Obscure Singles Heard at CVS

I can kind of buy that. My sister is a magazine merchandiser, and one of her clients is a Fry's Electronics where they have zoned music. She said the refrigerator and furniture salesmen used always blast 80s Rush albums.

related https://radioinsight.com/ross/175996/stiffs-on-a-plane-and-elsewhere/

^ Good article.

Just like I've heard "Welcome to the Jungle" more than once now at Kroger, there are some Saturdays where I feel like I'm trapped inside the wrong side of a loop. I swear there were like three weekends in a row where I heard "Billy, Don't Lose That Number" – a song I despise because I hate it and it's catchy.

Yesterday, I was standing in front of the bags of frozen chicken when "The Last Worthless Evening" came on, giving me a clammy sense of déjà vu. But again, I don't think it was real vu. I think my predictable routine somehow gets synched up with the predictable song loop.

There's this loud bee-duh-boo, bee-duh-boo sound that hits usually around 3 pm. It's usually followed by one of the "loud" songs, like "Jungle" or more often, "Jump" by Kriss Kross. I'd put money down that repeated three-note tone is synchronizing satellite playlists in grocery stores all across the Midsouth.

Smithereens: "Only A Memory" at Fry's.

Simply Red: "Something Got Me Started" at Fuddruckers.

At this point, hearing "Blitzkrieg Bop" by the Ramones in the middle of Kroger probably doesn't warrant a mention on this thread. (It did follow that top of the hour tone I mentioned upthread!)

However, I will say that hearing that song segue into "I'll Be There for You" by the Rembrandts was a new one for me.

And my parents insisted on going to this Texas-themed "Saltgrass Steakhouse" place out by the interstate tonight. And yeah, even though it was an alternative hit released by Sire Records 25 years ago, I still wasn't expecting to hear "The Long Cut" by Uncle Tupelo while grabbing another bite of fried potato cheese from the appetizer plate.

i know that it was #1 for a few weeks on its release, but i have *never* heard the The Romantics' "Talking in Your Sleep" except in a grocery store or pharmacy.

suddenly last summer by the motels -- at CVS

"want you back" by haim in a walgreens earlier tonight (by the standards of this thread the entire haim discography should be considered obscure)

Obscurities of The Future!

Apropos of nothing, but I made a DQ run earlier this evening and heard "Enola Gay" there again.

R.E.M. "Radio Free Europe" in the Sprouts market tonight.

JD McPherson: "Precious" and Chris Hillman: "Here She Comes Again" at Jack-In-The-Box.

Tom Petty: "A Face In The Crowd" at Fry's.

JJ Cale & Eric Clapton: "Ride The River"
Yo La Tengo: "Friday I'm In Love"
10,000 Maniacs: "Candy Everybody Wants"

All at Jack-In-The-Box.

I'm right by a jack-in-the-box and tempted to poke my head inside and see what's playing. But then I remembered that I've already made a mental note that this Jitb plays only the worst music.

Level 42's "Lessons in Love" at Publix.

https://www.mixcloud.com/TOLKIENBLACK/cvs-bangers/

I had lunch at IHOP the other day. Usually at this one it's straight Top 40 Muzak, but for reason that day it was smooth Contemporary R&B fuck jams. I Shazam'd these two:

Glenn Lewis: "Make Love"
Jazmine Sullivan: "Let It Burn"

"for some reason"

My local Dairy Queen must use an OMD Pandora channel for Muzak, because I dropped in for an Orange Julius and heard both "Sailing On The Seven Seas" and "Pandora's Box" in the 15 or so minutes I was there.

the litany of middle America chain retail outlets you patronize is impressive

Glenn Lewis: "Make Love"
Jazmine Sullivan: "Let It Burn"

Interesting/unfortunate thematic progression there, chronology-wise

i hear "let it burn" on the radio still every so often. it's recent enough that despite not being a hit outside its format i wouldn't call it obscure at all

Chicago: "Alive Again" at Fuddruckers

...

Donald Fagen’s “What a shame about Me” at
Coney Island

That's actually the Dan, from Two Against Nature. That's going Deep!

Sheryl Crow: "Summer Day"* and Spoon: "Can I Sit Next To You" (live) at Jack-In-The-Box.

*Feel like I hear this alot in the wild, a Lenny Kravitz-y flop single from her Soul Music album.

heart, 'nothin' at all' at gourmet fresh

Los Lonely Boys: "Diamonds" at Taco Bell.

