I don’t know if it’s the norm (although I tend to think it is) but our local Kroger plays “canned” music all through the store. So when I go there, I’m either listening to stuff from the '50s or stuff from the '70s or whatever. It’s kind of fun to go through the produce section sining “STOP! In the name of love!!!” but I honestly do try to keep that at a minimum.
Anyway, today was quite different. I was hearing the usual mix, until a fatal moment. All of a sudden I heard the strains of “Danny Boy” waft through the speaker system and I felt my stomach lurch. To make it worse, it was sung by someone that put far too much “feeling” into it. I can tolerate the song, don’t get me wrong, it actually can be quite pretty when sang by someone decent, but when you think the guy singing is about to cry, it gets rather tedious! 
So, I thought I would share my experience with all of you. I may never go to Kroger again 
That is just so wrong.
Maybe you could lodge a complaint? I mean, sure, there are more important things to get het up about, but…Danny Boy? And in full melodrama? Customers might start clawing their own eyes out. That can’t be a good thing.
The other day I was in the grocery store, and they were playing Nena. That was the first time I had ever heard 99 Luftballons in English. I had no idea what she was saying. 
RUN! Abandon your shopping cart, gather up the kids, don’t look back and give the store the hex sign as you leave!!!
Danny Boy, Send in the Clowns, and Feelings will make me wretch automatically when I hear even a few bars of those songs.
I feel your pain!
MarkB
they could play disco! 
I lurvvve Send in the Clowns.
Slan,
D.
It amazes me what the recording industry has done to music and how every one plays along. Playing a recording that you bought could be considered a performance and needs to be paid for, so the corporations get the license to play some canned music at malls and stores.
Just once I would like to see larger communities push for their local establishments to play locally produced by artists that give specific licenses and with less red tape.
Christmas is the worse. I cannot go into some stores without getting very edgy.
Ba! Humbug
Oh, and I lurvvve MacArthur Park! Not. 
It’s got to be the Judy Collins version though.
Beware of imitations.
http://www.ladyjayes.com/sendintheclowns.html
make sure your speakers are on
Sublime…
Slan,
D.
Good lord! It’s the motherlode of glurge.
Dig around a little. It’s got the greatest hits of Debbie Boone and Michael Murphy – both of them.
And John Denver and Karen Carpenter.
No Rod McKuen, though. No Seasons in the Sun, either. Damn.
I’m pretty sure there’s not an original thought, quote, or scrap of music on that entire site.
Lots of different shades of purple, though.
No Rod McKuen, though
Well!!!Harump.The very idea !! I won our district and went to our state’s forensic competition way back when(ca. 1970, with a reading of this- 
A Cat Named Sloopy
Rod McKuen
In memory of my late fat cat Pashosh.
1
For a while
the only earth that Sloopy knew
was in her sandbox.
Two rooms on Fifty-fifth Street
were her domain.
Every night she’d sit in the window
among the avocado plants
waiting for me to come home
(my arms full of canned liver and love).
We’d talk into the night then
contented
but missing something,
She the earth she never knew
me the hills I ran
while growing bent.
Sloopy should have been a cowboy’s cat
with prairies to run
not linoleum
and real-live catnip mice.
No one to depend on but herself.
I never told her
but in my mind
I was a midnight cowboy even then.
Riding my imaginary horse
down Forty-second Street,
going off with strangers
to live an hour-long cowboy’s life,
but always coming home to Sloopy,
who loved me best.
2
A dozen summers
we lived against the world.
An island on an island.
She’d comfort me with purring
I’d fatten her with smiles.
We grew rich on trust
needing not the beach or butterflies
I had a friend named Ben
Who painted buildings like Roualt men.
He went away.
My laughter tired Lillian
after a time
she found a man who only smiled.
Only Sloopy stay and stayed.
Winter.
Nineteen fifty-nine.
Old men walk their dogs.
Some are walked so often
that their feet leave
little pink tracks
in the soft gray snow.
Women fur on fur
elegant and easy
only slightly pure
hailing cabs to take them
round the block and back.
Who is not a love seeker
when December comes?
even children pray to Santa Claus.
I had my own love safe at home
and yet I stayed out all one night
the next day too.
