mental_floss magazine
SUBSCRIBE >
GIFT SUBSCRIPTIONS >
DIGITAL SUBSCRIPTIONS >
subscriber services >
Sure, they still play music in elevators — and in waiting rooms and shopping malls and just about everywhere else these days, it seems — but it’s not exactly elevator music, AKA Muzak, that we’re hearing. Gone are “Girl from Ipanema” and spine-tinglingly bad re-instrumentations of Beatles songs; instead, we’re assaulted with the same top 40 hits, lyrics and all, that we hear constantly on the radio and on TV. Like Kleenex and Hoover, Muzak is the name of a corporation than has come to represent and entire substrata of products, or in this case, music. But the Muzak corporation, founded in 1934 and indeed responsible for most of those canned “Ipanema” covers, has rebranded itself entirely; it now focuses on selecting and playlisting existing recordings.
Given Muzak’s face-lift, I figured I’d be safe from that grim reminder of inevitable death which confronted my parents and their generation each time they heard a favorite song from their youth played by an orchestra of French horns while they had their teeth cleaned. Unfortunately, I hadn’t counted on Paul Anka:
Once upon a time, when I was a high school senior, my group of friends used the term “becoming a Muzak subscription salesman” as shorthand for becoming the ultimate drudge/sellout. It was a fate worse than selling insurance. At least insurance is ultimately useful.
posted by Larriann on 5-21-2007 at 11:58 am
I recently had a chat with a Muzak salesman; the company I work for moved to a new building, and I was tasked with office music and “music on hold”. Muzak turned out to be one of the costliest options out there… Installation fee, equipment fee, monthly subscription fee… Gah.
We ended up buying a pile of royalty-free music, loading it up on an unused Mac running Audion, and running audio patch cables to the inputs for the two systems. (Relatively) cheap, simple, and easy to manage.
posted by Dave on 5-21-2007 at 9:54 pm
For anybody who’s as sickened as I am by this Paul Anka butchering, check out The Bad Plus. They do crazy free-jazz versions of Smells Like Teen Spirit, Heart of Glass, Immigrant Song and tons of other classics. As an added benefit, they don’t suck.
posted by Andrew on 5-22-2007 at 1:52 am
That song is my ringback tone (Paul Anka doing Smells Like Teen Spirit). Picked it for the sheer ridiculousness of it. It reminds me of Richard Cheese.
posted by Sarah on 6-19-2008 at 10:00 am
When I was in high school, I worked in a sandwich shop. We played music in there (original versions of songs, not smooth jazz remixes), but I’m not sure if it was from Muzak or some other company. The collection of music that it would play was so random and weird. One minute they’d play Billy Joel, the next minute Shakira. Also, whoever chose the music was particularly fond of ’80s-prom-slow-dance-like songs. I even had a few customers complain to me about how bad the music was over the 2 years or so I worked there. It was actually quite hilarious.
posted by Sandy on 6-19-2008 at 12:19 pm