What music does your local supermarket play?

I heard "Whip It" at the supermarket today!

Wham! Club Tropicana, back in Durty juRZ.

I DID whippits in the supermarket today.

Was that part of a torts assignment?

U2

I once heard "Love Will Tear Us Apart."

At an IGA in central Florida.

"Hungry Heart" by The Boss, which almost made me laugh out loud when I realized what it was. Some "Cure" recently. "Heaven is a Place On Earth" too.

I live in Atlanta. If you go to the Ansley Mall part of town all the stores are playing classic disco and cheesy modern dance music. The stores in East Atlanta play Grown Folks Radio, which plays the most badass grocery-store music I have ever heard. Classic funk and r&b.

I once TORE THAT ASS apart at an IGA in central florida

They were playing Steely Dan a few weeks ago which I thought was awesome, but since then the usual suspects, Kelly Clarkson, Nickleback and Matchbox 20.

Conventional grocery stores: Gin Blossoms.

Whole Foods: Phil Collins... no less than 3 times a day. I've had to spend some time in there, and that is the one thing I noticed about the music. All Phil. All the time. He must somehow be associated with organic food.

I once heard "Rape Me" in Whole Foods... fellow customers seemed unphased.

The Co-Op this morning had "C-Lebrity" by Queen & Paul Rodgers. At the weekend, "Paranoid Android". It was fun times.

The big Tesco out of town in Exeter plays this cod-Eno ambient wibble all the time.

I was in a supermarket in Poland once that played Always Look on the Bright Side of Life from Monty Python then Born Slippy by Underworld immediately afterwards. It seemed rather odd to me, but the old ladies pushing their trolleys of kiebasa around didn't bat an eyelid.

last time i was at the supermarket they played "psychotic reaction." i love it.

Local small Sainsbury's has two TVs above the checkouts showing music videos frequently punctuated with ads and offers. Standard pop fare, 80s to now, usually when I'm in the queue I'm all "bah humbug evil marketing" and resolutely look away, but the other day they played Let Forever Be and I just had to watch 'cause the video is sooo good.

When I was 14, I was in the music sections of WH Smiths with my parents, when George Michael's "I Want Your Sex" started playing.

The hotel I was in was playing "I'm so tired of America" by Radiohead, or so I thought.

I had to check, it was very Thom singing, and the chords were ones he'd use, but the lyrics were way too direct and unambiguous.

Yep, it was Rufus Wainright.

Still...

I used to work for a sattelite company that did feeds to all of a major supermarket Aus chain for their music and annoying "hey buy our stuff!" blurbs. The stuff was mostly shite, but having access to the playlists i'd pick a few things out now and then that were good.

One of the songs on rotation was "Boom, Shake the Room". Cant say I ever heard that at Safeway but hey.

my local branch of woolworths has been known to play bad religion.

I went to Harris-Teeter a few weeks ago to get hurricane supplies (didn't end up hitting us, thankfully), and for some reason they were playing all this really dramatic classical music. way to set the mood, guys!

The Cure - Close to me in the mall this morning.

Can't be long before they start putting on Christmas Carols though.

Whole Foods: Phil Collins... no less than 3 times a day. I've had to spend some time in there, and that is the one thing I noticed about the music. All Phil. All the time. He must somehow be associated with organic food.

― drainCosmetics, Tuesday, September 30, 2008 2:17 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest

Phil Collins is mandatory music for any business, whether it be office building, grocery store, or thrift store. He is OMNIPRESENT.

Working in a grocery store full time I should be an expert on this, but as it happens I'm really good at tuning out the jams and maintaining my mental stability. (When it's nothing but the graveyard it's essential to protect your brain.)

What I can recall: Phil Collins (like duh), some terrible cover of that awful Modest Mouse song from that sinkhole of an album right before Johnny Marr joined, Taylor Swift, Jimmy Eat World, y'know, the usual current(ish) stuff, balanced out by Van Morrison, the Kinks ('80s KINKS!!! YEAH), CCR, Fleetwood Mac, Neil Young, WHAT I'M SAYING HERE IS WE GET A LOT OF CLASSIC ROCK YA SEE. But never any fun surprises like Psychotic Reaction, or like that time I went into a gas station and heard "I want your skuuu-uuull, I need your skuuu-uuull!"
Though coincidentally there is a guy in the meat department named Scott Walker, so that's cool right? (I can't believe I didn't bring him up when some of us were talking about people with other famous people's names in some other thread a while back).

