Now it's in your head, too. Photo: Mitch Teich

Mar 30, 2025 —

I enjoy music.  Maybe you do, too.  I mean, it’s rare to run into someone who says, “you know, I really just don’t like music.”  They’re probably out there, and they probably don’t like chocolate chip cookies, either.

As I write this, Cheap Trick’s 1978 anthem, “Surrender” is playing on my stereo.  It’s the live version, recorded at the Nippon Budokan arena in Tokyo (far superior to the studio version, in my book).  But the recording has always confused me a little - lead singer Robin Zander opens the song by saying, “This next song is the first song from our new album. [guitar lick]  It just came out this week, and the song is called ‘Surrender’.”  The crowd goes crazy, and continues to go crazy throughout the entire song, which always makes me wonder: If the song just came out this week, why is the crowd so excited about it?  Did they all buy the record four days ago and listen to it, nonstop, until the night of the concert?  Was the performance that electric?  Would they have gone crazy regardless of what Cheap Trick had played, including “Convoy” or Franz Lizst’s “Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major, S. 124?”

But I digress. 

The point is, I enjoy music.  Almost all styles, and in many languages.  Careful readers of the email version of this column might even have discovered the regular link at the bottom that goes to a song - usually in a language other than English - that has popped up on my playlist on that particular week.

A couple of months ago, I interviewed a musician named Clerel, who grew up in Senegal, went to college in the States, and now lives and records in Montreal (if you missed it, go back and listen to the podcast. I promise it’ll be worth your while.).  We talked about the appeal of listening to a song performed in a language you don’t understand, and enjoying it for the feeling it elicits - the vibe - without having to consider whether the lyrics are perfectly apt to the way you connect with the song.

Yet, the problem with listening to so much music in other languages is that occasionally a piece of a song gets lodged in my head at an inopportune time, such as 2:17 a.m., when I wake up to visit the little disc jockey’s room, if you catch my drift.  In fact, such a phenomenon occurred just this morning at 2:17 (what a coincidence!) when I woke up with exactly one line of Austrian pop singer Christina Stürmer’s “Millionen Lichter” firmly wedged into my consciousness. 

“Da sind Millionen Lichter in der Welt,” she sang.  Thanks to my 134-day streak on Babbel, I even know what this means: “There are a million lights in the world.”  None of them were actually turned on at 2:17 a.m., but this did not seem to matter.  There are a million lights in the world, Christina Stürmer repeated. 

So what if there are a million lights in the world?, I asked as I came back to bed.

There are a million lights in the world, Christina replied.  But why? I asked.  There are a million lights in the world. 

And so on, for the next 45 minutes, as the record in my mind continued to skip, and I desperately tried to think of either the next line in the song, or get a different tune lodged in my head.  True, it could be worse - it could have been the jingle from “Metro Mattress,” or “Feels So Good,” the 1977 flugelhorn single by Chuck Mangione, which got stuck in the brain of my colleague, Bill, the other day.  (He, of course, texted me first thing in the morning just to get it stuck in my head for the rest of the day.  Thanks, Bill.)

Eventually, though, Christina Stürmer’s voice faded, and I fell asleep.  I woke up a few hours later, and it had been replaced by “Nowhere to Run,” by Martha and the Vandellas.  And I understood exactly what Martha meant.