I was in a small coop store over the Christmas holiday, when You Can’t hurry Love by the Supremes came on. Every fibre of my being cried out to dance to this golden oldie so I discreetly tapped my feet as I waited for my favourite bit. Another shopper caught my eye and boogied across the aisle to the parsnips, and we smiled at this moment of middle-aged complicity.
Streamed music is available for every kind of shopping experience and the power of supermarket music to make housewives linger over the avocados is well known. I am the world’s most desperate lingerer. Many a time have I pondered mozzarella purchases to the strains of Billy Paul singing Me and Mrs Jones/ we got a thing going on, or lurked in the narrow aisles of West Side Market to Rocket Man. One Italian supermarket I popped into after dropping off the kids at school always played This Old Heart of mine ( is weak for you) at 8.10. Of course the best playlist is at Blanco’s restaurant, Port Talbot, where today I heard Dusty Springfield singing ‘Spooky’.
My top supermarket tracks, in no particular order:
1. Baker Street ( Esselunga, Italy)
2. This Old Heart of mine ( Conad , Italy)
3. Dancing in the Street, (Morrisons, Port Talbot)
4. Love Grows where my Rosemary goes ( West Side Market, Broadway)
5. Rehab ( Esselunga)
And if this dreamy number is piped out, I am in seventh heaven for three minutes.