Wandering through a mall last year, The Cramps “I Was a Teenage Werewolf”. Maybe it counts as an oldie now?
Don’t forget about Greg Lake’s “I Believe In Father Christmas”. :dubious:
I heard this at the local mall several years ago. It was a minor hit in the summer of 1979, and is probably the only song ever to make the American Top 40 that’s about an inflatable sex doll. 
Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport in a grocery store.
I’m pretty sure I’ve only heard that song twice in public (once on a local rock station), and it’s one of those songs that really stands out.
I was shopping at Ralphs a few days ago, when they played There Must Be An Angel by Eurythmics.
Just this past weekend I heard a song in Pavilions supermarket that I fell in love with on the first note. I took out my cell phone and having the Shazam app, tried to identify it. Upon picking it up I was pleasantly surprised to find it was by Deee-lite, the song being “Who Was That”?.
In terms of Deee-Lite one only hears “Groove Is In The Heart”.
The other day I was surprised to hear “Tainted Love,” not the Soft Cell version but the Gloria Jones original version. Much better version, actually.
Another one I just thought of was XTC’s “The Mayor of Simpleton” in Hardee’s.
My Meijer always plays very emotional indie/alternative rockish stuff. The last time I was there they played Jeff Buckley, Dashboard Confessional, and Civil Twilight. I was waiting for them to play something with Adele crying.
About a hundred years ago, I would work overnight at Walmart overnight for OT. And when they did play music over the speakers (they don’t anymore), it was a mix of soft rock and oldies and once in a while the Star Trek theme with lyrics.
It is a thing. But it was just so out of nowhere.
My mom had a mailbox business at about the same time (shipping/packaging). And she had some (to me) classic rock/oldies station always playing. It was out in the country a bit and it’s Texas and conservative.
One day we’re busting it, and this very Church Lady couple of…CHURCH LADIES come in. My Mom is waiting on them…and I realized what was playing on the radio. I ran over and started making the whole thing a loud mess. I got glare until I explained when they left.
The song was Elton John’s The Bitch Is Back
Not to stereotype/assume too much, but Cabela’s and other sporting goods places often has country music playing, even though this isn’t really country land. So it was the last place I expected to hear the very gay “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.”
I was in a local sandwich shop and whichever SiriusXM station they had played the album version of “I Want You To Want Me.”
And, it made me think of this thread when I was in Walmart today and heard TMBG’s “Santa’s Beard” as part of their holiday playlist.
Wow! It was always my understanding that “The Theme from Star Trek” had *never *been performed with its lyrics, which were written by Gene Roddenberry and are generally considered pretty lame (though I like them). He was criticized for this, since he automatically got 50% of any royalties each time the theme was played, whether or not the lyrics were sung (though I maintain that as creator and producer of the series, he could damn well write lyrics if he so pleased). I can’t help but wonder what recording this was on!
(As an aside, I did hear a Muzak instrumental version of the theme once while waiting in an eye clinic in Minnesota. This was in 1972 or '73, and I have never heard it since.)
Regarding my above experience with The Planets, a woman in the store at the time asked the name of one part; I told her it was “Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity.” What I didn’t know then was that the middle of the piece is more commonly known as the patriotic hymn “I Vow to Thee, My Country.” She might have been recognizing that but couldn’t think of the title.
There’s a satellite music channel that has played XTC’s “Mayor of Simpleton” for over 20 years.
I’ll never forget when I opened the grocery store pharmacy at 7:55am to the tune of King Crimson’s “In The Court of the Crimson King” (I have never had any desire to take acid, except for then 
) and we heard the 17-minute version of “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” later in the day. The overnight crew had turned the music to the prog channel and not turned it back when they left.
Another time, someone turned it to country gospel and also bumped the volume to about 14. I have never been able to hear Anne Murray, or “In The Garden”, which was what was on at the time, the same way ever again. :o
ETA: Just in the nick of time - didn’t realize this was a bumped zombie thread!
Last July, I heard “Jingle Bells” in a supermarket, where the music was set on what I call “rinky-dink ditties”, songs like “Row row row your boat” and “Doggie in the window”. There is more to this story – wait for it. . . . .
The supermarket was in Brunei, where just a few weeks earlier, the sultan had dictatorially decreed that Christmas Trees were going to be banned in Brunei’s publicly accessible places, as being potentially discomforting to the citizens of the Islamic state. The story of that got a great deal more outcry in the rest of the world, than in Brunei, which is maybe the most contented and peaceful country I’ve ever been in. Nobody in Brunei objected, they thought it was an honest and reasonable position in a civil society not to needlessly abrade each other’s sensitivities.