It seems like a song is always playing in my head. Often, it is the situation I find myself in that determines which particular song presents itself.
Let’s say I am trying to learn a new oldie to perform with the Retro Brothers. That tune will be quietly rehearsing itself in my mind as I go about my daily activities. Or it may be that I am grocery shopping and a song is playing on the store sound system that catches my attention. Hours later as I am driving I find myself humming that very tune, and I am not sure how it got there. Is this a common behavior? Do other people constantly hear music in their heads? How many? Why? This would make a good research study, I think.
At this time of year, holiday songs and carols are on a continuous loop on my mental playlist. I wake up and drift off to sleep with Christmas tunes leaping across my synapses, and echoing through my head. It goes on pretty much 24/7. I have my favorite holiday songs but they are not necessarily the ones that show up. I am not a big fan of “The Little Drummer Boy” but that doesn’t stop it from pa rump bump bump bumping into my personal Christmas rotation. Recently, I have been sharing my headspace with Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.”
My guess is this song has been hanging around my brain because Brenda Lee and her perennial holiday song have been in the news. Last week the song, recorded in 1958 by 13-year-old Brenda Lee, officially was the No. 1 song on Billboard’s Hot 100 Chart. Although it had been as high as Number Two on the charts several times, this Number One spot was a first. It took the now 79-year-old singer 65 years, but she made it. Artists would do well to hold on to this knowledge and remember: There’s always hope.
Hope and memories and celebration are the gifts old holiday songs give us mostly delivered with huge dollops of nostalgia. Critics will tell you it is rare for newer songs to break into the Christmas rotation. Holiday songs, since they come around year after year, tend to have a powerful connection to specific memories we carry from past Christmastimes. Either good or bad, these memories are some of the reasons we cherish or dislike certain songs. It may also be the reason it is so hard to allow newcomers in.
Most of the holiday songs we hear are ones that were written in the middle of the 20th century or even earlier. Like so many of us, our pasts are often remembered as simpler, happier times. That’s how nostalgia works. Even when the actual times weren’t always that simple and were sometimes filled with anxiety and unhappiness. “I’ll be Home For Christmas” was written during World War II as was “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”
When Christmastime is here, I openly admit to being a holiday music devotee. I enjoy thinking about my simpler, mostly happy past. I believe nostalgia has a good and useful place in life. It is not wrong to remember the past as the “good old days,” but I believe nostalgia for an idealized past can sometimes be a roadblock when thinking about the future. If we constantly wish and hope for a time that likely will never happen again, how can we be open to a new and different and hopefully better world?
Maybe it is a good thing that holiday songs come around for only a brief period in the big circle of the year. Maybe we are meant to balance the memories of the holiday season with the upcoming New Year celebration as a time to look forward to a new future.
Norman Knight, a retired Clark-Pleasant Middle School teacher, writes this weekly column for the Daily Journal. Send comments to [email protected].
