What music does your local supermarket play?

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

I was just in the Trader Joes and they were playing some soft piano and falsetto schmaltz that I think was Coldplay (but might have been James Blount or Travis or Keane or Jack Johnson or any of those that I can't really tell apart, but it was a hit that I probably should know), so things were already melancholy and sort of alienated feeling under those fluorescent lights, and then they went right into Tears in Heaven, and the clerk was explaining in vague terms what the song was about to some customer who kept saying, "That Eric Clapton, he's so versatile. He writes songs about everything!"

As a teenager, I bagged groceries at a local Kroger, where they played cassettes which were issued by the corporate headquarters. These cassettes were weird blocky things - almost like miniature VHS tapes. Interspersed w/ cheerful shopping tips and such, the playlists consisted of muzak versions of oldies & soft-rock hits, but, amid the usual AOR standards, there was a version of "Bluebeard" by The Cocteau Twins. That was my jam, when it came on.

my local upscale yuppie-foodmart-for-white-people plays mor chillout, period. doesn't grate but it's kind of yaaaaawwwwwnn... the locals grocery store plays your standard indonesian rock-pop hit bands, but usually play the whole album, which makes it slightly more interesting somehow

Heard Neko Case and Camera Obscura at this dollar store recently.

i heard something off the most recent fleetwood mac album in my supermarket last week. made shopping 1000x more pleasant

On Sunday mornings, my local supermarket in Tokyo plays synthesizer covers of hi-nrg tracks. It really is the most atrocious think you can imagine. While elderly Japanese housewives wander around seemingly oblivious. Strange stuff indeed.

i heard something off the most recent fleetwood mac album in my supermarket last week. made shopping 1000x more pleasant

Coincidentally, while in the car today I was thinking about how I wish to strangle the next person who makes me listen to anything from "Rumours" again without my consent. Good to know the great DJ in the sky is mixing things up.

eating a valium and shopping in a health food store while fleetwood mac was playing in the background would undoubtably take me back to the 70's in the worst yet nicest way possible. but you know what i WISH they'd play in supermarkets? some 60's muzac, al la henry mancini and co. i would've thought the last 10 years or so have been ironic enough for that to have become a popular supermarket meme

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

I heard "Only Shallow" recently at Wegmans (immediately after "Lido Shuffle," no less).

i would've thought the last 10 years or so have been ironic enough for that to have become a popular supermarket meme

Wow, I'm trying to figure out if I'd shop at a store that played ironic shopping music and loved in-jokes.

Mostly unidentifiable world music, but then there's one guy who always puts Sebastien Tellier on.

The post-Leonard Cohen Jennifer Warnes.

yesterday at how's in north hollywood -- that sara bareilles (sp?) hit song. which i'm finally warming up to; it's an earworm for sure.

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

the "western bagel" location i go to always has the same oldies station on ("cathy's clown," "shout," other non-intimidating music for 60-year-olds).

The really nasty Eastgate Foods that is the closest grocer to my house has mix tapes of great oldies hits playing. Motown and British Invasion and early rock and roll and bubblegum. Tommy James and his brethren. The owner makes the tapes, from what I understand. The overpriced locally owned organic market that is next door plays the selections of their hipster staff through one stereo channel and it grates.

I heard "Only Shallow" recently at Wegmans (immediately after "Lido Shuffle," no less).

This world is a good world.

The really nasty Eastgate Foods that is the closest grocer to my house has mix tapes of great oldies hits playing. Motown and British Invasion and early rock and roll and bubblegum. Tommy James and his brethren. The owner makes the tapes, from what I understand. The overpriced locally owned organic market that is next door plays the selections of their hipster staff through one stereo channel and it grates.

i'd probably like the bagel store's oldies station better if it were programmed by one person instead of (i'm assuming) a market research firm.

Working very long days at a supermarket a very long time ago, I have good memories of hearing "All I Need" and "You Make It Easy" from Air's Moon Safari only days after I had first discovered those songs.

More recently at a different supermarket, I've heard The Strokes "Someday" and Weezer "Island In The Sun" multiple times.

Dusty little market on Central Avenue: "Come Together" in the back, "Comfortably Numb" in the front. (Actually, they aren't always classic rock central, I hear a fair amount of punk in there. Depends on whose working there.)

buying 40s at harris teeter the other night, to the smooth sounds of "Imagine" arranged for spanish guitar

"I Wanna Be Sedated", yesterday.

― kingkongvsgodzilla, Monday, March 16, 2009 5:16 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark

I heard this on Friday.

I worked at Publix for eight years (all through high school and college). There was a lot of good 60s music and a lot of really crappy adult contemporary garbage. But I actually discovered Mazzy Star working there because they played "Fade Into You" quite a lot.

When I went back home to visit the Publix I worked at was playing a Spoon track (don't remember which one), which was a nice little surprise.