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Prior to the 1970s, music in television advertisements was generally limited to jingles and incidental music; on some occasions lyrics to a popular song would be changed to create a theme song or a jingle for a particular product.

An example of this is found on the recent popular Gocompare.com advert that utilises "Over There", the 1917 song popular with United States soldiers in both World Wars and written by George M. Cohan during World War I.

In 1971 the converse occurred when a song written for a Coca-Cola advertisement was re-recorded as the pop single "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony)" by the New Seekers, and became a hit. Additionally songwriter Paul Williams composed a piece for a Crocker Bank commercial which he lengthened and The Carpenters recorded as "We've Only Just Begun".

Some pop and rock songs were re-recorded by cover bands for use in advertisements, but the cost of licensing original recordings for this purpose remained prohibitive in certain countries (including the U.S.) until the late 1980s.