The Wife Says: Supermarket Music Bugs Me
[Another rant from The Wife. She says she has things to say. Okay…]
So I’m in the supermarket buying pine nuts. Pesto sauce. And find myself humming along with the music wafting over the aisles of paprika and Pampers. REM’s “Losing My Religion.” In a supermarket. It’s happened before-Peter Gabriel. U2. The Who. The first time is really disconcerting, checking to see if you forgot to unplug the earbuds. Then it hits you. Hard. The music of your life is now background.
Was it the same for our parents when they first heard “The Girl from Ipanema” played in an elevator? Did it leave them gutted? I don’t think so. Can’t conceive it. Music for my parents, anyway, wasn’t integral. Wasn’t essential. Did not define.
For me and mine, it was, is and does. And so, I try not to hum along even though I know all the words. I feel weird, as though Michael Stipe is monitoring what I put in my cart. Nodding at the probiotic yogurt. Frowning at the spring lamb. If I bought foie gras, the song would skip.
It’s hard to come to grips with the idea that what you loved growing up is now fodder to be played outside malls or over closing credits. Does that make me old? Older than the family-sized prescription of Nexium on the kitchen counter?
I prefer to think this is merely a manifestation of the incessant demand for content. We used to value silence. Now we need music or sound, whether tastefully whetting one’s appetite for a vente, no foam, extra hot macchiato or sitting on a park bench watching the leaves turn. Some kind of unspoken universal manifesto-Silence must be filled! With something. Anything.
And if that something turns out to be a song that made me weep or laugh or remember a first love, what’s the harm?
lol … I know, been there had that too.
But at the time when "ambience" and "elevator" music first started it was considered (the other)HIP!!
Girl From Ipanema in the store or elevator was actually considered a hippie thing to indulge flower-child-wannabe execs and to shake-up the establishmenticos … the Don Drapers and Sterling Coopers of the then world. It used to be only classical music to instill an air of dignity and general all-round hoity-toityness
You're supposed to feel 'with-it' when you hear those songs … ~nevermind~ the underlying finacial issue to the band.
And besides that it's just supposed to make buy more sh*t.
I am with you, sister. But I actually would really prefer to grocery shop in silence, or with just the ambient store noise for company. I don't want musical entertainment mixed in with my shopping entertainment. It's just too much sensory stimulation all together, know what I mean? We all need to learn to do one thing at a time again. You know, wherever you are, be there. Buckaroo Bonzai said that, circa 1983. That's all.
If silence is to be filled, what's the harm in it being done with music? None
That there's a compulsion to fill any and all silence in the first place, what's the harm in that? Immense.
Oh please. Current music is played constantly in grocery stores and the like. Quit being so melodramatic.
I heard Notorious BIG "Juicy" on at a diner the other day., and everyone just went on eating their all day breakfast like it was elevator music…..when that song was released as a hit, if it was played anywhere public, most people would have been offended…It made me sad that its so common place now…I liked it better when my parents hated it… 🙂
I am a music freak.. need music surrounding me 24/7 …if it is played in a grocery store I think that is awesome.. as long as it isn't Nickelback..and Rhianna then I am ok..
If I'm in a store and I hear Oasis, it makes my day!