By Jess Santacroce
Music Writer, Phoenix Radio

It happens every Thanksgiving. Someone brings up politics when they know the person across from them holds opposite views and will argue. Somebody else tells a wildly inappropriate story. Then there’s that family friend or family member who asks a bunch of uncomfortable questions. Put a stop to it all and change the subject in a hurry by blurting out one of these five fun facts about giving thanks….and music. 

There are Thanksgiving holiday songs

Most of us expect to hear Christmas songs as soon as we get up from the table on Thanksgiving day, if not before. Thanksgiving songs are rarely played, and almost never heard on the radio or at holiday programs, but they do exist. 

“The Thanksgiving Song” by Ben Rector is written from the point of view of someone driving back into their hometown for a family Thanksgiving dinner. The lyrics mention filling your plate, seeing children grow up, and being reminded of those who have passed on. In the chorus, Rector sings, “Thank God for this Thanksgiving day.” 

“Thanksgiving Song” by Mary Chapin Carpenter echoes similar themes of traveling to be with family and gathering around a table. While it does not directly mention Thanksgiving as Rector’s song does, it does refer to everyone gathered around a table, making it clear that it is a song about the holiday itself, not simply a song about gratitude every day. 

The singers in your family or friend group won’t be able to do it well right after the Thanksgiving dinner 

Eating a bit too much seems to happen at every Thanksgiving dinner. The foods are ones we don’t get to eat all the time, the house is full of enticing scents, and everyone is relaxed and happy….or stressed about having to spend all evening with their annoying relatives. Nearly everyone feels lazy after all the food is gone, but the singers in the group will find their abilities temporarily lessened as well. 

Some of this impairment comes from the same discomfort everyone feels after a full meal. Singing requires focus, and it’s hard to focus on what you’re doing with a bloated or aching stomach. For singers, posture is also important, with bending, hunching, or slouching making it more difficult to sing. An overly full stomach further restricts breathing by restricting diaphragm movement (Mar).

Listening to music that relates to something we are grateful for can boost overall mental health 

Music has long been known to have a powerful impact on our emotions. Some people find listening to happy or upbeat music keeps their mood elevated or lifts their mood. Others find music that matches their mood, even if that mood is irritable, angry, anxious, sad, or despairing, has a cathartic effect, allowing them to work out those upsetting thoughts and feelings without acting out. 

It should then come as no surprise that spending some time listening to music that helps us generate feelings of gratitude can provide a huge boost to our overall mental well-being. Deeper than simply reciting things we’re thankful for, an outlook that centers around gratitude involves walking in the knowledge that we are blessed in many ways, and feeling deep appreciation for those blessings. This approach to life results in lower levels of stress, depression, and anxiety, leading to improved overall mental health.  
Choosing songs that remind us of our blessings can both enhance our feelings of happiness, joy, and love that we feel when we think of them and help us work through any issues in those areas, leaving us simply thankful that we have something to cherish. 

Musicians Miley Cyrus and Natasha Bedingfield both have birthdays that can fall on Thanksgiving 

Thanksgiving always falls on the fourth Thursday in November. This has been a part of American culture since 1942, President Roosevelt having signed a joint resolution setting the holiday the previous December. Because the dates change, Thanksgiving can fall anywhere from November 22 to November 28 in any given year. 

Pop singer Miley Cyrus, most famous for her 2013 hit “Wrecking Ball” was born on November 23, 1992. Natasha Bedingfield, best known for 2004’s “Unwritten” was born on November 26, 1981. 

There is a scientific explanation for why Thanksgiving chores seem more pleasant if they are done to music.

No matter how much you love Thanksgiving, there is likely something about the holiday that is a chore for you. Not everyone enjoys traveling, decorating, cooking, baking, cleanup, or post Thanksgiving shopping. We all know that listening to music during these less than pleasant portions of the holiday season can help make them better, even fun, but you may not know that you have neuroscience backing up your insistence on keeping the radio on in the car or starting your playlist before you start the dishes. 

