As you can see from my location, I work for a large retail corporation. Since Black Friday, our muzak system has been playing Christmas music 24/7. I give whoever’s responsible for programming credit for trying hard to introduce as much variety into the track list as possible, since I’ve been hearing innumerable versions of the same songs over and over, rather than just the same songs over and over.
This past Thursday, however, I heard a new song in the rotation that stopped me dead in my tracks. It was a seemingly cheerful pop-punk song that was positively overflowing with sarcasm about holiday greed. It struck me as one of the most inappropriate things you could possibly play in a retail store when you’re trying to convince people to buy things. I heard it again Saturday, so it seems to have a regular place in the rotation. With some googling, I managed to identify the song, which is “My Christmas List” by Simple Plan. This is the chorus of the song:
Link to the full lyrics here, for the curious.
I have no idea who thought this was a good song to play in a retail store, but I have three theories about how this might have happened:
- Whoever programs the muzak didn’t listen to the song and just inserted it into the playlist because they needed a few more songs to fill the gaps and it had an innocuous sounding title.
- The person responsible is just clueless and they didn’t get the glaring sarcasm of the song.
- Some “rebel” who has delusions of being a DJ decided to stick it to the man and slip this one in.
I found this incredibly amusing, especially after the second time I heard it and confirmed that the first time hadn’t been a mistake. I wonder how many of our shoppers heard this and picked up the cognitive dissonance?