I don’t know about you, but I have songs stuck in my head pretty much non-stop. It starts sometimes as soon as I wake up, probably due to whatever was happening in my dreams (mine definitely have soundtracks). Anything can trigger it, maybe I hear a song on the radio and it sticks with me, or someone says a phrase that reminds me of a song. It’s always unfortunate when it’s a song I don’t like, but since I am physically incapable of ignoring a song that is playing if I’m familiar with it, I’m rather prone to this happening. Since I have always enjoyed listening to albums straight through, sometimes I will start out mentally singing one song, and before I realize it I’m singing the one that immediately follows it on the record (that happened today, in fact). For years and years I have wondered just how many different songs I get stuck in my head on a typical day, and I’ve always wanted to document them all, just to see. Since I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, I just decided to go for it. I may even keep it up for several days, this has been so fun. (Actually, I think I’ll do it once a week. If I did it for consecutive days, there’d probably be too much overlap and it would be boring.) Consequently, my daughter Miranda decided to do the same, and we’ve both been creating Spotify playlists of our songs. I think it’s safe to say we have each had some influence on the other’s list. All being said and done, as the day is ending and we’ve compared lists (we’re actually listening to hers), Miranda’s list makes mine look like crap! Anyway, I only ended up with just seventeen songs, and hers is twenty-four. (Edit: I ended up adding two more to mine after I stopped writing for the day and before I went to bed.) I only put songs on the list if they actually got stuck there for a little bit, not just if I merely thought of the song. It had to be repeating up there for awhile, even if just a phrase or two.
The first song on my list, I didn’t even know the title or artist’s name, and I had to text Miranda and ask her, cos it’s a song she’s played for me a few times. Also there’s an awful lot of The Offspring on there, as I’ve definitely been listening to music from my teenage years a lot lately (Ixnay on the Hombre stayed in my boombox for weeks at a time), and M heard Pretty Fly for a White Guy for the first time a week or two ago when it played on the radio. Two of my husband Ian’s songs made it on the list too, one from malcolmtech and one from Deeper in the Static, and this isn’t surprising, since several of his jams pretty much live in my head anyway. The one AJR song that made it actually got stuck in my head multiple times during the day! There were a few things that did shock me, one being that my favorite band, Weezer, didn’t worm their way in at all, and also just that there wasn’t all that much variety on this particular day. (That’s one reason I may keep doing this, cos my tastes are all over the map, and this doesn’t seem like a fair representation.) Miranda’s list, however, was extremely varied, did include Weezer, not to mention the Beatles, Heart, and John Denver, and it actually made me kinda proud. She introduces me to new music just as much as I do for her, and I consider her to be very well-cultured.
So what’s left now, except to include our lists? I’ll include a link to my Spotify playlist, and a link to Miranda’s playlist as well. How about you??? Are you willing to take my Today’s Earworms Challenge? It’s such a fun experiment! If you’re willing to give it a try, let me know in the comments, and then come back after a day and link up your list!
Aaaand here is Miranda’s Spotify playlist:
Please consider following one or both of us on Spotify, and you’ll get to see even more fun playlists, as well as all our new music as it’s released. Miranda is also a budding young writer, and you might check out her Substack as well, where she writes totally random short stories that she makes up on the fly.
As usual, I have to remind you that I also write my own Substack about parenting Betsy, our baby with Down Syndrome. If you’ve never checked that out, now you can!
With that, I leave you with a meme about the most perfect earworm in existence.
Make sure to leave a link to your own playlist in the comments! Thanks for reading.