1. 60 Ft Dolls, "Happy Shopper" (available on The Big 3)
The 1995 debut single by these former next-big-things stacks martial drums and towering riffs like so many wrapped packages, while bandleader Richard Parfitt shouts in his thick Welsh accent about a transsexual prostitute trapped in a suburban nightmare. "The working class can kiss my ass / If the price is right," Parfitt bellows, just before repeating "come on down" over and over, as both a double-entendre and an anti-consumerist taunt.
2. Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers, "Rockin' Shopping Center" (available on Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers)
It isn't so bad when Richman wanders into a shopping mall where all the brands are different from what he's used to, because our man can sympathize with the mall itself, and its attempts to be hip and cool even while salesmen keep slapping dorky logos over every available surface. "If I were a shopping center I'd sure be embarrassed," Richman sings. "I know I'd never get a date with some cute little building, like from Paris."
3. The Clash, "Lost In The Supermarket" (available on London Calling)
Usually assumed to be Mick Jones' words, the lyrics to "Lost In The Supermarket" were written by Joe Strummer for Jones to sing—a testament to how well Strummer knew (and could mimic) his partner. Starting out from a childlike perspective, the song uses supermarkets as a metaphor for the shop of horrors that is society: full of echoes, silence, isolation, and helplessness. By the end of the song, Jones—now older, lonelier, and clutching at "coupons from packets of tea"—has come full circle, his misery recycled like so much plastic packaging. "Lost In The Supermarket" wasn't the only dissection of consumerism on London Calling (note the "I went to the market to realize my soul" line from "Rudie Can't Fail"), but it is the album's most poignant.
4. They Might Be Giants, "I Am A Grocery Bag" (available on NO!)
Yes, but how does it feel to be the object being used for shopping rather than the shopper? They Might Be Giants has the answer in this 30-second ditty about things you might find inside a paper sack at the supermarket. The complete list: Juices, muffins, pasta, cheese, milk, biscuits, cocktail sauce, salsa, pickles, organic grains, fresh coffee, bagels, pudding, soap, baby formula and ham. Thank you, and come again.
5. The Jam, "Shopping" (available on Gold)
Like "Lost In The Supermarket," "Shopping" drips with the guilt of lower-middle-class punk kids who suddenly have all the money in the world to waste—and nothing of substance to waste it on. Paul Weller deflates the Mod movement's fashion-fueled materialism with disillusioned verses like "As I flit from shop window to window / I'm trying to pick up a friendly bargain / but it's not like the adverts all make out / and there's no one to greet you as a friend"—backed by a sighing, minor-key waltz that predicts the jazzy soul of his work in The Style Council. (Yes, the band that named an album Our Favourite Shop.)
6. Fountains Of Wayne, "The Valley Of Malls" (available on Utopia Parkway)
Only Adam Schlesinger and Chris Collingwood could see the caravan of RVs that frequently populate mall parking lots, and imagine what it's like to be behind the wheel of one of those behemoths, on the way from suburb to suburb, scoping out the sales, then getting back on the road for a never-ending stretch of chain restaurants and gas-station snack breaks.
7. Dolly Parton, "The Bargain Store" (available on The Essential Dolly Parton)
Here's shopping as metaphor, as Parton explains how her life is "like unto a bargain store," because she might have what you're looking for "if you don't mind the fact that all the merchandise is used." Among that merchandise? A broken heart and broken dreams, ready to trade for a future. Parton guarantees satisfaction, but frankly, she sounds like the kind of fixer-upper that will take a lot more work than she's worth.
8. Bruce Springsteen, "Used Cars" (available on Nebraska)
Over a muted acoustic guitar, Springsteen tells a wry, bitter first-person story about a boy who watches his father dickering over a used car, then driving his family home. Dad's stewing over the lousy deal he got, Mom's sitting quietly, his sister's obliviously blowing the horn, and the neighbors are coming out to check out (and quietly scoff at) the not-so-new set of wheels. The narrator is so embarrassed that he's already figured out his main goal in life: "I ain't ever going to ride in no used car again." Thus another American dream is born, cast in green and etched with dollar signs.
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