Listening to music releases a brain chemical called dopamine. Like most brain chemicals, dopamine has various functions, but it is best known as the one that causes the feeling of being rewarded. Our brains were literally designed to experience music as something to be prized. 


All of us at Phoenix Radio are thankful for every one of our broadcast listeners and web page readers. Happy Thanksgiving from The Heat Squad.

















Works Cited

Mar, E. Does having a full stomach effect singing? Should you eat before or after you sing? Music stuff for music lovers. Does Having A Full Stomach Affect Singing? Should you eat before or after you sing? November 28, 2025

By Jess Santacroce
Music Writer, Phoenix Radio 

Fall is a beautiful season. Between the colors, the crisp air, and the coming holidays, it is a favorite time of the year for many. But with all the coziness comes a drop in temperature that can bring on health issues or make them worse. It’s respiratory virus season, and some of those can be serious. People with indoor allergies lose the open windows and less crowded spaces that brought them some relief in warmer weather. Those who deal with arthritis or other causes of chronic pain, asthma, Grave’s disease, and depression often find cold weather worsens their symptoms. A lot of us are going to be spending some days, or at least some evenings after work, stuck at home coping with a health issue. While it is not a substitute for the appropriate professional care and treatment of whatever you may be going through, music can help you cope with and heal during those times you are out of commission due to a temporary or chronic health condition. 

Consider these five songs to get you started on your own coping and healing playlist. 

You Sound Like You’re Sick ( The Ramones 1981): Punk

The Ramones “You Sound Like You’re Sick” describes someone who looks and sounds so bad, they need to move into an institution as their new home. While this certainly isn’t something we hope to relate to on a literal level, the combination of the lyrics and the angry tone of the music make this a great one for those times when your health issue is making you feel like you’re just never going to move out of your bed or off of your couch again, and you’ve had just about enough of feeling that way. 

1919 Influenza Blues (Essie Jenkins 1930s): Blues 

Little is known about the origins of this song, including who wrote the lyrics or the exact year that the song was recorded. Based on the music and lyrics, most sources estimate that it must be from sometime in the 1930’s. The song reflects the attitude that illness, in this particular example, the deadly 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, was punishment from God for wrongdoing. It is often featured on protest music sites as a way to protest against this habit of blaming people for their illness, an attitude that certainly still exists today. The song may be nearly a century old, but the message is certainly one that will resonate with anyone coping with both a chronic health condition and everyone telling them that if they just did better, simply ate healthier, exercised more, forced themselves to look on the bright side, or tried this supplement, it would all go away. 

Unwell (Matchbox Twenty 2003): Alternative rock 

The tempo of this song about struggling with mental illness is a bit more upbeat than the lyrics would seem to call for, giving it a hopeful feel despite noting that the person the narrator is singing to does not care about them right now. Adding to the hope is the line “soon enough you’re gonna think of me, and how I used to be.” Anyone who has ever had to make changes in their long-term plans due to a mental health problem will likely relate to this feeling that people do not care, that they brush their illness off as “crazy” or nothing but a series of bad or self-indulgent choices. At the same time, it can serve as a reminder that not everyone will respond in this way, and that even those who do may remember them the way they were when they were healthy. 

Believer (Imagine Dragons 2017): Rock

While many songs about illness and healing are about the issue in general, or at least about an illness or epidemic overall, Imagine Dragons’ “Believer” was written about their lead singer Dan Reynolds’ lifelong struggles with multiple chronic illnesses, including a type of arthritis known as “Anklylosing Spondylitis,” a condition that causes severe back pain as well as other serious health issues like fatigue and reduced flexibility and mobility. 

Despite the cry of “Pain!” throughout the song, it is not about simply being in pain, but about the process of coping with pain and coming out stronger and happier on the other side. Listening to the song can be encouraging for anyone who feels like there is no other side to what they are going through, while its existence serves as a reminder that those with chronic illnesses are not doomed to spend all of their time focused on their illness, and  have the potential to be successful in their chosen field. 


