How To Keep Artists And Songs In Your Mind For Long Periods Of Time
In today’s world of over-stimulation and music saturation, we need to activate our long-term memory
The music ecosystem is more saturated than ever. With music streaming sites like Spotify, Apple, Tidal, and Amazon Music hitting us with 100,000 new songs daily, it’s impossible to keep up with the noise. Thanks to music publications and writers like us, people can synthesize through all the latest hit playlists on their social media feeds and music streaming platforms. One of the goals of music writers is to help listeners make sense of the music they’re listening to and to put music in their proper context.
With all this music around us, it’s hard to concentrate on any song or artist for a long time. One of my pet peeves is hearing a song or artist I like and then forgetting the name of both a week or so later. I’m assuming you have been in the same position, too.
The song’s name is on the tip of your tongue, right?
You could hear some of the melodies, but the lyrics escape you…
If this happens to you, I have a solution that will work. In this article, I will outline a strategy I call the Music Memory Maker, or MMM for short. Through MMM, you can better your chances of memorizing the music and artists you heard on the radio or at the store. These strategies work because they don’t just reuse your hearing senses, but they tap into your sight as well. It’s a strategy that requires you to work, so be prepared to make several contacts with songs and artists and activate your memory. Through the contact points below and repetition, you will have a clear-cut strategy to combat music memory loss. MMM will help the music and artist you find stick in your mind for a long time.
For each contact point, I will describe the following
- How to accomplish this step
- How it will specifically help your memory
- A personal example
Contact Point #1: Listen To The Artist’s Entire Album
How To Accomplish This Step: I know this sounds too obvious to be a step, but with the strong push of playlists in today’s age, I need to repeat it. I can’t stress enough how important it is to hear an entire project by an artist. Not only do you simply spend more time with the artist, but the overall themes and sounds of the artists are more likely to seep into your skin and stick to memory. Stay with this album for a few days and live with it. Even if you don’t like some songs, after a few days, this may change.
How It Helps With Memory: The benefit here is straightforward — listen to an entire album to get a great idea of the artist’s voice, production, and message. Even if you don’t like the artists, after listening to their projects several times, you’ll have a more informed reason why they are not your cup of tea.
Example: When I started hearing about Majid Jordan I was quickly suspicious of the hype and their origins. Why did these seemingly unknown artists suddenly become prized members of the new R&B community so fast? To address my wariness of them, I put on my headphones and listened to A Place Like This EP several times. I joined the bandwagon once I understood their moody, night sky R&B sound and excellent, mysterious aesthetic. Their sound was missing from the contemporary pop-R&B scene of acts like Chris Brown and Jhene Aiko. Majid Jordan tapped into the murkier, synth-heavy wave of R&B that was approaching thanks to the popularity of artists like Partynextdoor and The Weeknd.
Contact Point #2: Watch Video Interviews Of The Artist
How To Accomplish This Step: YouTube is the gift of gifts in the modern age. Most artists have at least some interviews online, and YouTube is a spectacular place to start. It doesn’t matter where you begin; starting is just essential. I usually go for the older interviews first because they represent the artists at their most sincere and pure. They typically give authentic interviews and share their honest thoughts and personalities at this time before the industry corrupts them or they become guarded. This step will help you understand the artist as a person.
How It Helps With Memory: Watching several interviews will help you recognize and understand an artist on a personal and human level. After several interviews, you will pick up trends, and the artist’s personality will become apparent. This step helps me listen to their music because I can understand their perspective more and pick up on lines or themes I remember hearing about in an earlier interview. Interviews will further flesh out the complete artists and the extensive web encapsulating themselves, their art, and their business as recording artists.
Example: Jazz music hasn’t had a resurgence in decades like it’s having now. Thanks in large part to the celebrity and music of Laufey, jazz music has captured the hearts of millions of young fans. Once I heard the music, I quickly realized why her sound was so beloved. It’s cute, poppy, and immediately intimate. However, I watched countless interviews to help me along with the celebrity aspect of Laufey’s rise. At that point, I was bought into the person behind the music and quickly became one of her biggest cheerleaders.
