Why You Can Memorise Entire Songs But Not Your Study Material

Tujhe dekha to yeh jana sanam…

Don’t tell me you didn’t sing Pyar hota hai deewana sanam in your mind.

Almost every Indian (or maybe North Indian) knows at least the first two lines of this legendary song. This song is just one example of the plethora of songs that most of us know by heart and could sing them even if someone wakes us up in the middle of the night.

Are you aware of the reason why we know all these songs word by word?

Is it because they have awesome beats, heart touching lyrics and amazing melodies? 

Sure they do.

But don’t we also tend to remember even the worst of songs that have the same word repeating over and over again? *cough* Tony Kakkar *cough* 👀

They don’t have great beats or melody or even meaningful, let alone heart touching lyrics. Then what makes them imprinted in our minds?

It is just because of our action of listening to them again and again, intentionally or unintentionally. Soon after being released, we hear them so many times – on the radio, on Spotify or on YouTube – that we have no choice but to absorb them.

The mere repetition of the song made sure they are always on the tip of our tongue. 

And there’s another noteworthy observation that we don’t memorise entire songs in one go or even if we listen to it 5 times in a row.

The first time you hear a song, you don’t sing. You just listen along and enjoy it.

The second time or the next day when you hear it, you sing along to maybe the first two lines or the first stanza.

The third time or a couple of days later when you hear it, you almost make it through half the song.

The fourth or fifth time you hear it, you can sing along the entire song, but fumbling a bit.

Around the seventh time or week later, you know the entire song.

When you hear it the tenth or the twentieth time around a month later, you can probably sing the song more confidently than the singers themselves.

Essentially your memorization for the song lyrics were spaced out over a period of time which made remembering them easier.

The repetition coupled with the fact that the repetitions were spaced out helped you recall the songs with ease.

You may have had this question in your mind at least once too. 

Now you know why you can memorise the songs. It’s because you repeat them many times over a period.

This statement itself also explains why you cannot memorise your test notes or study material. 

The fact that we try and cram the notes in one night and expect to remember everything is bizarre. 

There would be no way that the content would have not seeped in our minds. We neither repeat it, nor space it out. This directly affects our retention of the data we studied.

So the next time you want to learn something, and memorise it you know that you just need to repeat (repetition) the content multiple times, over a period (spacing it out). This seems like common knowledge and something really obvious, but we don’t pay that much attention to it.

This is an actual study technique and is quite popular among students completing higher studies such as graduation or post graduation. It is known as Spaced Repetition. Even though it can be explained elaborately, the crux is to repeat the content periodically after studying it. (One of the most popular schedule is repeating it after 1 day, 7 days, 15 days, 35 days and 60 days)

You can memorize both songs and study material now 😉😂

Comment below what are the songs that you can sing even when you’re half asleep.