MetaChat - Why is it Impossible to Forget Song Lyrics?

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09 July 2005

Why is it Impossible to Forget Song Lyrics? Once you've learned them - whether you wanted to learn them or you had to since they were on the radio every single day when you were 13 and riding in the car pool to school - it seems like they never go away. A lot of other things go away, like Macbeth speeches and the quadratic equation - why not song lyrics? Is there a special place in the brain for them? All it takes is one note and the whole song comes back, or at least the chorus. WTF?

post by: mygothlaundry at: 22:27 | 30 comments

I think I once went 25 years without hearing this song, yet the lyrics never faded a bit:

"Two all beef patties special sauce lettuce cheese pickles onions on a sesame seed bun."

Likewise for "Hold the pickle, hold the lettuce, special orders don't upset us, all we ask is that you let us..."

Those lyrics still haunt and taunt me today when they suddenly play out of nowhere in my otherwise clear mind. Especially now that I'm practically vegan.

Songs, especially adverts, seem to store themselves deep in your ancient reptilian brain stem. I'll always remember an old Swamp Thing comic by Alan Moore with this zombie-like creature whose mind was almost completely gone, yet it still sang annoying advertising jingles non-stop.

posted by shane 09 July | 23:04

It's because there is a melody involved. Call the musical scale a learning aid.

posted by Cryptical Envelopment 09 July | 23:04

I decided they occupy some weird little place in your brain--connected to emotions and memories or something, and that it's music makes it last longer, like some smells trigger things forever, too.

yup...it's the melody.

posted by amberglow 09 July | 23:05

MetaChat: yup...it's the melody.

posted by shane 09 July | 23:09

And a rhythm. Music is an axis (?) like most everything. Pitch and rhythm. Higher notes and lower notes (vertical, pitch). Shorter or longer (horizontal, time). The words become superfluous as Bob Dylan and advertisers discovered early on.

posted by Cryptical Envelopment 09 July | 23:15

But most of you know words better than music. Hence jingles.

posted by Cryptical Envelopment 09 July | 23:18

Music is primal, somehow. It's a combination of rhythm, pitch and melody that speaks to some part of our reptilian brain and makes it easier to learn the associated words. It probably has something to do with how our ancestors learned the accumulated wisdom of the ages (by rote memory, because this was before writing, printing, or even photocopiers). Evolutionary theory sort of dictates that those primates that best learned the passed-down wisdom were more likely to survive and bear offspring, so we ended up with this weird bunch of associations that help us hold onto memories.

If our primate ancestors had been boffo mathematicians instead of budding Buddy Riches, perhaps they would have associated learning with numerical sequences and we'd all be Mr. Spock nowadays.

posted by yhbc 09 July | 23:23

Yeah, it's a tremendous amount of knowledge to store, actually. I just went out and asked my daughter and her friend this question, and we started listing all the songs that everybody knows: the entire Beatles catalogue, Stairway to Heaven, every McDonalds jingle, Who Let the Dogs Out and, well, the list goes on and on.

posted by mygothlaundry 09 July | 23:26

Don't forget "Gilligan's Island".

posted by yhbc 09 July | 23:29

Which is a perfect example of my points above (such as they were). The song told you (the TV viewer) everything you needed to know about the show you were going to watch. So, you heard the song, you couldn't shake the music from your brain, and the next thing you knew, you were watching Gilligan dropping the coconuts for the 100th time and laughing anyway, because you already knew (through the received "wisdom" via the song) just who these people were and why they were together.

