Mermaid
composed by Francois-Paul Aïche and H. Scott Salinas

The Blue Sky Project: A Clorox Charity Collection is a charity music project sponsored by Clorox to benefit Music In Schools Today (“MuST”), a charity that supports music programs in public schools around the Bay Area. While it’s not unusual for companies to receive letters about their advertising, sometime around 2005, Clorox began receiving an unusual number of letters and emails specifically about the music in several of their commercials. People loved the music, wanted to know where it came from and where they could get it. This was the birth of The Blue Sky Project. While some of the music included on this CD was existing music from known artists, much of it was created specifically for the commercials. As such, it had to be extended from 30-second commercial-length pieces to full, album-length tracks. Most of the songs on this album are available for the first time. The tracks “Mermaid” and “Pirates” were composed by H. Scott Salinas and Francois-Paul Aïche through Amber Music. Originally based in London, Amber Music now has offices in New York and Los Angeles. They are one of the preeminent music houses working in advertising today. Both songs helped bring to life the adventurous imaginations of children in Clorox commercials for their line of bathroom products. “Lion’s Mane” is the opening track from Iron & Wine’s 2002 release, The Creek Drank The Cradle. It evokes the innocence of youth and was used in a Clorox Disinfectant Wipes commercial called “Touch Me,” in which dirty surfaces call out to the eager hands of young children. “Smooth Day” was originally composed for a television spot for Clorox’s Brita brand water filters in which people literally float through their days. The song was composed by Leonard Ian Dalsemer & Jason Paul Bonilla, also known as The Elements, a group that worked through Amber Music. “Smile” was written by Rich Wiley, a composer at Singing Serpent, an extremely versatile and innovative music company in New York and San Diego. The song accompanied an emotional television commercial for Clorox disinfectant wipes, in which a father shares a spontaneous dance with his young daughter in the kitchen. “And Time Stood Still” was composed by Kenseth Thibideau, also at Singing Serpent. It scored a Clorox commercial in which two jubilant young boys play in a mud puddle with the kind of fun-trumps-cleanliness abandon that only boys possess. “Birthday Girl” was written and performed by Canadian singer/songwriter Andrew Rodriguez and his band, Bodega. Their dreamy song perfectly captured the mood of a commercial in which bath time literally becomes playtime, with bathtubs taking the form of seesaws, carousels, and swings.

The commercial is an underwater scene with a mermaid swimming with the fish, discovering an underwater world. The mermaid writes some kind of letter and places it in a bottle, which she swims to the surface, then releases. As the mermaid breaks the surface of the water, it is realized that the whole thing was just the imagination of a young girl while taking her bath. Because a bathroom can be more than just a bathroom. Clorox helps keep it clean. Even the imaginary parts.