# How clearly can you "hear" songs in your head? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 26, 2006, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-clearly-can-you-hear-songs-in-your-head/354299 "2006-04-26T14:56:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2006, 12:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-clearly-can-you-hear-songs-in-your-head/354299/41 "2006-04-28T12:09:46Z")
[I have an iPod—_in my mind_](http://www.theonion.com/content/node/33642) ---
**Author:** ![Bambi\_Hassenpfeffer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Bambi\_Hassenpfeffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bambi_Hassenpfeffer)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2006, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-clearly-can-you-hear-songs-in-your-head/354299/42 "2006-04-28T17:14:37Z")
> [@featherlou](#): > > I’ve got “No Te Ames” by Jennifer Lopez and Mark Anthony in my head at the moment; the whole song is in Spanish, and I don’t speak Spanish, so I’m obviously enjoying a phonetic memory. Slight nitpick: It’s “No Me Ames”, which means “Don’t Love Me”. “No Te Ames” would be “Don’t Love Yourself”. > [@Anastasaeon](#): > > Also, like **featherlou** , I tend to enjoy some songs in my head that are not in a language I am familiar with. I listen to a lot of J-Pop. Though I can wrap my lips around the words with relative ease because of knowing the song well enough, I don’t have a clue what I’m saying. I pulled the same stunt when I fell in love (briefly) with that Las Ketchup song a few years ago, “Asereje”, was it called? I couldn’t spell you the chorus, but by god, I knew it. I still know it. What are they saying? Damned if I know. A-sara-hey! Ha! De hey! De habi to dey hey bury say bee noahva mahavee an de boogie an de bweedeedeepee! This is a funny example too, cause it’s not in Spanish either. “Aserejé” has a chorus that’s really a phonetic version of what Las Ketchup heard listening to an English rap called “Rapper’s Delight” by the Sugarhill Gang: > [@Rapper's Delight](#): > > i said a hip hop > the hippie the hippie > to the hip hip hop, a you dont stop the rock it > to the bang bang boogie, say up jumped the boogie > to the rhythm of the boogie, the beat Since they don’t speak English, they transcribed what they heard into this: > [@Aserejé](#): > > Aserejé ja > de jé de jebe > tu de jebere > sebiunouva majabi > an de bugui > an de buididipí I’ve always found this to be hilarious, once I realized what it is. Now, back to the thread: Like **Anastasaeon** , I can sing pretty much all my J-pop without having the slightest clue what it means. (I’ve got something from Pizzicato Five running through right now). I can also pretty much hear the full orchestration and lyrics and background noises completely faithfully in my head for anything I’ve heard often enough. I usually have some song or other playing inside my head – last week it’s all been merengue, which is rough cause it’s dance music and I’ve not really been in the mood to dance. ---
**Author:** ![Anastasaeon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/73ab20/32.png) [@Anastasaeon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anastasaeon)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2006, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-clearly-can-you-hear-songs-in-your-head/354299/43 "2006-04-28T21:19:36Z")
> [@Bambi Hassenpfeffer](#): > > This is a funny example too, cause it’s not in Spanish either. “Aserejé” has a chorus that’s really a phonetic version of what Las Ketchup heard listening to an English rap called “Rapper’s Delight” by the Sugarhill Gang: > > Since they don’t speak English, they transcribed what they heard into this: > I’ve always found this to be hilarious, once I realized what it is. _Ha_! Ignorance has been fought today, good sir. I had no idea. That _is_ pretty funny. 😃 Now that I think about it… I managed to phoneticise a phoneticised non-translation? …Forget it. This sentence makes me dizzy. ---
**Author:** ![Mayo\_Speaks](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c57346/32.png) [@Mayo\_Speaks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mayo_Speaks)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2006, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-clearly-can-you-hear-songs-in-your-head/354299/44 "2006-04-29T01:38:40Z")
> [@Leaffan](#): > > Inspired by the [talking out loud](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=368993) thread, I was wondering if anyone else can “hear” entire songs in your head without actually listening to music? > > For example, I could run through maybe hundreds of songs – from start to finish – in perfect clarity. They kind of run in the background without me thinking about it. > > Anyone??? Yep. And I’ll go ya one better: I hear them in _stereo_. I almost never listen to music without headphones, and so I can “hear” both tracks. When I “listen” to Let It Be, I hear that faint spoken voice, but only in one ear. In “The Trial” by Pink Floyd, I hear the word “BAAAAAABE!” move throughout space. When I get some surround sound speakers, I’ll report any further findings. ---
