CVS Bangers This well-wrought appreciation of the in-store music at CVS by Mitch Therieau makes an interesting point about how the “existential emptiness” of chain stores “allows the music to sound with a special liveliness.” He notes that “the store’s music produces its effects by way of contrast: earnest voices singing about tenderness lost or gained over sparkly guitars, piped into an impersonal, overlit, understocked place where absolutely nobody wants to be.” The contrived emotionality in pop songs is especially likely to “ambush” you there, he suggests, when your guard has been lowered by consumerism’s more demoralizing exigencies. The songs seem to be trying harder amid a retail environment that seems to flaunt its indifference.
This reminded me of the time i was standing in a frozen food isle in a giant grocery store and heard the clash’s lost in the supermarket playing and thinking maybe history had indeed ended. I came in here for a special offer, a guaranteed personality.
Opened the comments section to compose rigorous argumentative criticism complementing your posts, Rob. But so taken am I by the idea that “all praise is faint damnation”, have decided to keep shtum.
THANK YOU for the cvs mixtape suggestion. Will play when I return to work
This reminded me of the time i was standing in a frozen food isle in a giant grocery store and heard the clash’s lost in the supermarket playing and thinking maybe history had indeed ended. I came in here for a special offer, a guaranteed personality.
Opened the comments section to compose rigorous argumentative criticism complementing your posts, Rob. But so taken am I by the idea that “all praise is faint damnation”, have decided to keep shtum.