someone who remembers everything they hear

A moment that is generally agreed to have had a significant influence on pop culture and everyday life. While the term was coined by Rose McGowan in context of the #MeToo movement, and is mostly associated with the K-pop community, the phenomenon is universal and a basic component of how culture works.

Real world events such as social/political movements, the election of a new U.S. President, major catastrophes and disasters, as well as entertainment such as movies, music and TV, can all function as cultural resets. Notable cultural resets in relatively recent memory include:

* The Beatles appearing on the Ed Sullivan show in 1964
* The Watergate scandal of 1974
* The release of Nevermind by Nirvana in 1991
* The September 11, 2001 attacks
* The election and inauguration of Barack Obama in 2009
* The COVID-19 pandemic

A person blessed with a Phonographic Memory has the ability to instantly recall and name the origin of sounds, chords, bass lines, drum fills, and guitar licks from the records he/she/they heard in their youth. Everybody recognizes the opening licks of "Satisfaction", but a person with Phonographic Memory "...can name that song in one note."

It is not the hearing of a train whistle and being reminded of the long summer evenings in Iowa. It is not recognizing a song being played faintly in the background of a Budweiser commercial. It is directly related to the graphic recording ( the LP or 45 rpm record, quite likely ) of those particular notes, and a instantaneous and pinpoint recognition of the song. Phonographic Memory (PM) is like muscle memory, as it is developed by repetition.

For those too young to remember, music used to be distributed on vinyl records (commonly known as a "phonograph" record). These records were played using a needle that would pick up the inscribed spiral grooves in the disk and, with the use of an amplifier, emit from a set of speakers.

Inevitably these records would get a scratch in them causing the record to skip a groove. The result was that a few milliseconds of the song would be missed. As audio tradition would have it, the listener would end up memorizing the song and lyric precisely as it was played back...skip and all. This is referred to as phonographic memory.