You might not think you’ve ever heard of the Teddybears before, but more likely than not, they’ve got a stronger hold on your household than any stuffed animal “bearing” the same name. Since starting out as a grindcore group in Sweden more than a decade ago (1991), the band has taken hold of the mainstream audience, perplexing almost anyone with ears, no matter who they are and what they are doing.
Months before their first U.S. release, the word around the campfire started to spread—These Teddybears are pretty damn hot! Of course, simply selling an album in this day and age is surely not enough to thrust a band into the impulsive American limelight. The age of sitting around a record player (or even an 8-track for that matter) and having a chat about a band was an age most of us weren’t even old enough to have been around for. No, these days, with the amount of media resources there are in the world, a band really has to make themselves available in an ultra-expansive, cross-platform sort of the sense. And that’s just what the Teddybears did.
Using their single “Cobrastyle” off of 2005’s Fresh, the band began an assault of sorts on the general audience, hitting listeners up wherever they might choose to be. If they were watching TV, the Teddybears attacked the audience on basic and premium cable, with placement on ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy and HBO’s Entourage. If there were a potential fan at the movie theater, the Teddybears found them, as “Cobrastyle” was a featured piece of the soundtrack in Robin Williams’ Man of the Year, Rob Schneider’s The Benchwarmers and Employee of the Month starring Jessica Simpson and Dane Cook.
Of course, TV and movies might be great places to find new fans, but the Teddybears and “Cobrastyle” didn’t stop there. Their song assault founds its way into video games such as FIFA ’06. It was played at sporting events such as New York Giants’ games, in addition to pseudo-sporting events such as the WWE (“Cobrastyle” was the official theme song for the WWE’s SummerSlam 2006 pay-per-view). Even our beverages couldn’t stop the Teddybears, with their hit single being used by Tab Energy, as well as Heineken in the beer’s Meet You There advertising campaign.
And the trend seems to be continuing with the Teddybears’ more recent singles off of 2006’s Soft Machine. “Yours to Keep,” a song which has the successful distinction of being featured as iTunes free download during the week of September 12, 2006, opened the snowboard video afterlame and was featured on the Virgin Mobile 2006 Christmas commercials. “Punkrocker,” which includes work by the one and only Iggy Pop, is also starting its ascent into multimedia madness and has already been featured in a Cadillac television commercial. Who know how far this song will take the band?
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