I tried to tell her about Marx and Engels, God and Angels; I don't really know what for.

[andrewducker]

They say you never forget your first.

That's certainly true for me. It was Gun N' Roses masterpiece "Appetite for Destruction" which I discovered, some years later, I could sing along to every word of. I'd love to know how the brain stores all of that information. It's not something I can access at will - I can clearly remember the next 3-4 seconds of song at any one point, but if I want the four seconds after that I have to actually sing my way there.

The reason this springs to mind now is that I just discovered, while doing the washing up, that I can do the same for The Sisters Of Mercy's "Vision Thing".

I wonder how many other albums are taking up brainspace.

Comments

[opusfluke.livejournal.com]

I have the same problem with dialogue. Red Dwarf, Star Wars, Airplane!, The Princess Bride, all the usual suspects. I can't quote it off the top of my head but if it's on at the time I just sort of chant along.

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

I'm the same with quite a few albums (anything I got into before age 18) and a couple of films, notably The Breakfast Club). Some kind of heavily contextual memory, closely linked within itself but not beyond?

[andrewhickey.livejournal.com]

This may be of interest...

There are literally hundreds of albums I can do this for - the first one I *realised* I could do was the Beatles 'blue' album when I was seven or eight, but there are maybe two or three hundred in there. Along with some films (the whole of the Rocky Horror Picture Show for example).

[andrewducker]

Cheers for the link. Fascinating!

[ashfae.livejournal.com]

She looked good in ribbons.

[andrewducker]

Incoming!

[ashfae.livejournal.com]

Just walk on in. ;)

[wolflady26.livejournal.com]

I've often wondered that, too - and I can totally sing all of Vision Thing, in exactly the same way. I discovered this when I put it on my iPod and listened to it for the first time in a decade, but still knew all the words.

But I like Vision Thing. What really troubles me is how many truly awful 80s pop songs are taking up brain cells, while I struggle to remember that thing I really really had to do next, or what I did with all of last week. Thanks for that, Phil Collins.

[sterlingspider.livejournal.com]

In relation to your last post; my German is pretty much nil, but I'm pretty sure I can sing the entirety of Sehnsucht phonetically.

This also stands equally for a staggering amount of other music all of which exists in this bizarre internal earworm cross reference database which constantly inflicts me with strange musical references.

For example, after watching the Olympic Giant Slalom coverage from Tuesday and seeing the name Ted Ligety in the standings I inflicted myself and my boyfriend with this...