By Lee Scott
A new friend of mine stopped me the other day and said she had seen me driving down the highway.
“You sure looked like you were having a good time,” she said.
Evidently she had spotted me as I was singing. I explained that I was enjoying some of my old friends; there was Sonny and Cher, “I Got You Babe”; and Simon and Garfunkel, “A Bridge Over Troubled Water”; and my old Motown buddies, The Supremes, with “Love child”; and Marvin Gaye, “Heard It Through the Grapevine.” Of course, when I drive through Beaufort, I enjoy listening to any of the songs from the movie “The Big Chill.”
There is so much joy in listening to radio stations like 104.9 and hearing many of the old songs from the 60s and 70s. It amazes me the amount of songs that I recognize from over the years — and especially when I actually know the lyrics. Oh, there are always those songs where you hum many of the lines, but you can always jump in on the chorus.
Recently I read that there are several reasons why we remember the lyrics to old songs. The obvious reason is because we listened to one song over and over again; there is nothing like repetition to get us to learn words. How many of us had 45 rpm records where the record player just kept playing the same song over and over again?
Then there is the emotional attachment to songs, an experience when a particular song is playing. It is one of the reasons why so many couples say, “They are playing our song.”
One year when my daughter was 13 years old, I dragged her to a Harry Belafonte concert. She told me how bored she was going to be but when Harry Belafonte started to sing, she realized that she knew all the songs. There was “Michael Row the Boat Ashore” and the “Banana Boat Song (Day-Oh)”. The audience sang along to all of his songs and my 13 year old was right with them. She had forgotten about all those 8 track tapes I played in my old Pinto station wagon.
So if you do happen to see me driving in my car and it looks like I am having a good time, remember: “Girls Just Want To Have Fun”!
