Sing Along to the Color

Today was a day full of driving for me. While usually this would sound bad, I actually had a ton of fun. This was because of an amazing thing called music. However, it was not just music that made my car ride so much fun. It was the act of singing along to my favorite songs over and over again. Honestly, what is more fun than jamming out to music in your car? The reason I bring this up for today's blog is because of something I noticed when singing along.

Later in my day, I decided to choose a playlist I made of some classic video game soundtracks of the 2000s. At first, this sounds extremely dorky but don't worry, these are actual songs in their own right, not just tunes in a video game. I am talking about It's Tricky by Run-D.M.C., Sell Out by Reel Big Fish, Do What You Want by OK Go, and so many others. While listening to these songs that I had not played in quite some time, I found that I knew almost every single word to them. This goes for other songs that I hadn't listened to since middle school too! The act of remembering lyrics from songs you haven't heard in years is something that everyone does and it just amazes me.

From some personal research, I found that the reason we can do this ties back to when stories were only told orally. These stories used sound patterns such as: "alliteration, assonance, repetition and, most of all, rhyme." All these patterns, especially rhyme, take advantage of our memory's strength and allow us to remember words and stories more easily. How fascinating is that?

I am not sure why I randomly started thinking about this today but I thought it would be cool to share with you all. Let me know down below which songs you know every word to even if you didn't listen to it in years!

- Jared