“Starlight,” by Taylor Swift, in CVS.

(This track was not one of the seven (7) U.S. singles from Red.)

Robert Forster: "2541" and Elton John: "Grey Seal" at Jack-In-The-Box.

Earlier today in Morrisons: 'Too Much Time' by Captain Beefheart

Little Feat: "Two Trains" and Eric Clapton: "Bad Love" at a pizza place.

The Stampeders: "Sweet City Woman" at Walmart.

is that obscure at this point? sad if so, wonderful single. as with "beach baby" way upthread my brain refuses to accept that anything featured in the sounds of the seventies TV commercial could possibly be obscure twenty-five years later....

Well, I'd say it's fairly obscure. I never heard it much as an Oldie (same goes for "Beach Baby"). It just kind of faded away?

i buy that - pretty much all early 70s light pop bands/songs, however big, have ended up without a radio home for a while now. see also the three dog night thread. CVS and movie soundtracks might be their only hope.

I’ve definitely heard “Sweet City Woman” on the radio in the past decade, and many more times in the decade before that.

I’ve heard it on the radio many times over the last 2-3 years, largely due to discovering a better-than-average oldies station. But I didn’t know the name of the song (or band) until just now.

pretty much all early 70s light pop bands/songs, however big, have ended up without a radio home for a while now

I heard Olivia Newton John's "If You Love Me Let Me Know" in a pizza restaurant yesterday and was thinking about this. Olivia and Anne Murray were huge in their day, yet I don't hear that kind of soft pop much any more.

Anne Murray isn't exactly party music, so why would you play it in a pizza place?

Speaking of inappropriate music, I heard this at Walgreen's. Because when I'm picking up medication for a serious medical condition, I need to hear this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0UXsl_5fdA

i don't have any good hand-wavy social theory explanation as to why, but music that was considered adult contemporary at the time of its release tends to have a poor shot at ending up on classic hits stations decades later, i think. such stations are starting to mine the 90s for material in recent years, and even at-the-time modestly successful alt rock hits seem to be much more likely to get onto the playlists than veritably major successes by, say, celine dion. it's like our cultural memory refuses to allow some of these songs to remain representatives of the era they partly defined. (either that or there's unacknowledged bias among those who program such stations. perhaps both.)

lol. Olivia was sandwiched between "Papa Was A Rolling Stone" and some other Motown hit, which made it stand out even more, but that was also the way pop radio sounded in the mid 70s. xp

totally spitballing here but could these shifts also be demographic in nature? i'm not sure exactly who made up celine dion's buying audience in the 90s, certainly it would have included some teens (especially after titanic obv), but i imagine she was mostly selling to adults, who have maybe now aged out of the big target demographics for whoever is still advertising on radio?

which maybe wasn't quite the case for the easy-listening artists of the 70s, who i think sold plenty of records to silent-majority 25-year-olds (not necessarily hepcat party-goers - - - - let's say young parents), who were still game to hear those songs in dentist's offices in 1995. maybe?

the demographics matter, sure. but i'm talking about even the big adult contemporary smashes that went the full distance in crossover. you didn't get toward the top of top 40 stations' playlists unless you had a sizable fanbase of 20-somethings and even teenagers. this is a very different situation to, say, later-career michael bolton hits, which still saw acceptance at adult contemporary stations but little outside that niche.

like, "my heart will go on" was my brother's favorite song on the radio at the time it was out -- he was 9, and his favorite music was otherwise almost all rock. today you're far more likely, at least in my city, to hear eve 6's "inside out" or harvey danger's "flagpole sitta" on a classic hits station than ANY celine dion song, including "my heart will go on". dion's situation is quite comparable, imo, to that of anne murray and john denver and such.

I was watching this Nat King Cole clipshow on PBS last night, and they showed that he was having high Top 40 songs into the early '60s, which reminded me that you never really those songs, or Sinatra, Dino etc. hits from that era on Oldies radio.

<Really HEARD>

My local oldies station has an all-Sinatra show, broadcast weekly. And I've heard Nat King Cole, Jerry Vale and Roger Whittaker ("The Last Farewell") a few times. And Fabian. And Sly And The Family Stone and Curtis Mayfield and Badfinger. It's a weird station, but I dig it.

In fact, I just wandered over to their site to see what they've played today, and there's Jerry Vale! And Anne Murray!

http://www.albanymagic.com/