Originally posted:
Saturday, February 28, 2015
I work retail. I've worked retail off and on for about 17 years. My first job at Ross was my real introduction to the redundancy of what a retail radio station was. A strange mix of mostly terrible, but some good, sometimes (if you're lucky) even great songs. It was 1998 or 1999 so by then, you would still hear songs from the 1960s and 1970s over the speakers embedded into the ceiling. Nowadays, like many "oldies" radio stations across the country (if you're lucky enough to spot one), having dropped the 1950s completely, and have mostly 1960s, 1970s and jeez, sometimes even 1980s. Similarly, work radio stations are composed of contemporary songs, "bright pop" (according to "SiriusXM The Blend" which is what they play at my current job) and some 1980s and 1990s.
With each entry here, I'm going to feature one song that is horrible and then another which is at least decent. I'm fairly convinced that these stations have subliminal messages ingrained into each note, otherwise why else would they play them so often? I was told, by comparison at Target where there is no overhead music played, that the lack of music actually keeps people shopping longer. Supposedly, when songs are played, a customer becomes aware of their time spent in one store, whereas silence makes that distinction murky. I worked at Target for 7 years and the only music you would hear was on the loop tape played on the electronics department televisions. There were 3 different TV's; the main channel broadcast across all the TV's for sale, then the next two over in the CD and DVD/Blu-Ray sections with different movie trailers and new music videos snippets. I didn't know most of the songs as a whole that were played, so I'd sometimes fill in the rest in my mind. I remember doing this growing up watching music compilation commercials (which I've always loved seeing). Particularly before I first heard about Blondie's "Heart Of Glass" from a disco compilation, I imagined it being totally different, although I can't remember how specifically. More recently, I recall "filling in the blank" with Bruno Mars' "Locked Out Of Heaven", which is a really terrible and weird song. It's most notable for it's near theft of The Police's distinct sound. I'm guessing imitation is the most sincere form of flattery? This is also comparable to "Blend" (or Bland as I call it sometimes) station favorite, Maroon 5's Adam Levine, who very much imitates Sting's oddball singing style in some of their godawful songs. Whoa-oh, whoa-oh, whoa-oh, oh oh uh uh oh.
