always on shuffle
Every morning I wake up with a song in my head — a different song, a song of the day. It could be anything. This morning, for instance, it was “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off” — you know, “You say toMAYto and I say toMAHto.” Yesterday morning it was Beck’s “Nausea,” the day before that “Disarm,” by the Smashing Pumpkins. Other recent features have been the one and only hit by Primitive Radio Gods and Procol Harum’s “Conquistador.” (Where the hell did that come from?) Sometimes it’s even a hymn.
I cannot discern any pattern — it has nothing to do with what I’ve been listening to lately, I know that much, nor do I get to hear songs I especially like. (Exhibit A: “Conquistador.”) And never, ever do I get the same song two days in a row. In fact, I am not aware that the playlist has ever repeated itself, though (since this has been going on for decades now) I’m sure it must have. When I got my first iPod — the first iPod — and noticed the shuffle feature I thought Apple was stealing ideas from my brain.
Almost as long as this has been happening I have been debating whether to document my own internal Song of the Day, but I never have. This is pure superstition — I’m afraid that if I start writing them all down they’ll stop coming. And I like finding out what my brain is going to serve up each morning.
The worst thing that can happen is to wake up with a song in your head that you’ve randomly heard before, but you don’t know who sings it or the name of the song, and so you can’t listen to it. Torture, I tell you.
— Sam James · Mar 9, 11:18 PM · #
Yes, that is misery, I agree. But not, I would argue, worse that waking up hearing a song that you never wanted to hear again, EVER, and had even perhaps forgotten. . . .
— Alan Jacobs · Mar 10, 01:29 AM · #
Gotta get those fillings checked…
— Michael Simpson · Mar 10, 03:11 AM · #
Alan, have you been withholding something from us? Are you, in fact, a fictional character from a Nick Hornby novel?
— PeterSuderman · Mar 10, 01:08 PM · #
I know, it is depressingly Hornbyesque — or would be if I were not, in fact, Andrew W. K. As I recently announced.
— Alan Jacobs · Mar 10, 01:49 PM · #
Paging Dr. Sacks…paging Dr. Sacks…
— J. G. Pair · Mar 10, 03:15 PM · #
This morning I woke up with “Big Log” by Robert Plant (“My love is in league with the freeway …”) in my head. Absolutely no idea where it came from. And then as I was showering I realized that I had absolutely zero clue about any of the lyrics beyond the first line. But I had a strange sense that I had been hearing the whole song all night long. I wonder what words, if any, were coming through.
— Kent · Mar 10, 05:42 PM · #