This morning I woke up with another song stuck in my head.
You know the kind—what people call earworms. The little fragments that loop just enough to be recognizable, but not enough to actually identify. I get them all the time, to the point that I’ve made an official playlist out of it: Stuck in My Head.
And the worst part? You don’t even have to like the song. Your brain just latches onto some little looping fragment—usually something repetitive, something that doesn’t quite resolve—and decides, “Yep, this lives here now.” And not even paying rent.
Today’s was different, though.
All I had was this rising beat. No lyrics, no hook—just that feeling of I know this song. Normally, this is where I start the usual ritual: humming into Shazam, trying SoundHound, maybe Midori—maybe not butchering it so badly they actually have a chance.
But this time I tried something else.
Logic.
Where have I heard music recently?
I ran through the usual suspects and landed on the obvious one: the Oscars. They’d played a ton of songs this year. Problem was, the audio mix was… not great. Everything sounded muddy, like it had been filtered through a wall. Rewatching it wasn’t going to help—besides, it was way over three hours. I’m not going to sit through that again… though Conan did have a few good zingers.
So I kept going.
Not where did I hear it—but what did I hear?
And then it clicked.
Oh. Right.
K-Pop Demon Hunters. The one with the song that won “Golden.” I didn’t see it when it first came out, but I caught it a month or two later. I liked it well enough at the time, but none of the music really stayed with me. It’s that driving, high-energy style that works in the moment—but it’s not something I carry with me afterward. I’m not a teenager anymore.
Still, it was something.
So I glanced over at my Echo Show and said, “Alexa, play ‘Golden.’”
And just like that—mystery solved.
That was it.
Song identified.
…still don’t like it very much
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