In this mall, the sound system is constantly playing that mediocre “not too hard, not too soft” pop music garbage that I got sick of hearing when it was released ten years ago. Lionel Ritchie? Bryan Adams? Elton John? Billy Joel? Don freaking Henley? Fucking enough already. I was fed up with Peter Cetera ten years ago, there is NO REASON to keep playing it now. None.
The numerous decent “not too hard, not too soft” pop music songs that have been released in the last ten years seem to have escaped the notice of Toronto’s radio stations. (Macy Gray. Coldplay. Elvis Costello. These artists are but a few examples of many who have produced inoffensive pop songs, which don’t suck.) I am not a music snob, I appreciate good shitty pop music as much as anyone. (My “Pop '86” cassette tape still gets some play at my house. If they played more Starship or Katrina and the Waves, I’d be happy.) Which is why I am inevitably astonished at the detritus they continually, repeatedly, inevitably play. (Richard Marx, I’m looking at YOU.)
I have composed many rants on this very subject, but have never been inspired to post them, because normally the stash of CDs I keep in my cube manage to relive my pain in short order.
But today, today a line has been crossed. I can bear this no longer.
I know that I should be pleased that they don’t play the wretched Christmas tunes that keep me out of any other retail building during the month of December. I am thrilled that the soothing adult-contemporary sounds of one-hit wonder has-beens singing sanitized and artistically void “holiday carols” do not torment me in this place.
However, can someone please tell me why I have now been subject to Extreme’s “More than Words” TWICE in the space of TWO DAYS?
I’m so glad they don’t pipe music in where I work. I’ve worked at a place that did that before, and it was the same as yours - non-offensive (supposedly) music that everyone will enjoy.
This stupid radio station had such a small playlist that we’d hear the same song 3 times a day. ARGH.
I saw a new doctor for the first time the other day, and the moment I walked into her waiting room I was nearly dumbstruck – she had actual, real MUSIC playing. Soft, classical, religious Christmas music. Not ostentatiously so, but let’s face it, there are a zillion beautiful classical pieces written in the last several hundred years that happened to be aimed at a church audience, but that doesn’t lessen their quality as pure music, and almost any one of them would be preferable to ANY of that ghastly pap we hear everywhere else. I complimented her on it and she said they use satellite radio, and keep a variety of stuff going throughout the year, but none of it of the “easy listening” variety that so pains our ears everywhere else.
With the easy accessibility of satellite radio these days, why don’t more places do this? Even if they’re going to play the same pap, at least they could pick a channel with an actual playlist longer than 20 songs. It’s really not a hard thing to figure out.
It may very well have been a recent cover by R&B singer Frankie J. He has a very high, effeminate voice on the cover, so he’s obviously being marketed as the “sensitive” guy. But his version of “More Than Words” has been plaguing the radio lately, and shows up on pop/Top 40 and urban/R&B stations a lot.
Hm. Perhaps, but I doubt it, for two reasons: first, it sounded exactly like the version I’ve always known; and second, I have never heard a song released in the last 5 years in this place, I don’t know why they would get hip now!
Yet another reason to loathe the average customer.
Can’t we, as sensible humans, get together and permanently ban terrible music from radio play? There must be some mechanism.