i mean knowing it completely, down to the last little detail and being able to play it in my head so perfectly that it is indistinguishable from the recorded version. every note, every beat, every specific pronunciation of the lyrics.
i know its easy to say "well duh, of course i know my favourite songs by heart" but do you, really? its the same with counting seconds in your head, it takes practice and repetition to get the exact timing right and i find it is the same with music. often its very very close but just a second or a half second off, or the tone is just a little higher or lower than what is playing in my head. its close, but its not perfect. and i want perfect.
so the goal is that i can hit play on a song with the volume off and no matter at what points in the song i turn the volume up or down again, i am perfectly in sync with the song. basically.
with a lot of my absolute favourites i can do this because ive listened to them thousands of times so its not too hard to put in the work to perfect it, so sometimes i like to pick songs that i love but that i dont necessarily listen to as much. if you couldnt tell by the title, this weeks pick was "rainbow comnection" by kermit the frog of muppet fame.
i always loved the muppets, ive seen every muppet movie probably at least ten to fifteen times and theres a lot of songs in those movies that feel extremely nostalgic and comforting to me. rainbow connection is one that ive only semi recently listened to in the english version, since i grew up with the german one (and i actually like the english one better).
so the way i go about it is by listening to the song on repeat. preferably with singing along, i find that it is easier to perfect memorising the lyrical pitches that way, but i can also do it without singing. when i was working my hotel job and had an 8hr cleaning shift i would sometimes listen to the same song on repeat for the duration of my shift, several days in a row — big shoutout to ne bi smel live from arena stožice, mwah 🫶
im currently restocking our shops in different locations and one of them is an hour away, and i thought what a perfect opportunity to memorise another song, so for the hour drive there and the hour drive back, all i listened to in the car was rainbow connection. full volume, locked the fuck in on that song.
i struggled with some of the lyrics at the beginning, my main errors were with these parts:
"i know they're wrong, wait and see" – kept mishearing it as "i know they'll all wait and see" and messed up the timing between wrong & wait
"somebody thought of that" – kept putting longer focus on 'some' instead of 'body'
"is this the sweet sound / that calls the young sailors" – misheard it in several different ways, somehow struggled to remember the lyrics several loops in a row and then kept trying to turn the into for
well i did figure them all out in the end and every time i finally got a tricky part right it was soooo satisfying, i can not describe the adrenaline rush those moments give me without sounding like i should maybe not sitting behind the wheel going 80 while doing that. but hey. i was grinning the whole way home and had the time of my life and the next day i practiced turning the volume off and on again randomly and my synch was peeeeerfect so theres that. another song added to the eternal brain radio hall of fame 👌
my favourite part of the song is the second bridge when "the lovers, the dreamers and me" goes into "all of us under its spell" but more powerful and melodic than the first time, i always get a little headrush from singing that part its so nice ♡
well. im driving to that location again tomorrow and will do a few more practice runs and ill probably ride this high for another week or two before picking the next song. i dont currently have any candidates, but im sure ill find a fun candidate when the time comes.
anyways, thank you kermie, you never fail me <3
oh also the first song i did this with consciously was demolition lovers by mcr, i feel like thats not too surprising, but during the pandemic there was a time where there was only ever one person allowed to be at the office i worked at so often that was me and im not bragging when i say i didnt listen to anything other than that song for three full weeks. after which i realised i even get the silent bridge in the middle timed perfectly, completely subconsciously humming along and i thought oooooh this is something i can do ☝️ and then i started doing it on purpose with other songs.
