10 Rock Bangers You Hear At Grocery Stores All The Time

A select handful of established and delightful tunes of rock history make up the unofficial but omnipresent canon of grocery store music. Originating between the 1960s and 1980s, these songs are well known to multiple generations for their initial and enduring popularity and because they were long ago deemed acceptable for use in retail settings. To think that rock music was once considered dangerous — but then it splintered into sub-genres, softened, and gained so much mainstream acceptance that the sounds once considered jagged and jarring became background noise emanating from rafters-mounted speakers.

To be a grocery store classic, a song has to be broadly familiar and agreeable to a huge swath of the population and feature at the very least the standard rock 'n' roll instrumentation of guitars, bass, and drums. It also has to have enough momentum to keep customers alert while not being too jarring for those outside the rock-age demographic or taste bracket. Based on circumstantial evidence gathered online and from Grunge staff, these are the rock songs you're very likely to hear the next time you head to the supermarket.

Apart from the Eagles' numerous hit ballads so soft and slight they barely even waft down from a high speaker to the shoppers toiling below, patrons may just hear "Heartache Tonight." A No. 1 smash from the Eagles' 1979 album "The Long Run," "Heartache Tonight" finds the band putting away the country and soft rock in favor of something that hits a little harder. It's a stomp-clap song about a night destined to end in romantic trouble, but it's upbeat enough to get people moving without ever getting too aggressive.

Daryl Hall and John Oates ruled the world of soft rock in the late 1970s and early 1980s, taking six songs to No. 1, with none of them bigger than 1982's "Maneater." Ominous but propulsive, "Maneater" warns of an attractive woman who breaks hearts for sport, layering hook on hook like a "whoa-oh here she comes" chorus, a blazing saxophone solo, and a bubbling bass line. It's as if it was purpose-built back in the '80s to be played in supermarkets forever.

We may need to rescind the "rock classic" status of Toto's "Africa" because it's been played to the point of overexposure. The No. 1 hit from 1982 can be quite dull, with a tempo too fast to make it a ballad and too slow to make it mid-tempo. When, in 2014, comedian Patton Oswalt described a scenario in which he was overcome by a sense of existential futility in a grocery store, he mentioned that "Africa" was playing because it had grown into such an identifiable standard of that environment.

Chicago was the rock band with the most Billboard hits of the '70s, and their sprawling jazz-rock band routinely provided unbridled joy. One of their most festive songs is also one of their most nostalgic: the 1972 smash "Saturday in the Park." It works for grocery store PA systems because the horns provide a little spurt of happiness to cut the drudgery of shopping. The lyrics, all about a magical summer day spent outdoors, give food buyers something more pleasant to think about beyond the task at hand.

Queen is one of the most popular rock bands of all time, but they're just a little too heavy and hard for a general audience not expecting it. And so, to offer a musical salve to grocery shoppers without getting too aggressive, stores are less likely to pump "Bohemian Rhapsody" or "We Will Rock You" than to play the lilting, gentle, and sweet paean to friendship, "You're My Best Friend." Only a No. 16 hit back in 1976, casual and forced listeners are likely already familiar with the song due to its frequent use in TV commercials.

A tongue-in-cheek love song that held the No. 1 spot the longest in 1976, "Silly Love Songs" is the definitive post-Beatles hit for Paul McCartney in his era leading the band Wings. In the lyrics, the singer-songwriter points out that "some people want to fill the world with silly love songs," pointing the finger squarely at himself. A love song about how nice love songs are, "Silly Love Songs" is ideal for mass consumption to a captive audience because it's just so likable. Also, McCartney's funky and jaunty bass is so high in the mix that it carries over any PA, putting a pep in the step of grocery store customers.

Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours" was such a blockbuster — it sold 21 million copies — that its smooth, crisply produced soft rock vibe became the sound of the late 1970s. Most boomers doing their grocery shopping in the 2020s have at least a working knowledge of the album, and so they might be quite pleased when they hear one of the monster record's bubbliest and most infectious tracks coming from a speaker 20 feet above their heads. And that's "You Make Loving Fun," sung in a high register with palpable sensuality by Fleetwood Mac's Christine McVie.

Another iconic moment in late 1970s restrained rock for grown-ups: the Doobie Brothers' "What a Fool Believes," a No. 1 hit that won the Grammy for Record of the Year. The Doobie Brothers, propelled by an attractive if goofy keyboard riff and the brisk, then soaring singing of Michael McDonald, never allow themselves to fully go off, placing "What a Fool Believes" in that grocery store-worthy sweet spot between upbeat and necessarily unexciting.

One element that makes a classic rock song worthy of making the grocery store playlist: It's the kind of thing that one can sing or hum along with the recording. "Bennie and the Jets," Elton John's 1974 pseudo-live chart-topper that praises a fictional, futuristic rock band, crawls along and demands the listener's attention as they're drawn in by all the clapping and the singer's frequent forays into high-note territory. Piano improvs and a fully falsetto outro make "Bennie and the Jets" irresistible and a welcome respite from cart-pushing and comparison shopping.

Crosby, Stills & Nash (and sometimes Young) are all exquisite folk rock musicians who perfected their genre and can harmonize better than most any other band. "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" is among their best-known songs, a No. 21 hit in 1969. But there are so many sections that most of the track disappears into the echoing recesses of a large grocery store. "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" serves as white noise until that really fun, multi-part "do-do-do-do-do, do-do-do-do" bit kicks in and improves the mood of everyone in earshot.