Sticky Songs That Comfort and Inspire
The best “ear worms” are sticky songs that touch the heart.
They fill your mind, blot out disturbing thoughts, and bring comfort and courage.
Sticky Songs play over and over in your mind.
They can be annoying ear worms you wish you could get rid of.
However, the sticky song I love, and welcome, is the one that touches my heart. I wake up in the morning with the music in my mind. Then it inspires and/or comforts all day long. While washing dishes, during clean up chores… During all the things I do all day long, the calm of a hymn or the joy of a praise song uplift me.
This morning, my sticky song was “On the Wings of a Dove.”
The blessing of Sticky Songs
As I cleaned up breakfast after the man of the house left for work,
all of a sudden, out of the clear blue of the sunshining sky,
the chorus came bursting from my lips.
Like the dove in the song, it floated down and settled in, and it was there in my mind, off and on, all day.
“On the wings of a snow white dove, He sends his pure, sweet love, A sign from above, On the wings of a dove.”
What made it even more special was the fact that my husband had just made a comment about singing, saying he used to hear me sing more. I was like, “Hmm. Well. Maybe you’ll have to find a new wife. One who can sing.”
Of course, I was being flippant, but at my age, who really wants to hear me sing? No one ever would have accused me of being musical, and I often filled in with home-made rhymes when I couldn’t recall precise wording. Which annoyed the people around me. (And secretly amused me.)
However, now this song came to me, crystal clear and word perfect. I hadn’t heard it in a long time, and neither had I read the scriptures about it in the Bible.
It was just there.
And it was a sign to me that day. A sign that God cares and makes good on His promise to give you what you need when you need it.
Often, it’s the polar opposite: A day filled with disturbed thoughts and crippling inner chiding, bringing us to our knees for courage to go on.
So when your mind gift for the day is a song like “On the Wings of a Dove,” fly with it!
Why are certain songs sticky?
Researchers say that “earworm” songs have a special cadence. The notes of the first phrase will rise, while the second one falls. Like “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.” They also tend to have a perky beat. Kelly Jakubowski, PhD, of Durham University in the U.K. says, “These musically sticky songs seem to have quite a fast tempo along with a common melodic shape and unusual intervals or repetitions.”
While that explains ear worms, Sticky Songs that comfort and inspire are so much more.
I think the good sticky songs are messages from God, gifts that He sends to help us through hard times, or like in my case this week, give us a happy, carefree day. Which doesn’t happen as often as we’d like, and thus, is a special blessing.
May God bless you with a special Sticky Song day!
I never knew all the lyrics to “The Wings of a Dove”. It seems like a hymn I remember from years ago. I found that interesting that earworms have a particular cadence. I will have to think about that next time one gets stuck in my head. Someone told me recently that to get rid of an earworm you have to sing the song to its completion but I noticed that when songs get stuck in my head that I don’t know all the words and keep going over the ones I do know! Haha
Have you noticed, though, that if it’s a song you used to know well, the “earworm” eventually evolves into a memory of the whole song? That happened to me when my late father-in-law asked if I knew all the words to a certain earworm he was having. I didn’t. But I kept singing the words I knew, and by the next day, I had remembered them all. I give the credit for that to God; He can bring words to our hearts when we need them, that we may have long forgotten. Thanks for visiting, Rachel Going. I love reading your blog.