Carpool Karaoke.

No matter where we are these days if Top 40 music is playing, my boys seem to know a majority of the lyrics to the songs.  The list of artists seems endless, Alessia Cara; Charlie Pugh; Gavin (DeGraw for those not in the know) and I never thought I would become familiar with all of their names, let alone their songs.  But some of my favorite moments these days are traveling in a car and looking in the rear-view mirror and seeing and hearing the boys singing along.  Most recently, this remind me of the scene from “Almost Famous” in which the band was singing Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer”, but of course minus the groupies.

Why do we remember song lyrics so easily?  According to Adam Sinicki of HealthGuidance.org, "Clearly our brains are somehow wired to be especially good at remembering music lyrics. . .most of us have the lyrics to hundreds if not thousands of songs stored in our brains. . .”  I can certainly remember Ms. Johnson's 2nd grade class and a few of us monopolizing the cassette player so that we could listen to "Combat Rock" over and over again as we desperately tried to memorize the lyrics to "Rock the Casbah".  At the time, my fascination with song probably had to do with the repetitive chorus: "Sharif don't like it / Rock the Casbah, rock the Casbah / Sharif don't like it / Rock the Casbah, Rock the Casbah".  I did not know that a Sharif was a Muslim religious leader and that a Casbah is an African Market, but I did know at 7 years old that I wanted to rock.

I believe one of the reasons that I recall lyrics is due to associating the lyrics with something going in my life.   These days I spend some of my downtime running in Frick Park (with multiple guys named Matt) and so many of our discussions can set off lyrics that are in my head.  We could be talking about anything from parenting to visiting with old friends and almost immediately the following songs enter my head: Ben Folds Five’s ‘Philosophy’:  “Go ahead you laugh all you want / I got my philosophy”) or the Mighty Mighty Bosstones’ ‘Toxic Toast’:  “Queensbury Number Eight / Hell Hotel punk rock estate. / Way way back in the day. / One hundred years it seems that way.”  And now there is Ed Sheeran’s ‘Castle on the Hill’: “We found weekend jobs, when we got paid / We'd buy cheap spirits and drink them straight”.

I do not believe that I would ever volunteer to sing these songs in public (when I have sang karaoke, it was shotgun style), but it does not change the fact that song lyrics play a large role in my everyday thoughts.  And it is somewhat comforting to now see the same thing start happening with my boys.

Thanks for reading.