What brain areas are involved in memorizing sections of a song? Typically when I listen to a song, the song will have different sections (e.g. chorus, verses, etc). As a composer, I have found that many songs use this structure to create a sense of repetition and help make the song more familiar to the listener. It tends to give the song a cohesiveness that simply introducing new material over and over doesn't yield. 

Therefore, when I listen to a song, what brain area helps me  remember parts of the song so when I hear them again, they sound familiar? 

Example: 


  We Wish You A Merry Christmas
I would read this paper, its mighty interesting.

Books

Snyder, B.(2000) Music and memory: An introduction. The MIT Press. Cambridge 291.

Hemispheric Coordination and Conflict


  "...while listening to the melody of the popular carol "Silent Night", the
  right hemisphere thinks, "Ah, yes, Silent Night", while the left
  hemisphere thinks, "two sequences: the first a literal repetition, the
  second a repetition at different pitch levels—ah, yes, Silent Night by
  Franz Gruber, typical pastorate folk style." The brain for the most
  part works well when each hemisphere performs its own function while
  solving a task or problem; the two hemispheres are quite
  complementary. However, situations arise when the two modes are in
  conflict, resulting in one hemisphere interfering with the operation
  of the other hemisphere." (Regalski 1977)


Melodic Memory


  "Performance was greatest for the musicians, particularly for the
  nontonal melody pairs. These differences were not primarily
  attributable to pitch discrimination or pitch working memory
  impairments. The findings point to differential contributions of the
  left and right mesial temporal lobes to melodic memory, with
  specificity of the right mesial temporal lobe emerging for melodic
  learning within a tonal musical context." (Wilson, Saling 2008)


Tonal Memory


  In general, tonal memory is supported by a wide network including
  primary and secondary auditory areas more right lateralized, the
  supramarginal gyrus particularly on the left, and dorsolateral
  inferior frontal areas, more clearly seen under heavy memory load
  conditions (Zatorre et al., 1994; Griffith et al., 1999; Gaab et al.,
  2003). Premotor areas, the cerebellum, basal ganglia and the thalamus
  are activated when subvocal tonal rehearsal is explicitly required
  (Hickok et al., 2003; Koelsch et al., 2009). Importantly a direct
  comparison of memory for verbal syllables and sung pitches under
  rehearsal and under suppression elicited largely overlapping brain
  areas consistent with this network (Schulze et al., 2011).


Quoted from this source.



Sources

Who Knows Where Music Lurks in the Mind of Man? New Brain Research Has The Answer. 
Journal of Music Educators (May 1977, Vol.63, pages 31-38)

Contribution of the left and right Mesial Temporal Lobes to Musical Memory: Evidence from melodic learning difficulties 
Sarah J. Wilson, Michael M. Saling 
Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol. 25 No. 4, April 2008; (pp. 303-314) 

￼Towards A Neural Basis Of Music Perception. 
Stefan Koelsch and Walter A. Siebel 
Trends in Cognitive Sciences Vol.9 No.12 December 2005

Functional anatomy of pitch memory—an fMRI study with sparse temporal sampling. 
Gaab, N., Gaser, C., Zaehle, T., Jancke, L., and Schlaug, G. (2003). 
Neuroimage 19, 1417–1426. 

Neural mechanisms underlying melodic perception and memory for pitch. 
Zatorre, R. J., Evans, A. C., and Meyer, E. (1994).
J. Neurosci. 14, 1908–1919.

Auditory-motorinteraction revealed by fMRI: speech, music, and working memory in area 
Hickok, G., Buchsbaum, B., Humphries, C., and Muftuler, T. (2003).
Spt. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 15, 673–682.

Functional architecture of verbal and tonal working memory: an FMRI study.
Koelsch, S., Schulze, K., Sammler, D., Fritz, T., Müller, K., and Gruber, O. (2009). 
Hum. Brain Mapp. 30, 859–873.

Neuroarchitecture of verbal and tonal working memory in nonmusicians and musicians. 
Schulze, K., Zysset, S., Mueller, K., Friederici, A. D., and Koelsch, S. (2011). Hum. Brain Mapp. 32, 771–783.