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> Have people changed so much in the last 70-80 years that these songs—which seem expressly designed to debase their singers and deify their subjects—would be joyfully sung in harmony without complaint at company meetings?
[...]
> Moreover, to answer one of the rhetorical questions above, no—people have not changed so much over the past 80-ish years that they could sing mawkishly pro-IBM songs with an irony-free straight face. At least, not without some additional context.
> There’s a decade-old writeup on NetworkWorld about the IBM corporate song phenomena http://www.networkworld.com/article/2333702/wireless/a-histo... that provides a lot of the glue necessary to build a complete mental picture of what was going on in both employees’ and leaderships’ heads. The key takeaway to deflate a lot of the looniness is that the majority of the songs came out of the Great Depression era, and employees lucky enough to be steadfastly employed by a company like IBM often were really that grateful.
The truth is probably closer to 'yes' than 'no', as best I know: I can't see how the OP thinks that the Network World piece supports the opposite conclusion. At any time in recent history before the '60s, people really did tend to feel a greater sense of deference to big institutions. But more than that, the '30s were something like the '60s in reverse: just as everyone over 35 discovered individualism and self-actualisation in the '60s, in the 1930s very many people really did feel a surging need to subsume their individuality into a greater collective, marching forward together. That urge wasn't limited to card-carrying fascists or communists at all. (Disclaimer: not a historian.)
> everyone over 35
Should be 'everyone under 35' of course.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=166983
I visited IBM's Almaden research facility years ago and a jolly old-timer sang me one of these songs. It went to the tune of Jingle Bells, and ended on this high note:
I.B.M. – happy men
Partners of T.J.
In his service to mankind
That's why we are so gay.
The jolly old-timer also told me that the day he started work at I.B.M., a doorman ordered him to pull up his pant leg and then sent him home because he wasn't wearing garters to hold his socks up.
I remember a friend who worked in sales that it was a disciplinary offence for an IBM salesman to be seen eating in McDonalds - this was in the mid 80's
An acquaintance said that he had worked in IBM sales as his first job out of college and the Navy. One day, a co-worker came in wearing a shirt that was blue rather than white. The rest of the office was uneasy all day.
That entire sequence (the song snippet, and the garter story) sounds familiar... I remember seeing it on Robert X. Cringely's "Triumph of the Nerds" on PBS (great documentary series, btw)
A snippet of that song is on YouTube from that documentary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afACnAMG9iM
You can also hear 'Ever Onward' from the songbook here, which I am oddly drawn to.
i work for them, but thanks goodness never had to hear them sing this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EqwvLzBWAs
Here is the same song sang by an PC/XT speaker (the speaker that beeps when BIOS fails); the singer is a program in GW-Basic
now this corporate song seems to be even newer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV2oBZU7tGg
and another one:
Is the garter story on there too?
Pirates of Silicon Valley featured a slight variation on this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyQEbLx6AEY
Reminds me of the "Triumph of the Nerds" were Robert X. Cringely sings with Sam Albert (former IBM executive):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afACnAMG9iM
74. OUR I. B. M. SALESMEN
Tune: "Jingle Bells"
1. I. B. M., Happy men, smiling all the way.
Oh what fun it is to sell our products night and day.
I. B. M., Watson men, partners of T. J.
In his service to mankind-that’s why we are so gay.
-- http://www.digibarn.com/collections/songs/ibm-songs/index.ht...
And the following up TV movie "The Pirates of Silicon Valley" that features the IBM song too:
It seems mostly lost to the memory hole now, but I always thought one of the most cringeworthy corporate anthems was the Sun song set to the Huey Lewis tune.
Long ago, I was a stockboy at a couple of Woolcos, which were suburban, one-story Woolworths, both of them just opening. Once the store was open for business, every morning the sound system would kick out a jingle that I still remember most of: "With bargains excitingly wonderful/All the things you've been looking for/???/At your Woolco department store!"
We were not expected to sing along with it, though.
I worked while I was in high school at one of the Meijer's superstores and they had a company song book. All the younger employees thought it was stupid. A case of billionaires making us sing odes to them.
Many Japanese companies still have corporate songs, although they are not sung that much anymore.
Made me immediately think of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXUhQnOYR54
It's funny to hear them sing of bringing sunshine to the world when IBM helped the Nazis in the holocaust.