Lost in the Supermarket

Type: Brano

Author: The Clash

Release date: 1979

Genre: Pop

Language: English

Lost in the Supermaket is a song by the English music group The Clash, featured as the eighth track within the album London Calling released in 1979.

The song, sung by Mick Jones, was written by Joe Strummer , who confessed during a 1999 interview that the idea for writing the song flashed through his mind following a singular incident. One day he was inside The International” supermarket, located between 471 and 473 Kings Road, a short walk from where he lived in the late 1970s, when he happened to be greatly stunned by the lights and colors of the department store.

The song is about unbridled consumerism, which generates a sense of confusion and bewilderment in shoppers , as is highlighted by the refrain, “I am completely lost in the supermarket, I can no longer shop happily.” The consumerist model, making use of advertising, creates nonexistent needs and false problems in order to sell the solution to shoppers: discontent, unhappiness and dissatisfaction are generated, which can be remedied simply by buying the right product. Customers in supermarkets become consumers, identical to each other and with flat and empty dispositions, as emphasized by the verse “I came here for this special offer, a guaranteed personality.”

The consumerism condemned in the musical piece is devouring the life of the citizen of the capitalist world who, from a young age, is excluded and alienated from society itself, because-as the author puts it-“more than born I happened to be, no one seemed to notice me.”

The piece, at the same time, also offers a Insight into the sad life in the slums of suburban London, drawn from Strummer’s autobiographical memories of his childhood – “we had a hedge behind the house in the suburbs, beyond which I could not see” – and from the childhood of guitarist Mick Jones, who through stanzas such as “I could hear the people who lived above me screaming and fighting frighteningly” e “children in the hallway and pipes in the walls make noise that keeps me company” succeeds in making the listener experience the plight of those who grew up with their mother and grandmother in the basement of a suburban apartment building. Life in public housing is characterized by emptiness and loneliness, often filled by television – “I’m always tuned in, I see all the programs” – and creates a situation of alienation, in which the citizen feels distant from reality, so much so that he falls back into the most immoderate consumerism, made up of unnecessary purchases and point collections: “I save points from tea packets, I took my giant collection of disco songs.” The statement “I empty a bottle and feel a little freer” then gives an idea of how in this scenario of degradationalcoholism reigns supreme, constituting both a way out and an outlet.

The song is thus a clear and strong critique of the modern consumerism raging in society as the cause of worsening living conditions for those who are already in a difficult situation.