The mall songs playing while your parents shopped: Do you remember these?
There was a specific sound to the American shopping mall in its golden era, roughly 1975 through the early 1990s. It came from overhead speakers, slightly too loud to ignore and slightly too soft to really listen to, floating above the tile floors and the smell of Orange Julius. It was almost always adult contemporary, the most carefully engineered music that mainstream pop culture had ever produced.
Your parents shopped to it. You trailed behind them or sat on a bench. It entered your memory without you noticing, and now, forty years later, the opening bars of any of these songs can send you back to a Saturday afternoon in a mall that no longer exists.
People still argue about which songs defined the format.
On Reddit, a discussion about the most quintessential pop songs of their era drew dozens of nominations for classic retail tracks. Among the most emphatic was a user who singled out Celine Dion’s “That’s the Way It Is” as the definitive iconic retail song. The 1999 hit was written by Max Martin and hit the top ten in over a dozen countries, remaining one of the most immediately recognizable sounds of the late mall era.
Image credit: Wiki Commons
“Sailing” by Christopher Cross (1980)
Few songs embody the adult contemporary ideal more completely than “Sailing”. Christopher Cross won three Grammys for it at the 1981 ceremony, including Record of the Year, beating out Pink Floyd’s The Wall and Frank Sinatra. Cross has said he never thought it would be a hit because it was too introspective. That floating quality was precisely what made it perfect for department store overhead speakers.
Image credit: Steven Miller / Wikimedia Commons
“Arthur’s theme (best that you can do)” by Christopher Cross (1981)
The following year, Cross won the Oscar for Best Original Song for “Arthur’s Theme” from the Dudley-Moore comedy Arthur, co-written with Burt Bacharach and Carole Bayer Sager. The famous line about being caught between the moon and New York City came from a lyric Bayer Sager and Peter Allen had written years earlier. The song reached number 1 on the Hot 100 in October 1981.
Image Credit: University of Houston / Wikimedia Commons.
“Islands in the stream” by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton (1983)
The Bee Gees wrote the song for Marvin Gaye. When that collaboration did not materialize, Barry Gibb brought it to Kenny Rogers, who was recording an entire album produced by the Gibb brothers. Rogers and Dolly Parton recorded it together, and the result reached number 1 on the Hot 100, the Country chart, and the Adult Contemporary chart simultaneously. Rogers later told a story about impersonating himself at a Las Vegas impressionist show, performing the song with a Parton lookalike, and being told he was a lot better than the real guy.
Image credit: Wiki Commons
“Hello” by Lionel Richie (1984)
No song had more mileage in the overhead speakers of the average American shopping mall than “Hello”. It reached number 1 on the Hot 100 and spent three weeks there. The music video, featuring a love story between a blind woman and a theater teacher, became one of the most memorable clips of the MTV era. Richie’s album Can’t Slow Down won the Grammy for Album of the Year in 1984.
Image Credit: DepositPhotos.com.
“I just called to say I love you” by Stevie Wonder (1984)
The single won the Oscar for Best Original Song in 1985. When Wonder accepted the award, he dedicated it to Nelson Mandela. The South African government banned his music in response. The song topped the Hot 100, the Adult Contemporary chart, and the R&B chart simultaneously, staying at the peak of each for three weeks. In the UK, it remains Motown’s best-selling single ever.
Image credit: Miguel Paricio / iStock
Takeaway
These songs were not playing for you. They were playing for the adults in the room. But they got into you anyway, through the ceiling tiles and the fluorescent lights, and they have never really left. Which of these five do you still hear on a Saturday afternoon?
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