is it coincidence or something else? kind of bizarre

Do you ever have a song playing in your mind, but there is no radio or tv playing nearby… then you turn one of them on, and the same song is actually playing at that moment, sometimes at exact point as it was in your mind?

This always weirds me out when this happens. It’s pretty cool, but kind of unsettling at the same time.

Truthfully, that’s a disturbing symptom of a brain tumor. Seek help before it gets worse.

The same goes for phantom smells.

As no one thought to pay it any mind, my mother found out the hard way.

:frowning:

Well, probably no surprise here, but I’m inclined to the “coincidence” theory myself. If we’re talking about one of those songs that the radio station you normally listen to has been playing six or seven times an hour day and night, the way radio stations often do (okay, I exaggerate just a teensy bit), then it’s hardly stretching the bounds of Known Science that a.) the damn song might happen to be stuck in your head and b.) the radio station might be playing it (again) when you happen to tune in.

Of course if one day, completely out of the blue, “Lux Aeterna” by the 20th Century Hungarian experimentalist composer Gyorgi Ligeti starts running through your head, and you flip on WYUK-FM, which is normally your “All Boy Bands, All the Time” station, and it just happens that the DJ is in a major contract dispute with management and has barricaded himself in the control room and is playing the soundtrack to 2001: A Space Odyssey over and over again, then I suppose that would be a little weirder.

maybe it’s the same thing as when you have a song in your head, and then you hear someone else sing it, but then it’s just because one of you heard the other without realizing it. maybe you can hear the tv and radio when they’re off…
i think it’s possible.

I can’t recall that happening to me. To answer the question I believe it is called a coincidence. Speaking of coincidences, one that often happens to me is, I’ll be reading on the internet, and as I’m reading a word, that word will be spoken on television. That’s kinda weird, when it happens. I mean a real word too, not “the” or “a” or “and”, but something like “coincidence”, now that would be weird.

definitely someone’s trying to send you a message. next time it happens, pay close attention to the lyrics of the song, i’m sure its apropos. like if you were singing the elton john classic “tiny dancer” and then you heard it, say, playing in the background at the expos stadium while you’re watching a thrilling interleague Expos-Blue Jays game, then you would definitely have to quit your job, move to Canada and become an Alanis Morissette groupie.

that happened to my best friends’ ex-boyfriends’ uncles’ neighbor, it was hella weird.

nope,
charmaine

Yeah, happens.

But when it does, I just retune my sub-cerebellic transciever and run a diagnostic on my cortical node. Usually it turns up as a subharmonic variance in the omicron range of the subspace spectrum. It’s a chronic problem with transcievers of my type, but unfortunately I won’t be able to replace it for a while. As a temporary measure, you can deactivate the subroutines that control the omicron band, and the theta band as well, for best results. If you need help with that, you can contact me for more detailed instructions, or talk to your doctor. My e-mail is in my profile.

Hope this helps.

:wink:

This reminds me of an old joke…

“The weirdest thing happened to me today, honey.”

“What’s that, dear?”

“I was on my way to work, and a song was on the radio. I was really getting into it, and singing along. I pulled into the parking lot at work, and turn off the car. Day comes, day goes, and I get back into the car. I turn it on, and the EXACT same song is on, at the EXACT same point as when I turned the car off! Weird, huh?”

“Weird, nothing. You just had the tape player on.”

[sub]I said it was an old joke, not a particularly good one…[/sub]

I can hear the radio and television perfectly when they are off. I can also understand the stream of information that is being beamed into my head by the government. Of course, I made it all better by perfecting the art of tin-foil hat construction. A few rolls and some spare time, and the voices will go away forever :slight_smile:

That usually means you’ve got a loose filling and your jaw just became a crystal set. See your dentist or pharmacist.

oooh, you’ve just independently arrived at the concept of synchronicity as a form of ESP!
Coincidentally, there were/are a buncha people who believe that very thing, that coincidences are actually some sort of psychic thingummybob. That’s all I know about that.

But I’d go with, bound to happen pretty often, statistically, considering the average radio station only plays 20* different songs.

Also, you could try this experiment:

Leave your office when catchy song is playing on the radio. Idly hum the song under your breath as you seek fresh caffein sustenance. Run into a co-worker you need to talk to, and after a brief chat, bring them back to your office. They might say “Wow, I was just thinking about that song!”

(Cause I was humming it, nimrod! True story.)

*number I pulled out of my ass.

If it is one of the “top forty” type of songs it is definitely just coincidence. One good way to illustrate this is to start with the dial on a top forty-type station, identify the song that is playing and then hit “scan” on your digital radio (assuming that you have one that has that feature, giving you 5-second clips of all the stations). It is almost guaranteed that another station is playing the same song.

That having been said, I still have been weirded out by having that happen with something that is NOT top-forty type material. Like the “Tiny Dancer” (Elton John) tune mentioned by another poster. The chances of an oldies station playing that song when you turn it on after having it go through your head are a LOT smaller.

I have heard the fillings/chrystle set theory before. Sometimes when we have a guitar amp on, it will pick up a radio station or CB. Could you have something in your home or office capable of doing that, but at such a low volume that you only pick it up sublimally?

[hijack] Am I the only person in the world who had never heard Elton John’s Tiny Dancer until today?? I keep hearing of it lately, everywhere I go, but I had never heard the song until 5 minutes ago when I broke down and downloaded it. This is actually my personal coincidence - until 2 weeks ago, I’d never heard of an Elton John song called Tiny Dancer, but for the last two weeks it has been mentioned everywhere I go.[/hijack]

Chalk it up to coincedence unless you can do it on a somewhat regular basis. Or unless you can also tell when the telephone is going to ring…

Sorry about your mom, Boss. But how can the presence of a brain tumor cause a song to be played on the radio? Or does it cause the afflicted person to think, post facto, that they had been thinking of the song when they hadn’t been? I do know about auditory and olfactory hallucinations, but sometimes the phone really is ringing, or someone really is barbecueing.

Wow, Cazzle. A mainstream song thats had 2 top 40 go-arounds
and is overplayed on practically every 70s, 80s and 90’s
radio station, as well as on commercials?
I hereby dub thee
“Cazzle in a Bubble”!!!
")

Bunkum! Maybe. The evidence is equivocal. Please read The Master. I swear some of you folks have no idea of the immense repository of knowledge at this site.

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_057.html

“Say you’re thinkin’ about a plate of shrimp, and all of a sudden somebody says ‘plate’ or ‘shrimp’ or ‘plate of shrimp,’ just like that, out of the blue. No explanation. No point in lookin’ for one either”

Sorry, Scredle, what was that? I can’t hear you. I’m in this bubble, you see.