do you ever get a tune caught in your head, only to later realize that the associated lyrics are pertinent to your real-life situation?

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...indicating some kind of pre-cognitive mode of association?

current example: pink floyd, "wish you were here" (a song i don't know well at all and have no real history with)

earlier example: ray charles, "i got a woman"

i suspect this phenomenon--if indeed it's a phenomenon and not just my own idiosyncrasy--could tell us something about how music works-- as information processed by our brains that is.

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Tuesday, 15 November 2005 05:02 (twenty years ago)

I often catch myself humming "You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman" without realizing it when I'm trying on my gf's clothing.

― Hurting (Hurting), Tuesday, 15 November 2005 05:09 (twenty years ago)

that's a great answer; i hope it's true.

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Tuesday, 15 November 2005 05:09 (twenty years ago)

how music works or how memory works? or how lyrics work?

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 15 November 2005 06:44 (twenty years ago)

i quite often find myself singing certain lyrics that are appropriate, like 'call me' if i'm about to make a phonecall, or friday on my mind if i'm organising what i'm doing on the weekend. i think this is partly habit, partly association of the lyrical phrases with whatever activity i'm thinking of.

― gem (trisk), Tuesday, 15 November 2005 07:00 (twenty years ago)

I'm currently in the process of discovering The Fall and I've been walking around humming the bass line to "Dr Buck's Letter" for a couple of days now.

Last night when a friend pointed out something to me I reacted like a dick (Oh f*ck off, I don't need this right now, ok? thx.) and half an hour later I found out the lyrics to that Fall track are:

I lost my temper with a friend
Mocked him and treated him with rudeness
And though I tried to make amends
Feel I miss him and walk a dark corridor

― StanM (StanM), Tuesday, 15 November 2005 07:56 (twenty years ago)

I once woke up with all the words to Portishead's "Glory Box" in my head even though I didn't own any of their CDs.

― Matt Sephton (emsef), Tuesday, 15 November 2005 09:49 (twenty years ago)

So what does it mean that I've had God Save The Queen stuck in my head all morning, then?

― Lady Totteringby-Gently (kate), Tuesday, 15 November 2005 09:51 (twenty years ago)

Which one?

On "Blockbusters" once, the question was "What is the third line of "God Save the Queen" and I immediately answered "They made you a moron"" which got no points. Just as well I wasn't actually on the telly.

― mark grout (mark grout), Tuesday, 15 November 2005 10:13 (twenty years ago)

No, no, not the Sex Pistols. That would be alright. I have the actual national anthem stuck in my head. Though I think the Sex Pistols might just get it out.

― Lady Totteringby-Gently (kate), Tuesday, 15 November 2005 10:14 (twenty years ago)

So what does it mean that I've had God Save The Queen stuck in my head all morning, then?

You're secretly Belgian? (today is Dynasty Day in Belgium)

― StanM (StanM), Tuesday, 15 November 2005 10:19 (twenty years ago)

this happens to me a frightening amount

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Tuesday, 15 November 2005 10:50 (twenty years ago)

i got this so bad with 'chinese rocks'

― Theorry Henry (Enrique), Tuesday, 15 November 2005 11:18 (twenty years ago)

This has happened to me before. I'm trying to remember a specific example. But I agree that it sheds a potentially interesting light on the inner workings of the mind: a "precognitive" process or what Freud would have called the unconscious. Whatever you call it, the part of the mind that starts us humming a particular tune is not directly available to consciousness. I don't consciously choose to start humming a particular tune, it just pops into my head - somewhat like a dream pops into one's head while sleeping. Usually I don't even consciously note when I begin humming it, because it happens when I'm consciously distracted by other things - thinking about something else, or half-awake. There is a moment when I become fully aware that I am humming something and think about what it is. Only at this stage do I realize the connection from the tune to the lyrics to a phrase that bears a connection to my current situation or a recent event. This in many ways similar to the analysis of dreams that Freud lays out in his books. It's hard of course to study this objectively, since the nature of the connection from the lyrics to my present reality is often poetic or metaphorical and open to subjective interpretation.

