CVS BANGERS, a drugstore soundtrack for existential emptiness

August 31, 2023 2:46 PM

“I vividly remember being violently hungover on a cold winter morning in New England, passionate kisses playing loudly in the background as someone’s grandma slowly searched her purse for coupons, fluorescent lights inescapable as I prayed for a swift end to my existence. Hell is real and I’ve lived it.” Passionate Kisses: The Soundtrack at CVS, by Mitch Therieau (The Paris Review).

"Hell is other people’s music. But whose music is the CVS soundtrack?"

posted by MonkeyToes (21 comments total)

Not to be confused with the other CVS BANGERS, the tag of which I immediately heard in my head upon seeing the title of this post.
posted by sagc at 2:54 PM on August 31, 2023 [8 favorites]

I have an extremely strong sensory memory of hearing "Passionate Kisses" as Kmart in-store music as a kid in the 90s, so it's funny to me to hear of it having such an effect on others to this day!
posted by sigmagalator at 2:54 PM on August 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

I never got the Urban Outfitters mixtape, but someone at the mall handed me the 1992 Marithé + François Girbaud CD, though I don't know if they did any others. Check out these bangers.
posted by credulous at 3:11 PM on August 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

I love the original and the cover version. Brings me great memories. I would hate to work at a CVS though.
posted by elmono at 3:24 PM on August 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

I swear, I remain scarred from working at the CVS on Newbury Street in Boston during my college years in the early '90s. The music was awful.
posted by maryellenreads at 3:58 PM on August 31, 2023 [5 favorites]

I, and many of my high school friends, worked in various parts of food service at the local hospital. We were only allowed to have the lite-rock station on, which meant a weird little clutch of teenagers in the early 00's sedately jamming out to the catalog of Chicago,Bryan Adams, and Lionel Richie.
posted by nakedmolerats at 4:06 PM on August 31, 2023 [5 favorites]

CVS is a sanitized version of hell. I worked there for several months about a decade ago. It was, by a large margin, the worst job I’ve ever had—stressful, exhausting, unrewarding, and perfused with inescapable malaise. I actually fault that job for precipitating a minor existential crisis, which lead to all sorts of secondary problems.

You get real familiar with the playlist. There’s not enough songs to last the length of one shift, so you often hear them more than once each day. I don’t know if it’s the same playlist now as it was ten years ago, but many of those songs still fill me with dread. When I hear Kiss on My List by Hall & Oates, for instance, I flash back to the aisles of an empty store just before closing, drained after a long day, wondering what the hell I’m even doing with my life.
posted by dephlogisticated at 4:45 PM on August 31, 2023 [10 favorites]

One song on that playlist that I absolutely have heard in my local store is Paula Cole’s “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?”—the nineties adult-alternative equivalent of a power ballad, a spoken/sung tale of a marriage crumbling under the weight of too much gender.

I usually have earbuds in when I'm at the Walgreens, which is my most convenient hospital/gas station snack aisle, but that is a really excellent summation of that song I had not thought about it years.
posted by the primroses were over at 4:49 PM on August 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

"They fixed up the corner store
Like it was a nightclub
It's permanently disco

Everyone is dressed so oddly
I can't recognize them
I can't tell the staff from the customers"
posted by Windopaene at 4:55 PM on August 31, 2023 [9 favorites]

Somehow I'd never clocked that there was a popular cover of the Lucinda Williams song and I think just thought that the (sorry no offense I'm sure she's nice we all have tastes and preferences) lamer version I'd not-quite-hear in the background sometimes was like just a product of my mood or something.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 4:59 PM on August 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

I've had this conversation more than once recently about how CVSes vary widely by location. And it's not even necessarily "this is a CVS in a nice neighborhood" vs "this is a CVS in a bad neighborhood." It's just that they seem to be chaotic regardless. Some feel like mini department stores and are a great shopping experience. Others are just a chaotic mess where I feel lucky to find anything on the shelves.

I go to one near me for my vaccines, mostly because it's close. I do have to say it doesn't feel as messy as the Walgreens I also go to sometimes.
posted by edencosmic at 5:17 PM on August 31, 2023

Might as well title your article about sounds made by insects: “Introducing the Music of The Beatles!”

CVS Bangers is taken.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 5:21 PM on August 31, 2023

It's just that they seem to be chaotic regardless.