Contact Point #3: Read the Artist Features or Album Reviews
How To Accomplish This Step: I want to give credit where credit is due in this section. Top-tier music publications like Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, and Billboard write some of the best artist features in the business. Please take advantage of the insights they are unearthing in these long-form, detailed write-ups. Usually, the writer had to visit the artist’s house, follow them around town, or travel with them on a tour to capture the content for the piece. I love reading these for my favorite artists every couple of years because of the little gems and small things they share; they give us a sneak peek behind the facade of their artistry.
How It Helps With Memory: Album reviews and features will give you great vocabulary and context to describe the artist for yourself and others. Music journalist’s essays and reviews will better equip you to put their music in an era or genre, which will help you better organize it in your mind. Therefore, it won’t just be an artist you like, but it will be an artist from a period or a trend that means a certain amount to a particular group of people. Your mind will have so many things to connect this artist to that it will help keep them in your mind for various reasons.
Example: Although I’m familiar with 21 Savage’s music and story, I could always learn more. This recent feature in Rolling Stone helped me understand his character more and his opinions on world events causing chaos and destruction worldwide. Thanks to this story, my knowledge and depth of understanding of 21 Savage is stronger and more rooted.
Contact Point #4: Watch The Artist’s Music Videos
How To Accomplish This Step: YouTube will also be your friend in this scenario. I watch at least three music videos, usually from different album cycles. I utilize this strategy to quickly get the most extraordinary breadth of the artists’ style and range. Find a tremendously big TV to watch these music videos on as well. Treat yourself in the process and pay attention to the little details. Music videos, for many artists, are treated seriously and showcase the expensive budget they are willing to put behind their vision to flesh out the whole idea of their music.
How It Helps With Memory: Now, we want to tap into our sense of sight for this step. Our minds organically connect the music to the person’s physical appearance through the visual medium of music videos. Music videos are a crucial final step in this process because it combines all the other pieces seamlessly. Now, when you try to remember the artist, your mind can hold the music, visualize the music, the person’s appearance, and their personality in one thought.
Example: A friend recently introduced me to the viral country star Carter Faith. While her music was good, the particular sound wasn’t anything outside your typical pop-country world. However, Faith’s music videos helped me remember her specific brand of country pop music. After perusing half a dozen of her videos, I figured out her angle of sultry and empowering country music. Now, I can have a much more firm grip on Faith’s perspective and music. Through this contact point, I became an avid Faith fan and supporter.
Contact Point #5: Repeat X3
How To Accomplish This Step: Once you complete the four steps above, repeat them several times! The magic number here is three because it’s a small enough number where you can accomplish the four contact points in a day, but it’s enough repetition to forge an unbreakable memory in your mind.
How It Helps With Memory: Repetition is key. Our minds pick up habits after repeating things for about six months. You can also learn a new skill with repetition for 20 hours. The act of memorizing artists and their general sound works the same way. After this practice, you’ll have a solid basis of an artist’s look, personality, and, most importantly, the sound of their music. Soon, you’ll realize most artists don’t change very much, so with this knowledge, you could have a great conversation about many artists with many people quite well. I can admit that this strategy has helped me tremendously before concerts or music conversations I know I’m about to have about artists I’m less familiar with.
Example: I’ve seen Tate McRae’s name pop up a few times in pop circles over the past few years. Her collaboration with Khalid in “Working” helped ignite some initial interest in checking out the rest of her music. Unfortunately, I didn’t fully pursue this idea. However, during the promotion for her 2023 album Think Later, I took advantage of the wave of videos, interviews, and features coming out week after week. Not before long, I was immersed in her pop-trap dancing world and began to seriously enjoy the artist McRae and all of the disparate parts that came with it. Now, she’s one of the younger artists I’m looking out for the most to continue to blow up in 2024.
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