Musical association

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Whilst on a train at the weekend, I suddenly started humming "Fergus Sings the Blues" by Deacon Blue, a song I hadn't heard for ages. I couldn't think why, until I glanced at my girlfriend's bottle of Highland Spring water and noticed the label - it was from the Campsie Hills and I thought "oh yeah"...recalling the lines "To the Campsies over Christmas/I still dream of Memphis".

So...does anyone else suffer from this bizarre sort of subconscious musical association and are they freaked out by it, like I am?

― MarkH, Thursday, 12 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I never really understood that Ricky Ross line. Possibly I still don't. But you've gone a little way towards clarification. Thanks.

Search: 'The World Is Lit By Lightning'.

― the pinefox, Thursday, 12 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

This happens to me ALL THE TIME. Generally I find that the masterpiece in question = "Birdseye potato woffles/are woffley versatile" or equiv.jingle-gem.

― mark s, Thursday, 12 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

My memories (of songs, but of everything really) are usually triggered not by reading a label and associating, or smelling a familiar smell, or whatever, but just getting a sense of being back in that original memory, for whatever reason. I think usually no good reason (i.e. the room I'm in looks nothing like the one I remember, I'm not in the same social situation, different music is playing, different weather, whatever). So, different in that respect. But otherwise I find myself thinking of old songs all the time, then realizing the memories they went with, apparently because I had just been triggered to remember those memories.

― Josh, Thursday, 12 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

i have a constant protean soundtrack in my head.

― anthony, Thursday, 12 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I really believe that the unconscious is structured by pop music. Nothing ever comes into your head by accident, there's always a message there about your true feelings. My father had a stroke last year, and lost the power of speech for a while. Now he's totally recovered, but he says the thing that still worked, when all other language was failing him, was lines of poetry he'd memorised. He started with those and worked his way back to speech.

You may think your relationship is good, but if lines from 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' start coming into your head, it's doomed.

Just think how expensive it would be if we had to pay for synchronisation licenses for the soundtrack to the melodrama of our inner lives!

― Momus, Thursday, 12 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Then why do I have the theme from the Magic Roundabout stuck in my head most days?

― DG, Thursday, 12 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Could it be that, subconsciously, you consider your life a fairground farce, as repetitive and circular as a stuck mechanical pipe organ? Do you feel yourself hemmed in, surrounded by insane animals and puppets? Are you dizzy? What drugs are you currently taking?

― Momus, Friday, 13 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I have When my love walks down the street but my marraige has been liek a nice box of late.

― anthony, Friday, 13 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Good Heavens, Momus seems to know my life inside out. Do you live in the cupboard under the stairs or something?

― DG, Friday, 13 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I arrive in one place, survey it quickly, utter some weird remark, then boing off somewhere else. BOING!

― Momus, Saturday, 14 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

It's just the 'insane puppets' bit...have you met my family?

― DG, Saturday, 14 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

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Musical association - scary!