grocery store radio thoughts
y'all ever notice we play some WEIRD shit at the grocery store? i won't namedrop the one i work in the pharmacy at to avoid being doxxed lmao but. my grocery store radio makes some Odd decisions. such as:
"I Broke My Own Rule" by They Might Be Giants
and my hand to god we used to play the tmbg cover of "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" on the rare occasion, but not anymore unforchies.
we also play things that aren't out of the ordinary, but are... Odd choices for a grocery store, such as REM's "Everybody Hurts".
"Everybody Hurts" by REM (I'm hurting rn listening to this slow ass song while i'm trying to work !!)
some other songs we play i find odd for other reasons: "Wake Me Up When September Ends" by Green Day would almost fall into the previous category, if I didn't have sentimental attachments for it for personal reasons. But what I find odd is that, despite liking the song, I feel like when this album/song first came out, you wouldn't have necessarily found it playing just, at the grocery store on the radio. On rock radio, maybe, but between their vehement opposition to the Iraq War, plus the reaction to that opposition, it's just odd to me that we've come far enough from it to find it on your grandma's radio station, y'know?
picture unrelated
same with shit like Ozzy Osbourne and KISS (obvs KISS was milquetoast as fuck to begin with but like, their presentation was controversial at the time or whatever), like I just Think about how much times have Changed even in the 20 years since i was a kid/teen in wv.
another song that provokes Thought in me is Avril Lavigne's "Sk8r Boi".
"Sk8r Boi" by Avril Lavigne. you know this one
so obviously a feminist/etc critique has been done of this song somewhere, by someone, much more eloquently than what i'm about to say. but like... i just think about how, while avril's intent with the song is to Subvert... something (the fact that the cool punk rocker boi ends up with the alt Girl Singing This instead of The Prep or whatever), but what she REALLY does is Reinforce Heteropatriarchcal Norms; he was boy, she was a girl, could i make it any more obvious? they're a boy and a girl so OF COURSE they end up together; not only that, but the rival love interest, the aforementioned Prep, also ends up Straight Married, to someone who doesn't seem to care much about her or the kids (he's presumably working while she stays at home to take care of the kids) (though maybe he's watching them while she goes to the show? much 2 consider). avril's whole facetious alternative girl power schtick is just something that's really interesting to me, considering that i was Not Like Other Girls as a kid and now i'm Not A Girl At All. how many of those girls (and boys tbh) who end up unhappily Straight Married would be happier as a different sexuality or gender entirely? or even just... single? song is interesting from a sociological lens (esp as a queer trans etc person) and it always makes me Think when it comes on at work.
well, that's all i got today. sorry for radio silence, writing is like hard and stuff. i have a few more blog posts planned before the end of the year, but we'll, uh, see what happens, haha.
for now, silas over and out!