Maybe. Or maybe I'm just a little tipsy.

posted by yhbc 09 July | 23:32

A mind for music.

posted by Cryptical Envelopment 09 July | 23:44

I don't know the answer but this post reminded me that I was curious about the lyrics to "Hollaback Girl", leading me to this article. This shit is bananas.

posted by tracicle 09 July | 23:50

How's the baby doing, tracicle?

posted by Cryptical Envelopment 10 July | 00:12

Not so long ago I was listening to some 80s music show on the radio and they played "Wham! Rap." At that point it had been several years since I'd heard the song, but I still knew every last word. Go figure!

posted by sisterhavana 10 July | 00:28

There's too much paranoias!

posted by invitapriore 10 July | 00:50

And not enough jazz.

posted by Cryptical Envelopment 10 July | 01:07

The baby ain't no hollaback girl. But she is doing well. Adorable and easily pleased.

posted by tracicle 10 July | 02:04

Back of the bus in Bali. Elvis impersonator, another Yank, and me. And I was aghast to learn that I knew all the lyrics. How could I?! As far as I know, I've never even paid attention to an Elvis song never mind put a record on.

posted by dreamsign 10 July | 02:54

(cool, trac--mazel tov!)

posted by amberglow 10 July | 03:06

Wham! Bam! I am a man!
Job or no job you can't tell me that I'm not.
Do you enjoy what you do?
If not, then stop!
Don't stay there and rot!

sisterhavana - now I'm gonna have that song stuck in my head!
/ex-Wham! devotee

posted by deborah 10 July | 03:32

Poor shane.. You know I have that ad, your lyrics are spot on. Now..

Has anybody seen.....
A dog dyed dark green
.. About two inches tall
with a strawberry blond paw
sunglasses and a bonnet
and designer jeans with appliqués on it.

posted by dabitch 10 July | 05:13

dreamsign: I know the problem. I loathe bollywood films and have never been to one voluntarily, but india is so permeated with the film music, that I recognize songs even though I have never actually sat down and listened to anything deliberately.

posted by dhruva 10 July | 05:33

Ah, are we talking about earworms? Mine used to be the theme to The Flintstones. *shudder*

posted by bunnyfire 10 July | 08:43

You'll forget them eventually. I used to know about fifty Bob Dylan songs by heartin high school--I doubt I could get all the way through more than one or two now. And who ever bothered to memorize the words to Stairway to Heaven ? I don't know anyone who knows them all. And who would want to, anyway ?

posted by y2karl 10 July | 10:21

I've forgotten a lyric that I spent many an angstfilled teenage highschool-hour carefully jotting down in my notebook over and over again instead doing of my homework. It was a b-side Siouxie single, the name of the song escapes me, something about hating someone of course, and all the lyrics have flat out vanished from my head, except the line "six feet underground, you poison ive.." If anyone knows what the song was called please let me know so I can find it again as the mystery is now driving me mad.

posted by dabitch 10 July | 12:28

oh damn you, i can hear the beat now. someone better figure this out before i have to start looking. i can't stop yawning as it is and i was actually hoping to read some of this endless text called mechat, maybe answer some questions.
also, i suspect someone with jam hands has been playing with my keyboard.
*goes to fetch tea and maybe get something accomplished*

posted by ethylene 10 July | 13:00

who ever bothered to memorize the words to Stairway to Heaven ? I don't know anyone who knows them all.
Well, not exactly memorised - not deliberately, anyway. After you hear it for the 45,765th time, you can't really help but remember them (or mis-remember them as the case may be).

Actually, I can rarely remember song lyrics without having the song playing to prompt my memory - as soon as the song starts, it all comes back but, without at least the melody, I can hardly remember a line.

posted by dg 10 July | 18:24

Heh, thanks dabitch!

posted by shane 10 July | 20:52

(Pretty effective advertising, no?)

posted by shane 10 July | 21:15

They ran it forever and ever and ever and ever... and yeah, pretty dang effective. ;)

me and my brother used to play a game when driving, to sing all the ad-jingles of shops & things you can see from the car. A lotta of JcPenneys and I love my Toyata goin on. And of course See the USA in your Chevrolet. America is asking you to call. Drive your Chevrolet through the USA. America's the greatest land of all.

Still no answers on what the mystery Siouxsie and the banshees song is?

posted by dabitch 11 July | 04:54

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