Some songs arrive in a brief and immediately feel right. “Homeward Bound” was one of those. The creative team at CVS had built their holiday spot around a Nutcracker making his way home, finally arriving back at the store where the other Nutcrackers waited, with the Simon & Garfunkel classic already doing the emotional lifting before a single note was recorded.
The challenge, then, was figuring out what to do with the song once we had it.
Honoring the Original
Covering a beloved classic can be risky. If you lean too close to the original it becomes an imitation, but stray too far and it can become unrecognizable, losing the emotional resonance that made you choose the song in the first place. With “Homeward Bound,” the goal was to find the space in between, what Marmoset Senior Producer Reid MacKenzie describes as “a modern interpretation of a beautiful and timeless classic,” one that preserved the spirit of the original while presenting it in a way that felt modern.
There was also the question of what the spot needed emotionally. CVS wasn’t going for big, splashy holiday fanfare. The tone they were after was quiet, with the feeling of a long journey finally coming to an end. “Homeward Bound” includes all of that naturally. Marmoset was tasked with shaping the arrangement to let those qualities breathe.
Restraint as a Tool
The most important decision came early in the process: casting a female lead vocalist. A deliberate pivot from the original, it immediately brought the song into the present, and signaled that this was something new. From there, the production philosophy was shaped almost entirely by restraint.
This was a holiday spot, but MacKenzie and the team made a point to avoid the obvious seasonal signifiers. No sleigh bells, no choir swells, nothing that would announce itself as holiday music. Instead, the front half of the arrangement was kept deliberately minimal, stripped back, intimate, a little melancholy. The verse breathes, giving the story room to settle in.
The build was carefully choreographed to mirror the Nutcracker’s journey on screen. As the narrative moves into the pre-chorus and the journey continues, new layers slowly accumulate. The bass and full backbeat are held back until the chorus, a choice MacKenzie describes as central to the entire emotional design: “Preserving the bass and full backbeat until the chorus helped create that sense of arrival, which was a crucial moment in the spot.” When the Nutcracker finally walks through the door and the other Nutcrackers come into view, the track opens up. It blossoms. The music earns that moment because it spent the whole song waiting for it.
One final touch: a subtle tubular bell at the very end, the sole concession to holiday texture.
The Impact
There’s no voiceover in the CVS spot, which means the music isn’t just supporting the story, it is the story. Every emotional beat is carried by the arrangement alone, and the pacing of the narrative lives entirely in how the track moves. That’s a significant amount of weight for a piece of music to hold, and the measured structure of this version of “Homeward Bound” holds it without strain.
What makes the approach work, MacKenzie notes, is the way it meets audiences where they already are. The holidays bring nostalgia to the surface, people are ready to feel something. A song they recognize, reimagined in a way that’s both fresh and emotionally honest, taps directly into that openness.