Are there things you wish you could remember without fail yet somehow cannot, like extremely important passwords or that item you need to buy?
And do you often wonder why your brain instead still stores the lyrics to a decades-old tune you haven’t heard since you were 12, but a few opening notes are enough to recall the whole song, word for word and in rhythm?
When Norwegian girl group M2M announced their comeback, eagle-eyed fans pointed out that the duo had posted the video on Sep 22, a Sunday, at 9.25am local time. These random numbers wouldn’t mean anything to non-fans, but I immediately knew the significance.
Without warning, I heard the opening lyrics to the second verse of The Day You Went Away in my head: “I remember date and time, September 22nd Sunday twenty-five after nine.”
That was all it took to trigger a memory I never knew still existed. It had probably been 20 years since I last listened to the band’s teenybopper tunes. I looked up the song, hit play, and surprised myself by singing the entire darn thing. Accurately.
While this phenomenon may be responsible for many an aggrieved parent or partner when we can’t remember the crucial things despite easily calling up seemingly trivial facts, it is apparently rather common, with research spanning from neuroscience to psychology fields.
RECALLING ENTIRE SONGS FROM A FEW NOTES
It’s so common that a game is based on this very premise. In Heardle, a spinoff from internet sensation Wordle, players identify a song from the opening few seconds.
The game taps into the “gating paradigm” – a recognition process that identifies a well-known melody as it unfolds progressively. The more familiar the melody, the fewer notes required for recognition, according to a 2003 study by researchers from the University of Montreal.
