The Internal iTunes

I have a weird memory for music. Sometimes a song I haven’t heard in years will suddenly pop into my head, complete with lyrics and the right musical arrangement. The scientific term for this phenomenon is earworm. I prefer to think of it as my internal iTunes.

There are bad earworms and good earworms. The bad ones are sappy pop tunes where the choruses can run through my brain for days. An example of good earworms occurred in the last two weeks, after learning of the deaths of David Bowie and Glenn Frey. I’ll admit that I don’t know much of Bowie’s oeuvre, but “Space Oddity”, “Changes”, “Young Americans”, and “Under Pressure” came to mind. This week the internal iTunes featured “New Kid in Town”, “Desperado”, “Best of My Love”, “Lying Eyes” , and “Heartache Tonight”. After seeing the latest Bernie Sanders political ad, the complete version of Simon & Garfunkel’s “America” appeared.

Tomorrow I’ll probably return to something more aggravating. I don’t dare mention an example, lest it get stuck in my internal iTunes for days.