Mick Jones Reveals Joe Strummer Wrote Lost in the Supermarket

“I wasn’t born so much as I fell out,” Mick Jones sings on “Lost in the Supermarket,” one of the standout tracks from the Clash double album London Calling released in 1979.

While listeners often assumed the members of the punk outfit wrote their own vocal parts, guitarist Mick Jones did not pen the wistful lyrics for this particular track. Singer Joe Strummer actually wrote the words with Jones’s adolescence in mind, according to an interview Jones gave to journalist Ari Surdoval.

“He wrote it with me in mind, which is really a touching thing,” Jones told Surdoval in 2008. “Everybody thinks I wrote that one, because I sing it, but Joe wrote it for me. It’s not completely accurate, though. We didn’t have a hedge,” he added with a laugh.

The song features lines about growing up in the suburbs, including “Nobody seemed to notice me / We had a hedge back home in the suburbs / Over which I never could see.” Those suburban references later caught the attention of Ben Folds, who covered the track for the soundtrack to the 2006 animated film Over the Hedge.

Strummer and Jones shared a songwriting partnership that often contrasted sharply in style. Strummer typically handled overtly political tracks like “White Riot” and “Clampdown” with a gruff snarl, while Jones emerged as a melodist focusing on personal relationships with a higher, brighter voice on singles such as “Train in Vain” and “Should I Stay or Should I Go.”

Other deep cuts from the band’s catalog carry their own distinct production histories. “What’s My Name,” featured on the 1977 self-titled debut, holds the distinction of being the only Clash song with a writing credit for founding guitarist Keith Levene, who later formed Public Image Ltd and died in 2022.

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