I’ve had two songs running pretty much on repeat today. This happens to me on frequent occasion; I get stuck on some song and I will just loop it over and over. It usually takes a day or two for the compulsion to go away.

The first one is Nothing Left To Lose by Mat Kearney. Why this song? It gives me a feeling of calm; laid-back, content, happy. Not so much that it makes me calm, content and happy, but that it reminds me that it’s possible. I’ll admit right here that it doesn’t have a lot to do with the lyrics - I probably couldn’t sing along with the song if I wanted to - it’s more to do with the music, the melody. Good stuff. Why is it stuck in my head? I think it started back on Sunday while we were eating breakfast at McDonalds while waiting for the rain to stop. This song came on over the McD’s muzak system, and my brother Andrew and I both pretty much simultaneously started singing along. It was pretty cool

The other song is Coldplay’s Swallowed In the Sea. Again, I haven’t taken a lot of time to try to figure out the lyrics. What I love in this song is the way they build it sonically. It starts out pretty sparse, just some keyboards and a little bit of pad. Then they build it in, first with the drums, and finally with the guitars and vocal harmony, until at the end they’ve built up this massive sound… it’s so… there.

Am I the only one that suffers from this compulsion? What songs have been stuck in your head lately?