The Songs That Play in My Head

Like practically every person with functioning ears, I listen to music. In turn, also like practically every person with functioning ears, I tend to get songs stuck in my head. They get trapped there in a variety of ways. A common one is my friend from work, Richie. He'll randomly sing out a line from a song, and if I've heard it before, 9 times out of 10, the rest of the song will be playing in my head for the remainder of the day.

...and together we'll fly through the portal, when the gateway opens to the other side!

Other times, I'll just catch something on the radio, or hear it playing in the background of a store, or it will be featured in a commercial. However I come by them, they wind up stuck in my brain. And they never really go away.

Sure, they typically fade into the background and are practically forgotten. But they are still there. A song I haven't heard in years can pop into my brain randomly and I find myself mentally singing along. Sometimes not quite so mentally. I once disrupted a family reunion by tapping along to the beat of the Literal Trailer for Resident Evil Afterlife.

So while I can't really be rid of a song once it's lodged in my brain, I can quiet it down. I find the best way that works for me is to listen to the song continuously. After several playthroughs, it gets old and my head starts finding something else to focus on. This can be easy to accomplish if I own a copy of the song, as I can load it up and set the mp3 player to repeat. It's a bit more difficult if it's something I overheard though. Then I have to try and remember some of the lyrics so I can look the song up later. This becomes a bit more difficult if the song is not in English, or worse, an instrumental.

Once, my cousin Trey and I were eating at the now recently-rebranded Hwy 55 (formerly known as Andy's). For those unaware, Hwy 55 tries to recreate the 50's diner environment by playing old music over the in-store audio system. Since the music is basically stuff your parents got bored with listening to years ago, it reduces itself to background noise that you don't really notice. This time, however, they played a jazzy instrumental number that latched onto our brains and we couldn't get it out.

Since there was no lyrics, there was no way to look up the song. Also, unlike standard radio stations, there was no DJ to announce the name of the song. So it would just play on repeat in the back of my head with no salvation in sight. A year and a half later, I was in Toys R Us with a friend, browsing the toys, when a song came on over the in-store speakers. I recognized the tune as the same song from Hwy 55. But this time it had lyrics! Whipping out my smartphone, I was able to look up the song and find the original version that had no lyrics, called Soulful Strut. I was the most excited person to ever set foot on the My Little Pony aisle.

Well, second most excited