Are You Compelled to Sing Song Lyrics in Books?

I ask this question because today I find myself with a made-up tune stuck in my head. I was reading a novel, when I read this little poem which is the refrain to a Grammy Award winning song–in the world of the novel, that is. So I made up a tune to go with it, and now it’s stuck.

While I don’t remember doing that before, I have attempted to compose tunes for other song lyrics, and can’t read certain Psalms silently without putting them to music–ususally music someone esle composed and I have sung.

But maybe in addition to being a singer and a reader, I’m weird. So I ask you, can you read song lyrics without wanting to sing them?

I should probably be embarrassed to admit that not only do I not sing them, but I quite often simply skip over them.

Was a bit of a shock when I read LOTR out loud to my kids, and had to sing all those songs. Perhaps not surpirisingly, they all tended to sound quite similar…