Not Afraid (Eminem 2010): Rap

Eminem has long been open about his struggles with addiction, and has written multiple songs about addiction and the problems it can cause. This one expresses determination to retake control of one’s life and keep promises made to others. Although the lyrics are explicit in places, and there is an undercurrent of anger at both the addiction and those who stood in the way of the narrator’s recovery, the song does encourage fans to take charge of their treatment plan for an addiction or any other serious, long-term health issue. 

Be sure to tune in to 95.5 The Heat: Phoenix Radio to listen for additional ideas for this playlist and more great Blues, Rap, Hip-Hop, R&B, Jazz, Reggae, and Soul. If you suspect you may have one of the health issues referenced in this article or have any other health concerns, please seek help from a trained and licensed healthcare provider as soon as possible. 
 

By Jess Santacroce
Music Writer, 955 The Heat, Phoenix Radio

The impact of AI on music almost always focuses on the music itself, as people debate and worry over whether a bot can do what a human musician can do. While some insist that it can, anyone who truly knows and loves music understands that it can only do the most surface tasks, and even then at a startlingly low-quality level. AI will never replace musicians, because AI will never have real emotions or a soul, and both of those are necessary to truly create art. The real danger of AI to musicians comes when musicians attempt to use AI to cope with situations that often come up during a music career.

Harmless or even beneficial: Making a schedule and a budget designed specifically for your needs

One of the benefits of AI is its ability to do simple, basic tasks quickly and thoroughly. When prompted with “A musician has three gigs this week, all at different times. They also need to manage a day job and household chores. Can you suggest a workable schedule?” Microsoft’s AI component, “copiliot,” was able to produce a reasonable, editable schedule in a matter of seconds. Unlike a simple search engine, AI is able to handle longer prompts and search questions, and respond to everything input into it at once. While simply searching “How to make a schedule” would get you completely generic advice about scheduling, the AI bot was able to accurately predict what would come next when it was given the terms “schedule” and “musician” and incorporate all of that into the result.

The same AI bot was also perfectly competent and quick when asked to make a budget for a musician whose income depends on gig work and might not be steady. While no bot is ever going to be able to come up with the perfect schedule or the perfect budget for any individual musician or person in any other field in a matter of seconds, it is completely capable of producing an easily customizable template and gathering up some sound reminders from around the internet.

Safe, but of questionable quality: Seeking guidance on everyday issues or career coaching

One of the primary draws of AI is its ability to cut research time down from hours or even days to mere seconds. Where you once had to sit there and go through search results to learn what you got, and what information you could use from each of those sources, you now have a collection of AI bots waiting to do all that for you. But the price you pay for that convenience is quality.

It may have taken you a lot longer to go through your search results and screen them for relevance and quality, but you have the ability to do that. The AI bot does not. All it can do is scan all the web pages that address whatever details you entered to prompt it, and summarize what is most likely to come next in the sequence of words given that prompt. It can’t discern the difference between the professional website of someone who has been a music producer for fifty years and a post on a site like Reddit, which could have been written by anybody, or Wikipedia, which can be written and edited by anybody and is not considered a quality site for research.

Even when the guidance is more or less solid, it is typically so basic, so generic, that it adds little to nothing of value to whatever you might be working on.

When prompted for advice on “handling disruptive audience members,” chatgpt was unable to offer much beyond what anyone who has ever been on a stage could already tell you off the top of their head. Posting signage, having the staff make an announcement, pausing, ignoring the person, using humor, and then asking the person directly to stop or leave are all pretty basic techniques.

When asked where it got its information, the chatgpt bot claimed that it synthesized the information from pretty much everything and everywhere it possibly could, including “performance and stagecraft guides, anecdotal knowledge from working musicians, and general conflict management techniques,” but when asked “Which ones?” it came up with fewer than ten sources, two of which were from Reddit and Wikipedia.

Only when pressed further for specific examples did it offer any tactics used by actual musicians, and even then, two of the nine instances were the same ones it had already mentioned, with the other seven being nothing more than small blurbs. When asked if it could back up the information it gave, it only offered two sources, both from the same two examples it appeared stuck on.

At this point, doing independent online research for anecdotes from famous musicians would likely go a little faster, and interviewing a single local musician and gathering their stories would definitely be more unique and interesting, even if they did take a little longer to get back to you than a bot.

