Jill Murray

Is there anything lamer than the music at Starbucks?

Remember, like, ten years ago when it was fun to talk about how creepy it is that Starbucks has this mandatory music that can’t be controlled by staff? Remember when that was sooo corporate and evil?

That was before we knew they were getting into the music biz. Now its just dull and backwards-revisionally obvious. I miss the old days when coffee was coffee and HMV had a return policy.

I know there’s a lot of hatred out there for Starbucks all around. My own feelings for the chain work on a sliding scale. The closer I am to home, the less likely I am to go there. But if I’m in some far flung outpost (say Siberia, or North of Bloor) wondering what I’m supposed to eat, surrounded by burger chains, I’ll go grab a soy latte at Starbucks. That, to me, is Starbucks fulfilling the very best of its potential.

I do occasionally find myself far from home in search of cafeine and a place to work and that means I must sometimes put up with the entire Starbucks environment, universally bland, yaktacular music selection included.

As if the whole universal schlock issue wasn’t enough, they somehow even manage to pick the worst tracks available from artists I like, or used to like, so the whole time I’m listening, I have to think about how bad it sucks that that one yaky, yaky song from an otherwise decent band was ever recorded.

And they can’t just stop there. Oh no. Just as I start to get used to the yak track, and maybe relax, and start to think “Oh well, at least it’s Dean Martin, and not Diana Krall” they’ll cut the track off in the middle to play whatever girly-man soft rock singer-songwriter is currently being pushed during commercial breaks on Canadian idol, and then try to make that mix into some chou-chou nouveau-French chanson, as if to say “we’re not only into safejazz and saferock– we also dig saferock En Français. That last beat was totally electronic. See? We have variety. We’re downright kooky. ”

It’s no wonder everyone in Starbucks sits there working on their animation projects and brilliant unpublished second novels with their iPods cranked to nine million.

What I wouldn’t give to drag a big-ass old-fashioned, held-together-by-tape ghetto blaster in there, clear some tables and do a six step or two. Maybe I’d bring along a friend to do some waving or something, too.

lameness