That has to be the funniest thing I've read all day...

You've done it again! This one brings back too many memories of dancing through the aisles of the supermarket. My ex couldn't handle that... maybe that's why she's my ex.

Oasis are another one for toe-tappin' consumerism.

This sounds a bit like the experience ericmonkey and I had at the Smith Street Thai-Viet restaurant last night. We got to slurp on our noodle soups while we were serenaded with piped synthesised jivebunny muzak, covering everything from Britney Spears to the Beatles and Stevie Wonder. Funkeeeee!

too cool! my morning just got a lot happier :)

That sounds a lot more fun than my local Coles. I need to go to your supermarket, obviously. And your gym. Got an extra room?

hehehe! A lovely mental image of Canberran shoppers getting groovy. And you get such good music in your shops!

heh, I sing loudly. And finger dance. -- and look people in the eye when I'm doing it. It really unnerves people. Only crazy people sing and dance to the music in the stupidmarket. And me. Who is not crazy. Honest.

I knew there was a reason I got on the internet here at work. Yet another fabulous post, Shauny.

I loved this! I had a music-video image in my head of singing shoppers while I was reading it.

Were they choreographed? That would have been a nice touch. Excellent post, this one.

The inclusion of the song in Shrek didn't help matters. "I'm a Believer," much like another Diamond song thrown away to UB40 known in modern vernacular as "Red Red Wine," now resides just outside the edge of the corpus callosum of nearly every person born since 1947. The song has not only aged well, but it has been utilized for commercials and has hit more Muzak circuits (perhaps unfairly) than Ohio Express's "Yummy Yummy Yummy," a song that came one year later and was used in a Monty Python sketch.

"I'm a Believer," amongst many other songs is a testament to one tenable reality: Neil Diamond is a magnificent songwriter, but inevitably people forget his original versions. "I'm a Believer" is remembered as a song written by the Monkees. Urge Overkill gets hitched to "Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon." And of course, there is the UB40 problem.

It doesn't help matters for Diamond much when he sings. He has a silly angst-ridden voice which, while laudable in some kitschy capacity, is rendered positively ridiculous through such covers as his version of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." Thus, the quandary. Diamond is somehow pinned down as a regular on the Vegas-Reno casinos when the songs he writes are considerably more than that. Someone save the man from his predicament before it's too late.

If only supermarkets in Boston were that entertaining...perhaps then I would not view a 40 minute search for a pint of creamy caramel crunchy nut ice cream as a waste of time.

That's it. You're too weird for me. :)

miss shauny you make me laugh. herre i am with a galeforce hangover and you've got me smiling and laughing so much my eyes hurt.

you rock!!

miss shauny you make me laugh. herre i am with a galeforce hangover and you've got me smiling and laughing so much my eyes hurt.

you rock!!

Verrnice verrnice!!!11

Great post! I especially liked the part about the behavioral marketing gurus; that never occurred to me, but I bet they *are* our there. Scary, but, on the other hand, you did have a fun time, and you did spend more than you originally intended, so I guess it worked.

Hmm.. have you ever danced to 'Grease' down a shopping aisle? Complete with all the "Grease Lightning" movements? :) I have. I highly recommend it.

i hate it when they put cheesy music on because i always get lulled into a kind of trance, where i grab for the nearest shiny, coloured, pretty thing ("ooh... shi....neeeee.....") and then exit the shop wiping the drool off my chin and wondering why the hell i bought 7 kinds of tinned kidney beans and that new bacon flavour spam in a can instead of a litre of milk and a loaf of bread.

It's really in-store Al Green that does it for me.

Y'see, here, in the wonderful world of Tescos, we don't get such beautiful music. You get those fairly eerie instrumental versions of pop songs. Yes, the ones with tooting saxophones and fanfares. And really, I mean, come on, can you see anyone dancing to that?

Scrumptious, Shauny, scrumptious! I once had a curious moment when Eric Carmen's 'Hungry Eyes' came blaring thru Coles while I was selecting cotton buds in the medicinal section. I felt an almost unquenchable adolescent urge to grab the (strange) man standing next to me and pash Dirty Dancin' style. That would have been one for the marketing gurus...

That 'With You Always' thing is too funny. :)

Excellent, excellent. A new Shauny classic.

When I worked as a teenager at the King's Plaza branch of Peoples Drug Store (a now defunct East Coast U.S. chain), they put in this system of looping cassette tapes called "The Peoples Drug Satellite Radio Network." One tape was a 20-minute loop of announcements which imitated a DJ breaking in between songs and had irritating promotions. The other was about 45 minutes of pop songs (changed biweeklyat most --often left in by lazy managers for months) which played one of those focus-group driven mixes of baby-boomer favorites. This produced some odd moments -- nothing like cleaning up the painkiller aisle while Donald Fagen is warbling away about the pleasures of smoking opium("Tonight when I chase the dragon/the water will turn to cherry wine") -- I used to wonder if anybody else noticed.

while it is all fun and dancing games for you consumers ... please spare a thought for us poor workers!!
my loo-ong uni degree means i have spent eight years serving you better at my local coles. there are about ten 'loop tapes' that coles owns and each goes for just over an hour. i have heard them all 34,856,887 times.

[in an insidiuos move, the tapes are special thin material-if you put normal tapes in the machine they will be chewed!]

one does have 'now i'm a believer' on it -and 'hungry eyes'- and a few [FEW] other bop-worthy tunes. The rest are pure crap.

One of the worst is an absolute blood-bath trying to pass as a cover of 'light my fire'. If you are ever in a coles and this gem comes on please start breaking things.

that'll teach those market researchers.

This made me sing along and laugh out loud. Thank you, thank you. And the line at the end did zing me.

Love it! I was crooning to an Eagles song over the salad section in New World only the other day. The vegetable-stacker there always whistles along to whatever's on the stereo and we give each other a knowing smaile across the cauliflowers. Supermarket Muzak is so much better Down Under than in England.

I loved this entry. Hell, if it wasn't illegal all over, me and this entry would be having children already.

did you ever read margaret atwood's 'the edible woman'? i think you'd like it :p a lot of very witty supermarket consumerism rants and general good stuff.

I was singing it before I got here.
Your reputation had preceded you.

I love when you write like this!

definitely the best thing i've read today. oh my goodness yes. sadly, the supermarkets i frequent are too crowded and crabby for a communal sing-a-long, but oh how i wish things were different.