3
They must have thought me crazy
screaming
Sloopy
Sloopy
as the snow came falling
down around me.
I was a madman
to have stayed away
one minute more
than the appointed hour.
I’d like to think a golden cowboy
snatched her from the window sill,
and safely saddlebagged
she rode to Arizona.
She’s stalking lizards
in the cactus now perhaps
bitter but free.
I’m bitter too
and not a free man any more.
Once was a time,
in New York’s jungle in a tree,
before I went into the world
in search of other kinds of love
nobody owned me but a cat named Sloopy.
Looking back
perhaps she’s been
the only human thing
that ever gave back love to me.
A Cat Named Sloopy is from the book “Listen To The Warm” published by Random House.
Copyright Rod McKuen 1963-1967.
[/i]
Hang on sloopy, sloopy hang on
Hang on sloopy, sloopy hang on
Sloopy lives in a very bad part of town
and everybody else, tries to put my sloopy down
Sloopy I don’t care, what your daddy do
Cuz you know sloopy, girl, I’m inlove with you
and so I say now
Hang on sloopy, sloopy hang on
Hang on sloopy, sloopy hang on
Sloopy let your hair down, ooo
Let it hang down on me
Sloopy let your hair down, girl
Let it hang down on me, yeah
come on sloopy (come on, come on)
oh come on sloopy (come on, come on)
oh come on sloopy (come on, come on)
oh come on sloopy (come on, come on)
well it feels so good (come on, come on)
you know it feels so good (come on, come on)
well shake it, shake it, shake it sloopy (come on, come on)
shake it, shake it, shake it yeah (come on, come on)
hang on sloopy, sloopy hang on
(yeah) (yeah) (yeah) (yeah)
hang on sloopy, sloopy hang on
(yeah) (yeah) (yeah) (yeah)
hang on sloopy, sloopy hang on
----- Yardbirds, Hang on Sloopy
Lovely song, especially the hang on parts. Everytime I hear it, I want to pound on the table and just cry like a baby.
I must confess to being a closet (well, before this confession) John Denver fan. I especially like his earlier stuff (before he broke up with Annie and got all maudlin for a while). His music and lyrics just struck a chord with me, so to speak. If that means I like “glurge”, so be it. 
Go Gonzo!
I had the misfortune to hear an old song in a grocery store a few weeks ago. Something about:
“I’ve been to paradise, but I’ve never been to me.” I gagged a little.
That’s a nice thing about Barnes and Noble. Many is the time I’ve had to go back to the CD area to find out what they were playing. I ended up with a good Oscar Peterson CD that way.
So what are some of the worst pieces of bubblegum claptrap ever?
Haven’t those all been sung by Shatner? lol
Now this may well be my poorly biased perspective, but it seemed to me on both my jaunts round America, that I was far more likely to hear old music (e.g. 80s stuff) than current chart toppers being played, than I would be in the UK.
I’m used to having at least a passing acquaintance with the current trends, if only from hearing radios going as I pass through shops (and at work - teeth grinding quietly). From a collective month spent in the States, I have no impression of what American Youth is listening to today (unless it is Country & Western).
Can anyone comment, who has spent a moderate time in both countries, whether this is the case, or just observational bias?
Funny, I tended to notice old stuff being played in UK shops.
I think new music isn’t played because most of the shopping is done by parents and other grown ups, who may not like the “youth music” and prefer to hear the “oldies” they grew up on. I read somewhere that relaxing music is played in stores to encourage people to take their time and put more things in their basket. Similarly, there are no visible clocks in most US stores, except possibly one by the entrance in older buildings.
Spare a thought for those who work in the stores. I remember once going through the checkout and mentioning that I liked the song they were playing. The operator told me that the store manager just played the same CD over and over again and though she had originally liked the song, after hearing the CD all day every day for a fortnight she now hated every single track on it.
With you there sludester, John Denvers early work is first class and Rocky Mountain is a song that any writer would be proud of.
Grand stuff alltogether..
Slan,
D.
Did the Yardbirds really do Hang on Sloopy? The McCoys had the hit of it, and I somehow just can’t imagine the Yardbirds playing a song like Sloopy.