Thanks, YouTube Music, for making this image so I didn’t have to.
Ever since I started listening to popular music, around age 10, I’ve been aware that, most mornings when I wake up, there’s a song playing in my head. I’ve often wondered what it would look like if I started tracking those songs: Are there any over-arching themes? Are they relaying subliminal messages? Are they entirely random, or are they mostly songs I’ve heard recently?
It took me until late 2021 to start tracking them, in the hope of perhaps answering some of those questions. I created a playlist on YouTube Music, my subscription service of choice, and set a reminder on my phone to notice what song is playing in my head when I wake up and add it to the playlist. If it’s a song I’ve already added, then I skip the process for that day.
So far, the answers to the above questions are: No, no, no, and no. Mostly they are catchy songs I’ve heard recently, but not always. Once in a while, it’s a song I haven’t heard in years, or a song I barely know. (One morning I had to sing what I could remember to my kiddo, since it was a tune she knew but I didn’t.) I’ve been listening to a ton of Hozier over the past year, so he shows up a lot and, in general, these songs (regardless of genre) skew toward the catchy end of the spectrum. I suppose that’s to be expected, given the nature of earworms. I mean, if you look closely, my brain even Rickrolled me one morning. Jeez.
Now that the playlist is nearing 100 songs, I thought I’d share — and perhaps inspire others to do this as well. I know I’ve inspired one person already (Hi, Rosa!), and it would be fun to get more people paying attention to this stuff. Not for science or anything, but just to make ourselves more mindful of the songs our brains play for us when we first greet the day.
You can see and hear my playlist here:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpEjxKHxZD0mOzAqyMxIYSmamuf1nl4yz