Yeah, recordings seem to burn themselves into my mind very quickly. I can start playing a recording and take a walk around the block - and when I get back, my mind is at exctly the same place where the CD is, ever though two or three cuts may have played. It can be very hard for me to sing in a key or tempo that's different from the recording I know.
I suppose that our learning songs from recordings could tend to "homogenize" our music, so we all interpret a given song the same way it was interpreted in the recording.
-Joe Offer-