The Bad Eliots don’t owe MySpace any gratitude for their hit song. They can’t thank radio, nor MTV.

Nope, the Bad Eliots can credit an unlikely company for helping “Cat’s Meow” become a hit: Snapple.

The band was given the opportunity, along with other bands, to create a song for the Snapple Antioxidant Water commercial. “It wasn’t thrown open to the public,” says The Bad Eliots frontman Roto (real name: James Rotondi), “but certain groups were selected to go toe-to-toe and try to come up with the best fit for the spot.”

Roto says the band worried less about getting their song onto the ad and more about the quality of the music itself. “We took a very relaxed attitude about it, trying not to get hung up on winning, but just enjoying the creative process.”

And it might have been just this helped “Cat’s Meow” win. The 30-second commercial was released in early 2008, but YouTube played a big part in making the commercial and the song a huge success online.

“Once that 30-second TV commercial version of the song became really popular on YouTube and elsewhere, we all thought it would be a good idea to roll out the full version of the song,” says Roto, “which included several more verses, a nice bridge and an outro section; in short, a real, bona-fide pop song!”

As for the lyrics, Roto describes the words as a “sexy version of a nursery rhyme” complete with images and turns of phrase.

But just releasing the full song wasn’t enough. People wanted more and now you can check out The Bad Eliots video for “Cat’s Meow” on their website www.badeliots.com, and on YouTube.

“The video was a collaboration with a fine director, Tim Wilson of Go Robot, and an excellent creative agency who engineered this idea of using digitized images of our faces on cubes that would stand in for our heads,” says Roto. “It was a cool way, I thought, of playing with the idea of ‘celebrity’ and sort of toying with the public’s perception of rock musicians and exploring the way that digital media transforms all of us, one way or another.”

The band is working on their first album and Roto says to expect songs similar to “Cat’s Meow” as well as some harder-edge stuff.

“Fortunately, we seem to have preserved that spontaneous and fun spirit with our new material,” Roto assures, “and we will continue to try to sort of booby-trap people’s ideas about digital media as often as possible!”

Fans can expect to see the band live, but Roto confesses they won’t be touring during the cold winter months. “Believe me, you’d rather do it when it’s warm out!”

Since their song was, after all, featured on a Snapple commercial, I couldn’t resist asking Roto what his favourite drink was, and to my surprise it wasn’t the Antioxidant Water. “It’s really good stuff, actually, but, um, I prefer Belgian beer…? I mean, this IS rock and roll!”






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