to embed itself in under 10 seconds, LBB’s Zara Naseer spoke to Fred Ashworth, head of production at Native Music and the composer of the track.

LBB> What was your brief from Mother and how did you initially respond?

Fred> The team at Mother had a really solid vision of how they wanted everything to look and sound, and had put together a lovely clear brief for us. The overall idea being a young TikTok influencer is dancing and miming along to the latest viral hit, before a nearby IKEA mattress restores peace by throwing her through a wall. So our task was to create the track that she would be singing along to. The agency were keen for everything to feel authentic, so it was important the track sounded like a genuine current release.

It’s such a funny concept, and I was keen to lean into the humour of it by creating something as catchy and cringeworthy as possible, but without taking it so far that it feels like an obvious parody.

LBB> Where did you find inspiration for the track?

Fred> I probably spent more time watching TikTok dance videos than I care to admit, which was enlightening to say the least. But it definitely helped set the tone. A lot of modern pop records have quite dry, punchy drums and lo-fi, washed-out keys – often playing slightly jazz influenced progressions. So that was something I was keen to emulate. I also wanted to give the track a bit of a grating and almost uneasy or ominous feeling, to tie in with the idea of staying up all night, doomscrolling. Being able to get a little jazzy in the chords would certainly help with that too.

LBB> How closely did you collaborate with Mother in its creation?

Fred> The agency wrote the lyrics, which were perfect right off the bat so didn’t need any tweaking. Then they were great in trusting us to come up with the track. We presented a selection of options and they selected their favourite with no changes needed – so was a dream process! 

LBB> We only get to hear a snippet of the song in the ad – did you compose a full version?

Fred> Not full length, but we did do a longer version than what’s heard on the ad. That gave the team a bit of flexibility on the shoot and in the edit, to see which section worked best on screen and got the idea across in the short timeframe available. 

LBB> How did you ensure the snippet would quickly communicate that modern pop sound and feel like a genuine record? What kinds of instruments were used?

Fred> Time was a big constraint from the get-go, and we always knew there would only be a few seconds to play with. So firstly, choosing the right tempo was important to make sure we could squeeze enough of the lyrics in before the track cuts out. No time for long gaps or held notes, it all needed to be right there and to the point, straight away. 

The production was also key to making the whole thing feel genuine, so we spent a lot of time, particularly on the vocals, layering things up and making sure everything was perfectly polished and pristine. We used an extremely ubiquitous vocal chain for this style of music – going through a Neve 1073 preamp, into some CL1B compression, to give us ‘that’ vocal sound. Vocal arrangement is also a big part of that, so the lead vocals were triple tracked and panned, plus octave up and octave down layers, harmony tracks, and also whisper tracks very subtly blended in. All heavily processed to sit tightly together as a cohesive vocal. 

LBB> What were you looking for in a singer to perform the song? Who did you end up choosing, and how did they fulfil those needs?

Fred> We knew the vocal style we wanted to achieve, so spent some time listening to lots of different options. In the end we enlisted the very talented Karina Byrne, who has the perfect tone for this. Upfront and present, but with a lovely laid-back delivery. She did a fantastic job and made my life comping takes and mixing everything very easy. 

LBB> What was the most challenging aspect of bringing this track to life? How did you overcome it?

Fred> The biggest challenge was undoubtedly the short timeframe we had to play with. We needed to set the tone of the film, nail the style and era, be instantly catchy, and get the message of the lyrics across all in the space of about six seconds. Also pushing the intentionally annoying angle without being overtly silly was a delicate balance, but when we heard the track made the client cringe and had been firmly stuck in everybody’s heads, we knew it was a job well done!