― o. nate (onate), Tuesday, 15 November 2005 17:46 (twenty years ago)

it just stands to reason, if you know 25,000 songs then there is a good likelihood that just about any situation will force an association

― The Obligatory Sourpuss (Begs2Differ), Tuesday, 15 November 2005 18:47 (twenty years ago)

whoa - this happened to me JUST LAST WEEK! it was life-affirming!

― petesmith (plsmith), Tuesday, 15 November 2005 19:13 (twenty years ago)

it just stands to reason, if you know 25,000 songs then there is a good likelihood that just about any situation will force an association

most of us probably know a good deal more than 25,000 songs. (i somehow didn't believe this when i first typed it, but then i noted that i have at least 8,000 songs on my computer alone.)

i don't think this phenomenon is a matter of my drawing a connection between my life and the lyrics after the fact. that happens often enough. i think there is a definite precognitive activity happening here; the lyrics are in my memory, but it's the tune that surfaces first.

this suggests to me that in some ways music can function as a way of recalling information, roughly analogous to the way a visually arresting advertisement might help you to recall the information provided in the advertisement. the recollection of patterns (which is what music is, patterns upon patterns) provides a means of recollected meaning.

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Tuesday, 15 November 2005 21:33 (twenty years ago)

i suppose this should be obvious from such things as commercial jingles. but i think it's worth remembering how basic this process this is to all music with lyrics--there's a certain level of arbitrariness there, with memorable music serving to set off lyrics. of course the music can itself function to create or inflect meaning but at a certain level it's like a memory-device.

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Tuesday, 15 November 2005 21:36 (twenty years ago)

i think this rhymes with freud's notion of the unconscious but i've never been compelled with freud's overall notion of the functioning of the unconscious and its relationship to conscious activity (i.e. freud's apprehension of the unconscious seems fundamentally hermeneutic).

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Tuesday, 15 November 2005 21:38 (twenty years ago)

When I'm doing something really monotonous, "Against the Wind" by Bob Seger will occasionally pop into my head and make matters worse.

― darin (darin), Tuesday, 15 November 2005 21:51 (twenty years ago)

This whole phenomenon raises a number of interesting questions:

For instance, what about people who claim that they don't listen to the lyrics? Would they still have this experience? Do you have to give a certain amount of attention to the lyrics for this to happen, or would it happen anyway, even if you're not aware of listening to the lyrics? If you have an emotional reaction while listening to the lyrics, does it make it more likely that you will later recall them in this way?

What about people who are tone-deaf or have no sense of pitch? Would they still experience this phenomenon?

Is the association of melody with language deeply ingrained in the linguistic apparatus of the mind? Could this be why inflection can be such a crucial communicator of meaning, and why the same words can mean wholly different things depending on how they are spoken?

I'm no expert on Freud's theory of dreams and the unconscious, but I just thought the parallels were worth noting. Clearly the pre-cognitive process involved in creating a dream scenario (what Freud called the "dream work") is considerably more involved than the relatively simple process of recalling a tune.

― o. nate (onate), Tuesday, 15 November 2005 22:08 (twenty years ago)

I don't know how it works but it happens to me all the time. Just two days ago I got back together with my boyfriend and realised I had "I Only Wanna Be With You" by Samantha Fox stuck in my head and had been humming it all morning. I hadn't heard that song for years so it's like it resurfaced because of the circumstances.

― LeRooLeRoo (Seb), Tuesday, 15 November 2005 22:45 (twenty years ago)

A few weeks ago the driver's side window in my car broke, which necessitated a trip to the auto glass place and the coin-operated vaccuum at the car wash. For the rest of the day I had Grandmaster Flash's "The Message" stuck in my head, due to the "Broken glass everywhere" line. This wasn't any sort of premontion, but it took me a while to realize why I kept thinking "don't push me, cause I'm close to the edge".

― joygoat (joygoat), Wednesday, 16 November 2005 01:10 (twenty years ago)

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