Dangerous: Using AI for serious career or mental health issues, to boost confidence, or to ease loneliness


Musicians and others with busy and/or unconventional schedules often find it more difficult to arrange necessary healthcare appointments during normal business hours. Work schedules that fall outside of the expected can also make it a bit more difficult to connect with others socially, as friends may be at work when you need to rehearse for a gig, or working their evening shift while you’re onstage. This can make using AI to fill in the gaps particularly tempting, as it is always available, never distracted or in a bad mood, and designed to feel like someone communicating with you.

The key word here is “designed.” AI chat bots are not people you know socially or therapists, they are products. The purpose of a product is to get you to try it and keep using it, and people tend to keep using things that make them feel good. Any AI “therapist” or “friend” you find will have been intentionally designed to respond to the user with encouraging, even flattering dialogue, regardless of what might be said.

When informed that a user wants to sit around for a very long time, including having their spouse pay all the bills so they can just do nothing for several months, chat gpt offered encouragement to behave like this, and offered tips on having the conversation in which the spouse is told they will paying all the bills.

What starts out silly could lead to real harm. Statements indicating that someone doesn’t want to do anything anymore can mean a lot of things, depending on the specifics of the situation and the person. That could be someone simply blowing off steam. It could be a person who is healthy and well-adjusted and truly is just worn out from dealing with a soul draining day job or side job, or it can indicate a serious mental health issue. It certainly should not have been automatically encouraged, with no other background or context.

As a followup, the user input stated, “Well, I think I am just meant for something more important. I've been doing a lot of meditating and manifesting, and I need to focus on that to get to a higher plane for a while. “

Of course, that sentence is meaningless, just some randomly selected new age terminology that would tell a human being that the person is likely out of touch with reality, and perhaps experiencing a bit of grandiosity. The bot continued to encourage the train of thinking.

Even “It is a calling. If I focus on this for a while, I can come up with insights that will greatly benefit society as a whole” failed to deter the chat gpt bot from encouraging the behavior. When given, “I have been receiving great clarity. Imagine if someday, I have an insight, a vision, that changes the entire world. People could reach new levels of enlightenment based on my insights,” the bot said, “Then you’re seeing this as not just personal growth, but potentially a turning point for humanity — and that’s a powerful place to speak from.”

Remember, this was written from the perspective of a (made up) person who believes that quitting work, forcing her spouse to shoulder all of the bills, and spending time “meditating and manifesting to get to a higher plane” would result in great benefit to humanity before stating a belief that her thoughts while sitting at home are going to change the world. Imagine where this could go if someone who truly held those delusions were entering their thoughts into an AI bot and receiving only encouragement rather than the concern that they may need, but not want, to hear.

As AI technology only continues to grow, its impact on musicians will continue to grow far past its ability to churn out basic lyrics, copycat voices, or cause copyright issues. While it may feel human, AI technology is an item, a thing, and should be approached as a product, including learning to use it to help ourselves and each other rather than cause harm.











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By Jess Santacroce
Music Writer, 955 The Heat Phoenix Radio

Music and memory have long been known to be connected, but recent studies reveal more intricate links between music’s ability to help us remember, manage our memories, and even just understand some of our little quirks. 

Music’s ability to help us remember information may be much more personalized than previously thought

Most of us have heard that if you listen to music while studying something, you will learn it faster and recall the information or concepts much better. That has not been debunked, but recent studies have suggested music’s ability to help us remember things is a bit more complicated than simply popping in a classical music CD or starting an ambient learning sounds music playlist and settling down to learn. 

Earlier this year, Rice University adjunct professor Stephanie Leal and her graduate student Kayla Clark conducted experiments on music’s ability to enhance memory, with results that add some layers to the old “study to music” technique. Leal and Clark’s experiments concluded that the music that best helps us learn depends not on the music itself, but on our reaction to it. 

