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TikTok Stars Rocked the Clio Awards With a Song Celebrating Classic Jingles
Anthony Gargiula and Jonathan Tilkin on why their partnership sings
Singers Anthony Gargiula and Jonathan Tilkin brought down the house at the Clio Awards on Tuesday, opening the show with “Our Favorite Songs,” an original ditty full of memorable snippets from advertising jingles for brands like Chili’s, Liberty Mutual and Kit Kat.
The song came about after the Clios team reached out to the duo with an invitation to create something special for the show. “They had seen some of the stuff that we’ve done online, and we came up with this crazy idea to incorporate a bunch of jingles into a song,” Tilkin says. “Some are our favorite jingles, some iconic ones, a lot of past Clio winners.”
“We grew up on these jingles, hearing them as kids obviously in front of the TV every night,” Gargiula adds. “So, we thought it’d be fun if ‘our favorite songs’ were the jingles.”
The social media stars, also known for their appearances at the Grammys, met on TikTok during the pandemic. Gargiula was living in Orlando at the time. Tilkin was in Los Angeles. Each posted tons of content, and they bonded over their love of making music.
Soon enough, Garguila moved to L.A., and the pair began collaborating in person, cooking up a recipe for success with Kitchen Singing, a YouTube series that finds them belting out a cappella versions of hits with the likes of Teddy Swims, Victoria Justice and Tori Kelly. Then came the Counter-Melodies podcast, another kitchen-based production.
Here, Gargiula and Tilkin talk about why they’ve been able to join forces so successfully:
THEY KNOW HOW TO BLEND THEIR SKILLS
For starters, and most importantly, their collaboration clicks musically. That’s because “each one of us has an expertise in different things,” Gargiula says. “His background’s in theater, and then he became this acoustic pop star of life. My background is very much in vocal music and a cappella. We complement each other nicely.”
And they step up for each other to fill in any gaps. “Basically, I don’t know how to work a computer,” Gargiula admits. So, he appreciates the fact that—in addition to being a gifted vocalist and composer—Tilkin, who has a home studio, can engineer their recording sessions.
Meanwhile, Tilkin credits Gargiula with respecting his process when they are figuring out which projects they should pursue together. “I need someone who is willing to overthink things with me,” Tilkin says, noting that research is behind everything they do.
“We spend so much time looking at what videos are doing well and what songs we are passionate about and all these different things. And I’ve worked with people before who are like, ‘Oh, you’re overthinking it,’ and that shuts me down,” Tilkin relates.
But once it’s time to choose, he knows Gargiula will be decisive. “If I’m like, ‘I don’t have a strong enough opinion, what do you think?’ He’s the one to say, “Here’s my opinion. Let’s do it,'” Tilkin says.
THEY KNOW HOW TO SHARE ANY STAGE
The duo has a natural rapport onstage as we saw at the Clio Awards.
And they make conducting interviews for Counter-Melodies look easy—which it’s not when you’ve got two hosts questioning a guest. Part of their flow comes from the fact that, off mic, they hang out together much of the time. “When you spend enough time with a person, you complete each other’s sentences,” Gargiula says.
It also helps that both have a lot of experiencing interviewing people. “I was a red carpet correspondent for Ellen,” Gargiula says. “I also hosted a show at Disney like 25 times a week. And Jonathan was hosting livestream shows on the internet.”
THEY KNOW HOW TO COPE WITH FAILURE
For all of their creative wins, some projects by Gargiula and Tilkin haven’t gone as planned.
“We’ve been through all the highs and lows that you [experience] as you create on the internet. But we lean on our community a lot, because a lot of the times we are dealing with the same failure or the same struggle or the same hardships,” Gargiula says. “We have a lot of fantastic people who are in the same line of work as we are. They have been really amazing support systems for us.”
THEY KNOW HOW TO RUN A BUSINESS
Yes, Gargiula and Tilkin are creatives, but they also have a business to run. “At the end of the day, we are entrepreneurs,” Gargiula says. “It is a startup business. Our job, probably at this point, is 15 percent singing. And then everything else is emails and calls and business.”
Tilkin adds: “That’s probably one of the reasons that we work so well together. We’re not only good at the business side, but we enjoy it.”
