Scott Kara: Shop Music

It's 3pm on a Tuesday and I'm on a mission: to find out just what passes as acceptable retail listening these days. You see, some bloke down in Dunedin took offence to his shopping soundtrack in Farmers at the weekend, complaining about a song he felt contained sexually explicit lyrics.

So I headed to Queen St to see if things were any better north of the Bombays.

My impromptu poll started well at Bond & Bond, who made its customers strut their stuff to Billie Jean, which has easily one of the best bass beats ever written.

Then, just a few doorways away my aural music pleasure turned to pain with Max churning out some nondescript oonst oonst nonsense. I couldn't even bring myself to ask what it was.

Shoe shop Wild Pair wasn't much better, with a mongrel song that managed to merge Lou Reed's Walk On the Wildside with the Rolling Stones You Can't Always Get What You Want while some guy rapped over the top, and Supre - the fluoro factory for all things teen and tween - had the latest Ministry of Sound Sessions blaring. "We put on whatever CD we want," said the young shop assistant adamantly.

Just along the street I felt for the girls in Lippy who are subjected to stock CDs they have to play. They must have to play them at a certain volume judging by the way I had to yell to be heard over the wailing din of the Veronicas.

And just down the road, Mag Nation, which has been known to play anything from nasty and dastardly gangsta rap to the banshee yelp of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, was a letdown with some forlorn orchestral string background music.

With that, my 50m poll was complete. For the record, on my short jaunt I heard not one swear word nor any lyrics of a sexual nature.

The song that got the Dunedin Bible teacher and historian so up in arms was I Don't Think So by American singer Kelis which goes something like this: "You wanna get in my pants - I don't think so". And no, he wasn't undies shopping at the time. The song was playing in the toy section. Fair enough then. There's enough smut around on TV without hearing it while you're in the toy section shopping for the latest My Little Pony, or whatever 10-year-olds are into these days.

Still, parents of young children everywhere must be waiting warily for the answer to the more pressing question about what exactly is a disco stick that the naughty Lady Gaga keeps banging on about on the radio and TV in her song Love Game.

It turns out, according to the Otago Daily Times, Farmers has acted on the incident and reviewed its in-house music. Ironically, to stop unsuitable music being played in store - you know the stuff, Snoop "The Sleazy" Dogg, possibly Lady Gaga, and Usher (the bloke who proclaimed over and over that he wanted to have sex in the club) - the company changed to a centrally controlled system four years ago.

A colleague used to work at a retail chain which also had stock CDs that the shops would play. She reckons "the six years out-of-date pop" is painful and listening to the "inoffensive rubbish" maddening when you are subjected to it repeatedly throughout the day.

So chances are, unless you're off to the tattoo parlour or adult store, most of the music you're likely to hear in shops is sanitised for your pleasure.

But from my little stroll down Queen St, I can safely say most of the sonic trash blasting out of shop doorways is far more offensive than the lyrical content of I Don't Think So and Love Game.