So it turns out Tom Grennan’s Gillette advert bop is actually a cover from the 80s!?

Like the majority of people with a television or a YouTube addiction, I have spent 2024 bombarded by Tom Grennan singing about Gillette. Admittedly, the song is an utter rammer. Perhaps I am just simply a baby, a naive youth, but all this time I thought that the new Gillette advert had roped Tom Grennan in to sing an original song – but as of this weekend, I and many others have been shook to the core to learn this is not the case and it’s actually a cover!? Here I was thinking it was Tom Grennan’s equivalent of Katy Perry’s life-changing Just Eat anthem. But no.

A video went viral over the weekend showing that the Tom Grennan Gillette song, The Best a Man Can Get, is actually a rebrand of a jingle the company used in 1989. Obviously, I knew that Gillette’s slogan had always been “the best a man can get”, but the original song debuted in 1989 during a Super Bowl advert break. Perhaps if you were alive in this period you’re wanting me to shut the hell up right now as I make you feel dead old, but I genuinely had no clue about this. And seemingly, nor did the rest of us born around 1996 or later.

The replies to the viral tweet sees most people moaning that we’re all thick for not knowing this, or “born last week” – but here’s me honestly thinking Tom Grennan cooked this up in the studio in 2024. I feel dumb… but most of all, I feel youthful. A rare treat.

The differences between the two versions are wild. They both feel like such a time capsule of the era we’re in in their respective times, and the approach to masculinity we take. The 80s one is so ridiculously 80s it looks almost like modern parody, the production! The way the men are portrayed in the advert! So interesting to compare the two.

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