Tripping through IBM’s 1937 corporate songbook

> 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.)

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.

One doesn't forget such a thing.

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.

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.

(Sam Albert mentions: "Now gay didn't mean what it means today then, remember that")

-- 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:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YwJmb0N9GQ

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tzeu-gqMy0A

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.

Many Japanese companies still have corporate songs, although they are not sung that much anymore.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3725775.stm

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.