Popshopping is a series put out by the wonderfully-named German label Crippled Dick Hot Wax, who specialize in mining the vast, forgotten archives of ephemeral music from days gone by. I’m a sucker for old commercial jingles; I have a CD full of old 50s American jingles espousing the finer qualities of Muriel cigarettes, Chevrolet cars and Ballantine beer. So imagine my amazement at stumbling across Popshopping, which features music from German commercials and promotional flexidiscs in the 60s and 70s. Unlike the American jingles, many of the tracks on Popshopping are full-fledged songs. Between that and the mostly German lyrics and monologues, the decontextualization of the jingles from their original products is made more complete; you really have no idea what the hell’s going on, and some of the songs are so catchy that you can easily forget their commercial origins.

The only scary thing about this series of compilations is the thought that in the year 2030, we’ll have to face the future equivalent of mod hipsters toting around retro commercial compilations with “Da Da Da” and “Days Go By” on them.