It’s proven by science somewhere that putting words to music makes them easier to remember. Songs can help us remember lists of names or dates or places. School rooms across the country ring out with the bored, embarrassed, and/or shrieking tones of memorization via music. For graduates of the American school system, the knowledge contained in some of these songs, though useful once upon a time, has ceased to be relevant. Some songs contained valuable information but the tunes were not catchy enough to endure the erosion of memory that comes with time.

But some remain. And remain useful.

A few notes before we begin: Music is capable of many things. I’ll be leaving out songs that are useful for motivation (such as “Eye of the Tiger”), the enhancement of cinema (e.g. “Danger Zone”), fostering patriotism (ex: “The Ride of the Rohirrim”), or helping white people dance at weddings (à la “Cupid Shuffle”). These are all vital functions of music, but here we will limit our evaluation to songs that specifically aid in the memorization and retention of facts.

And now, songs in reverse order of utility because I’m pro-suspense:

9. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

Surprise! Not how you thought this list would start, but somebody’s gotta be last.

Points in favor: A catchy tune that helps you remember the names of Santa’s reindeer. Points against: The only time you need to know the names of Santa’s reindeer is to sing this song. It provides a solution for a problem of its own creation. Very limited use case.

8. Atomic Theory Song

My friend from middle school reminded me of this one. To its credit, it has more actual information than many of the others on this list. The lyrics include references to multiple models of the atom, quantum mechanics, probability, and the word orbitals. So there’s some valuable information (at least through high school chemistry) in there, but it’s also so unmemorable that I literally did not remember its existence.

7. School House Rock (any of em)

Third from the bottom?? But how? “They are THE quintessential education songs,” you say. And while yes, they are iconic, I don’t actually remember any of the content. I remember that there is a bill sitting on Capitol Hill and I remember that conjunctions have a function and it has something to do with how trains connect but truly that’s all that stuck. They get an A+ on vibes but on retention they score preeeetty low.

6. Helping Verbs (to the tune of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”)

Am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been / Have, has, had, do, does, did, something something something. This was another one that I forgot was been drilled into us in middle school but once I was reminded it came right back (mostly). It’s short, the tune is memorable, and it was a very useful song for middle school grammar, but hasn’t come up much since. Bottom half.

5. US State Capitals

Nooooow things start to get interesting. Fifth grade was a big year for geography at my school. That meant filling out worksheets with maps of Africa and Europe… and it meant singing four different US state capital songs. This has proven to be useful knowledge–both in having a sense of where the states are (important) and in being an asset in a trivia night (feels great). My particular state capitals song experience however gets penalized for being four different songs. The east coast one is firm in there (“Dooooover, Delaware”) but the west coast is pretty hazy and there was one for just…the middle? Not an efficient communication of the information but some of it definitely stuck and the information comes up a fair amount.

4. Books of the Bible (NT)
5. Books of the Bible (OT)

These are two different tunes but they gotta be neck and neck. They’re high up on the list because I do actually remember the tunes and all of the words for both, unlike all of the others so far. They both get a fair amount of use too (sword drills back in the day, the occasional Bible study scramble, and the bleary-eyed morning devotions), so that also contributes to the high ranking. I gotta give the OT track a slight edge because it’s harder to remember them without the aid of a song (more books and those minor prophets are tricky), so the song is slightly more useful. NT also has a few other mnemonics, like God’s Electric Power Company that make its song a little less crucial.

2. U.S. Presidents

How often do I need to know the order of the US Presidents? All the gosh darn time. 

A friend turns twenty-seven and you don’t know what to get her? Sing the song, count on your fingers, draw her a picture of William Howard Taft. You’re playing volleyball and the score is 19-11 and you want to figure out what was going on in the US in 1911? You figure that’s a few years before WWI which would be Wilson, so who comes before him? Sing the song and surprise! Taft again. 

You’re working at Mount Vernon, standing guard at George Washington’s tomb, and a guy asks you who was president after Washington and after Adams and after Jefferson and after Madison and so on, all the way through Van Buren? Sing the song, hope he doesn’t ask for too many of their first names, and escape with your tour-guide authority intact.

Okay, that one is pretty specific but it did happen to me and I was really glad I had the song memorized. I really wanted to put this at number one, but truly nothing can hope to contend with…

1. The Alphabet Song

Please rise in honor of the hardest working song out there. This truly is the best of us. There are only 26 letters in the English alphabet—should I be able to jump in anywhere and know what comes next? Yes. Can I do it without singing the entire song? It depends. Will I still need to sing at least part of the song? Usually. 

Truly where would we be without this song? The alphabet is an integral brick in the foundation of our society and most of us don’t know it without the song. This tune wins top spot by a mile for the importance of the concept it helps us remember and the frequency with which I use it. (Someone told me that some schools are teaching a different tune to learn the alphabet and I refuse to contend with that notion. I rebuke it.)

Instead of honorable mentions…

Things that don’t have handy songs that should:

• How long different foods can be in the fridge before going bad
• Remembering if turning 27 means I’m entering my 27th year or finishing my 27th year
• Cheese pairings
• Safe internal temperatures of different meats
• The different kinds of beer
• How to remove different types of stains depending on the fabric

Christina Ribbens

Christina Ribbens (’19) studied history, studio art, and data science at Calvin and public humanities at Georgetown. She now lives in the part of Virginia that’s almost Washington, DC where she helps award grants to arts nonprofits. She takes a lot of walks to admire the landscaping in peoples’ front yards, mostly listens to British comedians’ podcasts, and likes to make friends via sports.