Top Seven Annoying Retail Songs of 2004

In the grant spirit of putting up articles about music which we wrote in the summer of 2004, here's something I never posted which I must have written while I was working at my one and only harrowing corporate cashier job. Looks like I was just three songs and a pithy conclusion short.

I work for a large retail corporation, at one of its public money-and-goods exchange outlets, where I operate the money-and-goods-exchange actualization device. The store plays music in the background, but not a radio station like the independent store I worked for; perhaps a larger store has more necessity for abiding by copyright laws which, my dad told me, prohibit businesses from playing the radio to customers. It may be true. Who knows with my dad?

Anyway, it's a good explanation as any for the store's pseudo-radio, a neverending stream of bad pop music ranging from about two to ten years of age. These are songs we heard over and over several years ago, despite avoiding the radio as much as possible; that we got extremely sick of; that we wished would go away; and that, mercifully, went away. But not for me.

10. "sk8r boi," or however you spell that Avril Lavigne song. I actually don't mind Avril Lavigne too much, but it gets old. I actually kind of like the other one, "Complicated," I mean in comparison to the other songs on the circuit. But I'm sure it will wear on my nerves soon enough.

6. That "La la la, la la la la, la la la, la la la la la" Kylie Minogue song. The only good thing about it is that it reminds me of the time Ian McKellan was on SNL and he introduced musical guest Kylie, "Ladies and gentlemen, you lucky people, it's Kylie Minogue!" And then he watched the whole performance from the side, all excited that he was watching Kylie Minogue. But I'm afraid I don't share his enthusiasm. As repetitive as the song is when you're listening to it, it has the audacity to be catchy, too, so you just can't get it out of your head, no, just can't get it out of your head.

5. The song from, I believe, the beginning of Dawson's Creek. Isn't that the one that goes "It's about life, it's about love, it's about time.... to make up my mind"? I'd heard it in life before I saw it on Dawson's Creek (only watching for the articles, I swear) so I was tickled by the choice. As a song about teenagerhood, it's pure cheese, but it's about the cheesiest song you can have for the beginning of a show about teenagerhood. Essentially it's straight-out telling you "This show is about life. This show is about love. This show is about a whiny kid who can't make up his mind." At least when it's on at the store it doesn't signify the beginning of Dawson's Creek, but it's still damn annoying.

4. The terrible cheerful man cover of Joni Mitchell's song about paving paradise and put up a parking lot. Gravelly-voiced Mitchell wrote and sang a song about how we are wasting the world's resources and it sounded like she meant it. These awful cheerful men with their smooth, polished recording are really a joke. You can just feel the waste of resources dripping from their mass CD and merchandise production. And they sing so damn happily that when you listen to them, paving paradise actually seems kind of nice.

3. That Green Day song that was every school's graduation-montage background music a couple of years ago. You know, the one that's all "I hope you had the time of your life." And it has all violins like it's deep or something. I thought we were finished with the geological era in which we'd have to hear that song!

2. "Bathwater," and anything else from No Doubt's crappy-ass Return of Saturn album, which I purchased because it came out right after Tragic Kingdom and I thought it would be good, listened to twice, felt really depressed, and threw it in a box of my ex-girlfriend's stuff because I wanted to break up with it.

1. "I drive all dayyyy, ayyy... just to get to you." The most annoying thing about this one is that it gets stuck in my head. And it's damn repetitive. I don't even really know anything about this one, it just makes me sad.