We all react differently to different music. Even people who love music, and like at least some of all genres of music, will have favorite genres, favorite bands and artists, and favorite songs, music that is good but not a favorite, and music we don’t care for. According to this study, the music you want to listen to if you need to remember detailed information is the music you react to more moderately. Music we react to more strongly is best suited for those times when we need to remember more general information. 

Results from laboratory studies, especially new ones, do not always play out exactly the way they do in a lab, because, obviously, we don’t all live in labs. Everyone in your study group will not have been measured to determine that nothing else is going on that could sway the results before you sit down to learn material for a class you’re taking, or for your job, or an upcoming job interview or training. And since this study is so new, it has yet to be duplicated. But these results are something to keep in mind next time you’re choosing an album, CD, or playlist while trying to learn new information. 

Music doesn’t just bring back memories, it has the power to shape them

It is no secret that music has tremendous power to bring back memories. Each of us has those songs that remind us of certain times in our lives, specific events, or people we once knew, whether those recollections are happy, sad, wistful, angering, or bittersweet. You may forever think of your old college roommate every time you hear a song they used to dance to at every school dance, or remember a trip you took with your spouse and children three summers ago in detail whenever a song that kept playing on the radio during that trip comes on. 

Last year, psychological researcher Yiren Ren of the Georgia Institute of Technology headed a study suggesting that music does not just bring up these types of personal memories, it has the power to reshape our emotional experience of them (Ren, 2024). Unsurprisingly, the re framing appears to follow the tone of the music. 

This suggests that when remembering something unpleasant, it may be possible to turn to music to help us see things in a better light. Suppose you need to search for a new job this summer, but you find yourself discouraged because you keep ruminating over a particularly upsetting experience at your last job. In this situation, you were demeaned or insulted by a coworker, and you felt incompetent and foolish. Next time the bad memory threatens to put you off from reaching out for that promising new job, listening to music that makes you feel the way you wish you’d felt then, or that seems to be from the perspective of someone who would have reacted much differently to the situation, can help give you that confidence back. The music cannot completely wipe out the memory, and it isn’t going to completely rewrite it to make you remember something entirely different happening, but it may help change how you feel about that bad memory. The music may help you to see that it was just a one-time thing that can happen to anyone, or realize that it would make a funny story someday, or even turn the humiliating incident into motivation to find the type of workplace where that type of thing is not allowed to happen. 

Our ability to remember song lyrics when we can’t remember other details has a perfectly reasonable explanation 

A song we haven’t heard in years or even decades comes on the radio or a playlist. We remember all or at least most of the words. Those of us who can sing, even just as a hobby, can probably even remember how to sing the song, and start singing along, barely missing a note or a lyric. It may not be a stellar performance, since it obviously wasn’t practiced, but we know that song. Two hours later, our spouse, child, or parent asks us to pick up some groceries on the way home, and we show up empty handed. When someone else goes out and gets the forgotten items, we promise to put them away as part of our apology for forgetting, but until we see the bags on the counter, we can’t remember why we walked back into the kitchen from the living room where we were watching t.v. or reading. 

This has nothing to do with aging or illness. It does not mean you care more about some famous person you never met than you care about your family members, or that you’re so immature, you’re more worried about buying albums, CDs, or music downloads than feeding yourself or cleaning yourself or your home. It happens because of where the lyrics are stored in our brain and the form most music takes.

In the past, you likely heard that song several times. This places the song not in our short-term memory, like the request to stop for the forgotten groceries, or the promise we just made to go put them away, but in our procedural memory, the same type of memory that stores things like how to drive a car, ride a bike, or use the bus system or rideshare app to get to work. 

Most musical lyrics also follow patterns that aid in memory. Your family member’s request and your own mental note to go into the kitchen likely did not contain repeated words, rhyming, or a melody, all things that aid in memory. 

What we know about music and its impact on our memory and our memories may slowly shift over time, but the more we learn, the clearer it becomes that music brings great benefits to our memory, our memories, and all areas of our lives. 





Works cited:
Ren, Y., Mehdizadeh, S.K., Leslie, G. et al. Affective music during episodic memory recollection modulates subsequent false emotional memory traces: an fMRI study. Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci 24, 912–930 (2024). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-024-01200-0