Singing in your sleep - "Hallelujah"

I'm here in San Diego over Fall Break with Emerald and Lauren. We are in the motel and I just woke up - Emerald and Lauren are just waking up now.

I woke up with a song stuck in my head - "Hallelujah", the Jeff Buckley version. I always wonder how I can have a song stuck in my head when I haven't heard it played. Was I dreaming the song?

Paul McCartney wrote some of his best melodies while he was asleep. He would often wake up in the morning with a familiar tune in his head and swear he made it up, like a higher force brought it to him during the night.

But why do I wake up with somebody else's song in my head?

Different songs will remind me of a different time in my life, so it makes sense that if I'm thinking about a certain instance in time, a song from that time will pop into my head. It's also true that sometimes I'll hear a song and it will remind me of an instance that may or may not actually have anything to do with that song. For example, every time I hear "Sound of Settling" by Death Cab for Cutie, I remember driving in the car with my high school journalism teacher on the way to a Journalism convention in Ellensberg, Washington (about four hours from Seattle), over the summer going into junior year. He drove a stick shift on a little black car. I remember the song came on on the mixed CD he brought for the car ride as he was explaining to me how a stick shift worked. I always remember that trip when I hear that Death Cab song

The Jeff Buckley version of "Hallelujah" reminds me of a couple different things. Mostly it reminds me of the show The O.C., since the song was in the soundtrack for that episode. I know a lot of music snobs have a big problem with the O.C., but no matter what one's feelings are about the show, I have to give it credit for what it did for the music scene during its first season. It introduced a new generation of adolescents to underground music, and actually got them excited to hear something new. At the end of each episode, right before the credits, the show would list the music heard in that episode. After a while, the show got out of hand, and they just made soundtrack after soundtrack of songs that I couldn't keep up with, but I will always love the first soundtrack to the show. My favorites on the mix are "Just a Ride" by Jem, "Honey and the Moon" by Joseph Arthur, "The Way We Get By" by Spoon, "How Good it Can Be" by The 88, and "Dice" by Finley Quaye. The music on the mix goes really well together, and gives me this certain calm, sunny, feeling.

I have to admit that I absolutely loved that show the first couple of seasons. It was exciting and let me into a world that was different and separate than the world within my small, sheltered, college prep high school walls. I remember it being cold and rainy in the winter, and I would be in a down coat and wearing a scarf and soaked from the rain, and then the O.C. would come on and it would take me to sunny, southern California where everyone was in their swimsuits down by the beach.

I can't even count how many different versions of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" have been sung. Besides Jeff Buckley's, there's versions by Imogen Heap, Rufus Wainwright, and Ryan Adams. Obviously the song means a lot to a bunch of different people.

I don't know why it was in my head this morning. But, it isn't unusual. I wake up every morning with a song stuck in my head - it just shows how important music has become to my life. I mostly go around every day singing songs in my head. I don't mind. It makes my life musical.