Does anyone else have music playing in their head all the time?

[WoIsMe]

I was chatting to a friend just now and I mentioned in passing that the music in my head was particularly loud today. She was really taken aback and told me that this isn't normal. It's got me wondering how many other people constantly have music playing in their head, apart from when there's external music playing. It's usually something I've listened to recently but random songs do pop in occasionally as well. I just had Symphony of Destruction by Megadeth which I don't think I've heard for years. Music is just always there in the background and it's complete songs or sometimes albums; it isn't like earworms where you get 20 seconds of something annoying playing over and over again. It also isn't mistakable for externally-played music so it isn't a condition such as MES where you get auditory hallucinations.

I know my DH has exactly the same thing and I'm pretty sure my dad did as well because he was always walking around singing random stuff like Gilbert and Sullivan songs but he never listened to anything like that. Does anyone else experience something similar or is it as unusual as my friend says?

Round and round and up and down we goooo again!

Thank you for installing that little earworm.

I thought everyone had this? No reason to think I’ve got ADHD. But I do have synaesthesia (see words in colours).

I also sing in a choir, often it will be something we have done recently. Sometimes it’s a completely random song. I’m so used to it it doesn’t bother me, unless I’ve had the same song for several days. Sometimes I’ll go to bed with one song in my head and wake up with a completely different one the next morning.

Yes, I have this as do both of my DS. I suspect that all 3 of us would be diagnosed as ND these days as we all have various additional 'tics', some in common and some solely our own. We have a laugh about it now that they are both grown up and able to deal with / mask their differences. It can take a lot of focus sometimes to appear 'normal' in company but when we are at home anything goes! We sometimes joke about it and ask 'what's your DJ playing today?'. What I find most strange about it is that the songs played in my head are very rarely ones I want to listen to, my music taste would be rock / metal bands. Songs played in my head today were Funky Town, theme from Duck Tales and an Elvis song, so DJ in my head is taking the piss!

I have to listen to a piece of music all the way through to make it stop too 😃

Yes, I hear music in my head ALL of the time. There’s never a second when there’s no music. However I am a musician. I learned to read music before I learned to read English. So yes, music.

I have synesthesia as well. Very intensely with the names of chords in music. A Major is bright yellow. D minor is dark scarlet/violet. B minor is deep black. G Major is bright light green.

I have it sometimes? But not all the time or even most of the time. Maybe like 10-20 percent of the time?! And it’s more as a pp described like I’m imagining myself listening to a song rather than it’s coming directly from inside my head as such… part of my imagination! Usually I am not in control of which songs get played though, something will just pop into my head.

I do have an almost constant internal monologue or conversation with myself going though.