Radio in My Head

In the morning I wake up to music on my clock radio. I'm not exactly sure what station it's tuned to; it used to be WFNX, but one morning it turned on to nothing but static, and for whatever reason I can't get 'FNX on it anymore, so I just fiddled with the dial until I found another station with a strong signal. I hear a fair bit of jabbering about sports, and when I do wake up to music, it's usually from the 1970s, so it's probably WZLX.

My brain has some pretty deeply ingrained memories of music, particularly stuff that I heard over and over on the radio while growing up in the '70s, so while I may hear only a tiny snippet of a song in the morning before shutting off the radio, by the time I get into the shower a couple of minutes later, my brain has filled in the blanks, so to speak, and is playing whatever song I caught a moment of. Today it was "Peace of Mind" by Boston.

The recall power of the brain is pretty amazing. So much stuff seeps in without our making a conscious effort to remember it. There are certain albums that I've listened to so many times that I can "play" them from beginning to end in my mind. So why, then, when I walk into the grocery store, can't I remember what I went there to buy without making a list? Why can I not recall the face of my grandfather, who died when I was six, but I can clearly hear his voice telling me not to go near the street when playing in his driveway?

Even stranger are the instances when a song clicks on in my brain completely unprovoked. In fact, it happened about 20 minutes ago: out of nowhere I suddenly had "You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night)" by Meat Loaf playing in my head. Now, I admit to listening to Bat Out of Hell about half a squllion times... in 1977, before I'd had a musical awakening. But I haven't been anywhere near the album or the song in decades, so how does that happen?

Thing is, I don't necessarily want these songs in my head, but there's nothing I can do. (I was never much of a Boston fan, but I listened to the radio a lot, and I would usually just wait out the songs I didn't like instead of changing the station.) Occasionally I can "tune" my brain to a different song, but most of the time I'm stuck with whatever it is until I can start listening to something else. There have been times when it has lasted all day, but that's nothing: I have a coworker who claims she once had a song stuck in her head for a year. I never asked which song it was, because I was afraid it would trigger a relapse and she would then want to kill me.