Dalhousie Safeway raped me of my James Blunt virginity. I'd never heard 'You're Beautiful' -- I had managed to somehow avoid it for ages -- until that fateful day at the grocery store.

They also frequently played Love Song by the Cure and some Avril Lavigne rubbish.

salsa shark you're a terrible man for the way with words, to be sure

Sweet Jesus James Blunt! I heard that shit every day for two years.

No, salsa shark's words are an accurate account of the experience.

My gGod, have you heard this "Thanks for the Lemonade" by one Chris Rice? So atrocious it stopped me in my tracks like nothing since "Bad Day."

I heard "Radio Radio" in the supermarket a few days ago.

A few years back I heard "100 Years" by Five For Fighting every third supermarket visit or so.

The other day, Safeway was inexplicably playing the Star-Spangled Banner.

Centra is obsessed with Kiss Me by Sixpence None the Richer

the best i can hope for in the grocery store is some bill withers or bobby caldwell's "what you won't do for love", although i know i've heard some really weird things over the years.

I hear a lot of great '80s stuff in the local grocery stores -- Bunnymen, Psych Furs, Talk Talk, Scritti Politti, OMD, New Order, Pet Shop Boys, etc. I'm not sure how or why this occurs, but I won't complain...

Even if the supermarket plays something unexpected, it still comes through as anti-music thanks to the tinny little speakers in the roof. Can't say I've ever enjoyed a song via supermarket speakers.

No supermarket I go to plays music anymore. But my local Chase bank plays the Carpenters, Bee Gees and ABBA!

Both supermarkets in my neighborhood play MOR hits. Sometimes good, sometimes maddening.

I HAVE HEARD PARANOID AT MY LOCAL QFC. WAS STOKED!

Have heard no solid jams in QFCs here

Lowe's Super Saver #98: oldies (with an emphasis on regional western favorites)
Albertson's: depressing 80s MOR
Pro's Ranch Market: Banda! Banda! Banda! and other Mexican music
Smith's: I forget.

I could live in Rockist Scientist's neighborhood.

Big K-Mart has the most interesting mix (but of course it's not a supermarket, even if it does sell food). It plays al sort of familiar Anglophone pop songs alongside Spanish-language pop, and it covers a fwe decades. Today I heard David Bowie's "Let's Dance" and then an okay Latin pop tune and then a couple mediocre Anglo pop songs and then what sounded like an early rock or R&B song, and then a mediocre Latin pop song, etc. I've heard Fleetwood Mac there, I've heard Spanish covers of familiar English songs.

Inexpecliably, I like banda much more when I hear it at Ranch Market. I can't decide if their selection is better or if it's just the environment. Pro's Ranch Market is the most festive supermarket I've ever shopped in. Some of the songs at Albertson's, on the other hand, just make me want to leave the store before I fall into a severe depression.

"I Wanna Be Sedated", yesterday.

PARANOID! At 9:00 on a Saturday!

i was at raley's (grocery store) and they played cat power's living proof

I've heard Neko Case and Calexico at my Wegman's.

The local H-E-B (a Texas chain formerly known as "H. E. Butts") has 80s pop music on. "I Eat Cannibals" and "Word Up!". It makes me feel old.

I swear to almighty God, everytime I walk into a Borders 'Love Is In The Air' comes on, the John Paul Young version I think. It's the kind of song that would go well with some hot crazy homicidal killing spree, but not when I'm trying to buy books. One of these I will crack and mow down the toothless hoardes, making them eat on their Barbara Kingsolver paperbacks. They only have themselves to blame.

anytime i hear stuff on oldies stations, my mind returns to the williamsburg c-town

It's been the soundtrack to my workday a few times. It definitely creates a melancholy, gauzy memory of my youth (the tape hiss helps!)

I heard Radio Free Europe at Whole Foods last night.

I go to my supermarket as little as I can now because "Come Together," "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," "Comfortably Numb," "Imagine," "Mrs. Robinson," and literally no more than a single 74-minute CD worth of songs that are on every-wedding-band-ever's shortlist have been on shuffle for two years and counting. If I had to work there I'd put corkscrews in my ears.

"love will tear us apart" at fred meyers.

I was sat in the cafe in Sainsbury's, Didcot today and heard tracks by Talk Talk and Grizzly Bear.

I’m standing in the checkout line at Ralphs right now. They play mainstream vocal pop.

Today we had "Within You Without You" and I was so pleasantly shocked

Elvis, "Hound Dog", last night, sounded fuckin' great.