**Author:** ![SmartAleq](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smartaleq/32/163_2.png) [@SmartAleq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAleq)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2006, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-clearly-can-you-hear-songs-in-your-head/354299/45 "2006-04-29T01:55:13Z")
My memory for music is pretty exact–I can always tell different versions of the same song and artist apart and even the tiniest alteration of correct tempo will drive me wiggy (why no, I do NOT like “house mixes” even a little bit, is my screaming cluing you in?) My major interesting music trick is that about 95% of the times I have a CD playing when I turn off the ignition I will be able to instantly start singing the song when I start the car up, no matter how much time has passed. Sometimes this freaks people out a bit… Most freakish earworm ever? “Thick as a Brick.” All 47 minutes of it. Several times in a row. Sometimes being a driver is bad–especially if the stereo breaks and the brain is left to entertain itself… :smack: :smack: :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Hung\_Mung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a88e4f/32.png) [@Hung\_Mung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hung_Mung)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2006, 5:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-clearly-can-you-hear-songs-in-your-head/354299/46 "2006-04-29T05:36:41Z")
I also have a habit (annoying to my friends) of calling out songs and changing the radio station after hearing less than a second of music I know. It doesn’t matter what it is, if I’ve heard it, I can usually recognize it. Sometimes I make good impressions by calling out new music after hearing just a second or two of music. Some bands just have a musical “calling card.” ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2006, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-clearly-can-you-hear-songs-in-your-head/354299/47 "2006-04-30T02:13:13Z")
> [@Bambi Hassenpfeffer](#): > > Slight nitpick: It’s “No Me Ames”, which means “Don’t Love Me”. “No Te Ames” would be “Don’t Love Yourself”. > \ :smack: Of course it is - that’s why I always sing it as “No pee-jammies…” “Don’t love yourself,” eh? Hee. ---
**Author:** ![Bites\_When\_Provoked](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bites_when_provoked/32/18073_2.png) [@Bites\_When\_Provoked](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bites_When_Provoked)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2006, 10:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-clearly-can-you-hear-songs-in-your-head/354299/48 "2006-04-30T10:52:56Z")
These days, no better than ‘normal’ people. For most of my life, however, I was able to hear songs as clearly as though I had headphones on; music, voices, background harmonics, the lot. Generally it’d start with one song from a CD I knew and I’d hear the rest of the CD in order after that, but sometimes it’d just loop one song over and over. I actually learned the lyrics to songs \*via \*the replay in my head. That’s the clarity we’re talking. (And it’s also interesting from a physiological viewpoint, because it proved to me that more is recorded in our brains than we’re consciously aware of: my mind could replay lyrics I didn’t actually \*know \*yet. I don’t think it understood the words though - they were just sounds along with the other sounds. And it was definitely operating on two completely separate levels - the ‘broadcast’ bit and the ‘listen; comprehend’ bit.) Occasionally it was inconvenient though - I remember once when I was working as a receptionist I was under a lot of stress from my boss and the internal radio turned itself wayyyy up. It was hell trying to answer phone calls with the equivalent of a loud stereo right by my ear belting out “I want to be a Hippie”. 😃 Then in my mid 20’s I found out that what was being conveyed when _I_ said I had a song in my head and what _other people_ meant wasn’t at all the same thing… and since I had spent more than enough years being considered odd, I deliberately put a stop to it. (For anyone who’s interested, I do that by visualising as many separate things at once as I possibly can. I find that a 3x3 rack of images - mixture of moving and static - will derail any excessive brain activity.) Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to recreate the effect since - though I’ve come to realise it was actually really cool (if weird) and something I should have enjoyed for what it was worth. ☹ [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-clearly-can-you-hear-songs-in-your-head/354299.md?page=2)