Name That Song
Before an app could name it, someone had to listen
“Damn the man. Save the Empire.”
— Empire Records
A woman stood at the counter humming the same four bars, over and over again. Her eyes were closed as she struggled to remember the chorus of the song.
“It’s got drums in it,” she said. “Maybe a woman singing? Kind of sad?”
That was all my co-workers and I needed most days. A hummed melody or a half-remembered lyric. Someone would call over to another employee, until three or four of us were standing around the counter throwing out guesses and arguing over an artist none of us could name yet. When somebody finally cracked it, there was a real moment of celebration in the middle of the store, like we’d found something instead of just remembering it.
By Ear
I worked at that music store for years, doing a little bit of everything. Starting out as a cashier, then finally running a whole department. One of my first jobs was rewinding the returned VHS tapes. For a kid who loved stories, the whole store felt like a treasure chest. Books lined one side, with spots to sit and read, and the video department spread across the opposite side of the store. Music was right in the center, with listening stations where you could put on headphones and try before you bought. Every day I was discovering something new. I got to find new artists and hand them to people like I was giving them a gift, because I was.
The “name that song” game wasn’t official. Nobody trained us on it. It just became the thing we were good at. A few lyrics or a sung melody, using nothing but our own ears and everything we absorbed from being surrounded by music eight hours a day. This was years before Shazam. Before you could type half a lyric into a search bar and get an answer in half a second.
If you wanted to know what a song was, you needed a person who had actually been listening.
Catch and Release
A few months ago, I was in a restaurant, and a song came on that stopped me mid-sentence. I pulled out my phone before the second verse and held it up towards the ceiling speaker, waiting for the app to tell me what I already knew I liked.
It got the answer, and I added the song to a playlist. Then I noticed what I’d actually done: I hadn’t listened to that song. I’d captured it, the way you’d capture a Pokémon before it could get away. Identity secured and then back to choosing appetizers.
I used to be the person other people came up to because I could actually hear a song. Now I’m the person holding a phone up to a speaker, more interested in confirming what it is than in finding out what it does to me.
The Coordinate: Notice
In the ENOUGH Principle, Notice means awareness before action.
Working at the music store, noticing was the whole job. You couldn’t identify a song from four hummed notes unless you’d been paying attention to hundreds of songs before that moment. Not half-hearing while you did something else. Actually listening. The skill wasn’t a database. It was accumulated attention, the result of years letting music be the main thing instead of the background thing.
Shazam didn’t replace that skill. It replaced the need for it. And once you don’t need to notice something to get the answer, most of us stop noticing it at all.
A song in a restaurant used to be a shared moment, something you were inside of for three minutes whether you meant to be or not. Now it’s a small task. Identify, capture, file away, return to the conversation.
The naming happens before the listening does, which means the listening mostly stops happening.
A Small Practice
Next time a song catches you somewhere unexpected, don’t reach for your phone. Let it play through instead. Notice what it’s actually doing. Whether it’s the drums pulling you forward or the urge to turn it up. If you still want to know the title once it’s over, look it up then. But give the song the three minutes before you give it a name.
See you next week.
P.S. What’s a song that’s found you somewhere unlikely, and did you let yourself actually listen to it, or did you just capture it and move on?