Ever since I can remember, I've had an amazing memory for song lyrics. (Wish my memory for other things was as good.) If I know a song well enough to sing along, and am reminded of it, I can recall the lyrics even after 40 years. It may take a few hours, or even a couple of days, for the memory to trickle back, but it usually does.
I subscribe to
Politizoom, a liberal political blog. Every Sunday, the "Furkids" post an illustrated song -- you listen to the song while scrolling down the page to read the lyrics, each line accompanied by a cute animal picture.
This past Sunday, the song was A Thousand Years, by Christina Perri. I didn't recognize the artist (I'm woefully behind on contemporary music), but the title excited me -- I know that song! Only... no... no, I didn't. Big disappointment; it wasn't at all what I expected to hear.
My mind insisted that I knew a song with "a thousand years" in it, but the memory was so faint that I couldn't grab it. I did a search for "lyrics million years" and went through 15 pages of results. I found two or three other results for "million years" -- none of which stirred a spark of recognition -- but 99% of the results were the song from the Furkids' page.
Finally, as I was leaving Cindy's house this afternoon, I realized that the voice singing the song that I still couldn't remember was Eddy Arnold. That was enough. I opened my iTunes app, scanned down my list of Eddy Arnold songs, and there it was! The lyrics are actually "a million years," which aren't evident from the title --
Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye -- but as soon as I saw it, I knew. Vindicated!
Which isn't earth-shaking, even to me, but I'm very pleased I tracked it down.