Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Willie and Walmart.....

Willie Nelson has a new regae CD out (yes, you read that right). I heard a bit of it on the radio and had to laugh. I love Willie, but I have no idea what he was thinking when he did this. That brings me to my next topic of discussion.

The front of Willie's new CD features something that he's notorius for....marajuana leaves. So every store that sells his CD has this cover.....well almost every store. What's the one store that they made a separate cover for? You guessed it. Walmart. Walmart's version features palm trees instead of marajuana leaves. I guess Willie's label made an exception for Walmart since a bulk of CDs must be sold there. I had no idea that Walmart was so "holier than thou". Apparently, they have refused to sell CDs with explicit lyrics in songs before. The first person that I think of when I think of explicit lyrics is Eminem. So I went to Walmart's website and did a search. They do sell his CDs, but they are "edited". I guess Walmart always gets its way.

The other week, CNBC was running a two hour special on Walmart. It was really interesting. The part that made me laugh the most was these people that protest putting a Walmart in their town. Like they're doing any good? Walmart is the most powerful store in the world. They showed how much of an excellent market they have over in China. I had no idea that there were Walmarts in China! There were these Chinese women doing their little Walmart chant. It was cute!

Bottom line: Don't mess with Walmart.

1 comment:

Jen said...

I did not know there were Wal-Marts in China.

I did know about the editing. I made a comment about it in a Wal-Mart store once and got reamed by an employee. What I don't understand is how they can refuse to sell explicit CDs but they don't demand edited movies? They could only sell the TBS version of every movie, if they decided they wanted to, but they don't...so why go after CDs?

Willie and reggae, huh?