I might owe some people an apology.
I recently posted about a song from “Scrubs the Musical,” [1] a television episode that aired a few weeks ago. The title of this tune is presumably “Everything comes Down to Poo.” It is a clever and funny tune, but it is also dangerous.
For me (hopefully not for you) that song morphed into an “earworm,” another name for a song that can get stuck in one’s head. This crazy tune from Scrubs has been following me around relentlessly for the past two weeks. It has sometimes been distractingly annoying during the day. It even kept me awake one night last week.
What to do? I just happen to be reading a cogsci/music book: This is Your Brain on Music, [2] by Daniel Levitin. Here’s what I learned from Levitin: There is relatively little scientific work done on the topic of earworms. What is clear is that
musicians are more likely to have ear worm attacks than non-musicians, and . . . people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) are more likely to report being troubled by ear worms—in some cases medications for OCD can minimize the effects.
Hmmm . . . This makes me wonder whether Walgreens carries any over-the-counter medications for OCD . . .
Levitin suggests that the neural circuits representing a song somehow get stuck in “playback” mode, but usually only a small fragment of a song (15 to 30 seconds) is involved. Ear worms are most likely “simple songs and commercial jingles.”
Marketing professor James J. Kellaris, PhD, of the University of Cincinnati has also studied earworms. [3] (Kellaris has also done some interesting research about customer reactions to the use of music by busisnesses [4]). He has found that nearly 98% of people have had songs stuck in their heads. He has found that people tend to be haunted by their own idiosyncratic demon tunes. Musicians are more often bothered by non-musicians. He also notes that women are afflicted significantly more than men. As Kellaris writes, [3]
Songs with lyrics are reported as most frequently stuck (74%), followed by commercial jingles (15%) and instrumental tunes without words (11%),” Kellaris writes in his study abstract. “On average, the episodes last over a few hours and occur ‘frequently’ or ‘very frequently’ among 61.5% of the sample.
Kellaris has published his students’ “Top-Ten Earworm List”:
1. Other. Everyone has his or her own worst earworm.
2. Chili’s “Baby Back Ribs” jingle.
3. “Who Let the Dogs Out”
4. “We Will Rock You”
5. Kit-Kat candy-bar jingle (“Gimme a Break …”)
6. “Mission Impossible” theme
7. “YMCA”
8. “Whoomp, There It Is”
9. “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”
10. “It’s a Small World After All”
According to a separate list on Yahoo, [5] other common earworms include “Raindrops Are Falling on My Head” and “Chicken Noodle Soup.” Over the years, my personal demon has been “Jingle Bell Rock.” My wife’s demons have included “Sing a Song.” My father-in-law was long haunted by “Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer.”
In an article called “’Brain itch’ keeps songs in the head,” [6] we learn this from a jingle writer:
For both advertising purposes and pop music purposes, you want something that once heard is not forgotten quickly or easily,” explained jingle writer Chris Smith, adding that a good earworm was “Insidious – and often quite blatant. One of the key elements of an earworm is repetition,” he said. “If you have something with a lot of varied content, it’s not so easily assimilated.”
Smith indicates that “Even the greatest musicians had suffered with earworms”:
Mozart’s children would “infuriate” him by playing melody and scales on the piano below his room – but stopping before completing the tune. He would have to rush down and complete the scale because he couldn’t bear to listen to an unresolved scale.”
What can you do if you get a song stuck in your head? Some people say that you must force yourself to sing the entire song. I’ve tried that, but it only makes it worse for me. Others say that you need to replaced the earworm with another earworm, which functions as an “eraser tune.” That is the idea behind an enterprising site called “Maim that tune [7].” This tormented soul [8] tried yet another potential remedy:
[R]umor has it that chewing on cinnamon sticks will help make the song begone. I’ll see if that works. All I know is that by the time I’d finished drafting this post, “Springtime For Hitler” had been replaced by “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”
Not to frighten anyone needlessly, but earworms sometimes bloom into “musical hallucinosis,” [9] where people vividly hear music that isn’t being played. Such a hallucination can occur without any other distortion of reality and it can last for months.
Some research suggests infections of the brain, such as syphilis and Lyme disease, can trigger musical hallucinations by inflaming parts of the brain. Curing the diseases sometimes cures the hallucinations as well. And in other cases, the songs just stop.
Hmmm. I’m again thinking about going to Walgreens . . .
In conclusion, I’m not going to ask anyone to comment on his or her most feared earworm. Simply writing the title might trigger the extended playing of that song in your head. Don’t risk it. It’s not worth it. Really. Don’t you dare!
Then again, what is your most commonly recurring earworm?
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