As far as sheer chaos goes, for me, nothing will ever beat any Rite Aid location (except maybe pre-Walgreens-era Duane Reade).
posted by May Kasahara at 5:22 PM on August 31, 2023

Sorry, but the Hennessy Youngman erasure in this piece is fucking bullshit. You don't get to reduce the many, many hours of care that went into more or less inventing the genre (10 years ago!) and write it off as "a Spotify playlist of “CVS BANGERS,” apparently sourced from hard-won knowledge" just because people who read The Paris Review might not know any better. Boo this man.
posted by dhammond at 5:28 PM on August 31, 2023 [8 favorites]

Many years ago, I did assembly line work for a few months in a place where, I imagine, the radio station argument had long since been decided, and during the 3-11 shift, that meant Delilah was on.
8 hours a day of Lite FM, I don't think it matters if you're in a pharmacy or a factory.
I started coming up with the darkest possible secret backstories for e. g. Whitney Houston songs.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 6:19 PM on August 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

Thank you, dhammond, for your comment about Hennessey Youngman.

Eh, a sentence in the first paragraph turned me off from reading the rest, so I'll just leave it for now. 🤓
posted by AnyUsernameWillDo at 10:11 PM on August 31, 2023

Many years ago, I did assembly line work for a few months in a place where, I imagine, the radio station argument had long since been decided, and during the 3-11 shift, that meant Delilah was on.
8 hours a day of Lite FM I worked at a place like that in the 90's I got fired for singing along with my alternate lyrics after I could not stand hearing New York,New York the 100th time.
posted by boilermonster at 12:10 AM on September 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

Heh. So, elevator music notwithstanding, the one thing I miss most about the US is CVS. It's a weird flex, but "big pharmacy / general store that has all the crap you didn't know you needed" is one of the things the US does best. It might even be the thing we do best (other than aircraft carriers). Don't believe me? Go to any random country and try to buy a spiral notebook or a pack of safety pins. Or any random crap you never even think about. Dollars to donuts you'll get it wrong on your first try — or maybe even your first couple tries — and you'll have to ask a local where to actually buy the damn thing.

Just one example — if you want a pack of safety pins in Argentina, you have to buy them at a sewing supply store. I know I know I know, "hurf durf stupid estadiounidense expects things to be the same in every country and doesn't want to go to the cute local mom-and-pop specialty stores" but I promise you, it ain't like that. It's not like sewing supply shops are especially common there, and you just have to walk a few blocks. Sewing supply stores are really no more common in Buenos Aires than they are in NYC. It's just that the average Argentinian safety pin connoisseur has to deal with more hardship and inconvenience in their safety pin purchase than their estadiounidense counterpart. Either that, or maybe Argentinians just don't buy very many safety pins?

Come to think of it, I don't think we buy a whole lot of them either. We just always have them. At the bottom of the junk drawer. And we never really think of where they come from. Hey wait a minute, how is it even economical for CVS to carry them, an item we buy so seldom? How does this whole thing work anyway???

Bottom line, CVS is awesome. And most of the things we think the US is good at is stuff other countries are good at — or better. But I think CVS is our unique special ability. Kinda like Mongols and horses.
posted by panama joe at 12:37 AM on September 1, 2023 [5 favorites]

I really love analyzing music in stores and restaurants. For me, hearing a song I like in a restaurant or business improves the experience, but a bad one doesn't diminish unless it's several bad songs in a row. And the music played in commercial places is actually pretty different across the US. Less variable in chain places of course, but not always.

I also think its odd when people judge lyrics of songs played in commercial places - like Rod Stewart is extra sad, but would lyrics of people who are happy be any better? Especially in a pharmacy? I don't think so. What about hip-hop, where way too many of the songs have a verse about bragging they can buy nice stuff. Want to hear that while arguing over stupid random prescription drug pricing? I think not.

I actually heard a song in a restaurant the other day that was way better than the meal. Been meaning to do an 'ask' about it, because I guess it's too new to be googleable, and iphone Shazam is useless unless it's a big pop hit.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:41 AM on September 1, 2023

Ctrl-F Hennessey Youngman. Nothing. How dare they. The GALL.
posted by RobertFrost at 8:54 AM on September 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

CVS is the negative image of the club or the theater. There is no coordinated pulse of the crowd, just individual people shuffling around. The music is inflicted on you against your will rather than offered up as a kind of gift or “experience.” But the existential emptiness of this setting allows the music to sound with a special liveliness. In the wasteland, you can better hear what the pop song wants from you. The pop song demands your investment—positive, negative, ambivalent, it doesn’t care. It refuses to be ignored, and it won’t settle for a minor role as a manipulator of moods. In the harsh fluorescent light, we can hear the pop song say, “Give me what I deserve, cause it’s my right.” Who are we to refuse?

I LOVE THIS and it feels like a killer monologue option.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 4:42 AM on September 2, 2023