Posted on 10/24/2009 4:34:36 AM PDT by Slings and Arrows
October 16, 2009
Dear Cecil:
What’s the deal with getting a song stuck in your head? Why does it happen, especially if it’s a song you don’t like or don’t even know well? Yet all you can think about is that stupid tune. Please enlighten me; I’m getting really sick of “Tainted Love” running circles through my brain.
Cecil replies:
You think you’ve got problems? My assistant Una claims she had the same tune running through her head off and on for 27 years. Only after laborious research online was she able to establish what it was: a concerto by Antonio Vivaldi, which at least has some class. Can you imagine 27 years of “Achy Breaky Heart”?
As is all too often the case with the interesting parts of science, we don’t know much about this phenomenon but we have a good name for it: earworm, a translation of the German Ohrwurm. (Use the German if you want anyone to pay attention to you in the faculty lounge.) People have been interested in earworms for a while now — Mark Twain used one as a plot device in his 1876 story “A Literary Nightmare.” They’re the most common type of what’s called “involuntary imagery,” sounds, pictures, smells, and even tastes that repeatedly come to mind unbidden.
One theory is that earworms are a form of mild musical hallucination (normally a rare experience), the distinction being that with an earworm you (a) usually aren’t on drugs or suffering from schizophrenia and thus (b) are fully aware there’s no actual music being played outside of your skull. Another theory is that earworms are a side effect of your brain trying to consolidate memories, akin to what happens in REM sleep. Yet another possibility is pondered by neurologist Oliver Sacks in his book Musicophilia: earworms might simply be a consequence of our being surrounded by music in our lives whether we want to be or not.
A more promising line of investigation in my opinion is to focus on the earworminess of particular songs. Una contacted the office of James Kellaris, a professor of marketing at the University of Cincinnati who’s styled himself “Dr. Earworm” after years studying the subject, to learn more about a theory of his known as “cognitive itch.” According to Kellaris, “certain pieces of music may have properties that excite an abnormal reaction in the brain” — in other words, your brain detects something extraordinary or unusual about the music that compels attention. Your brain tries to process the itch by repeating it, which only makes things worse — not unlike an epidermal itch. Kellaris finds the music most likely to cause an earworm has one or more of three key qualities: repetitiveness, simplicity, and what he calls incongruity, often an unexpected rhythmic variation. One example he gives is the song “America” from West Side Story, which features a repetitive melody and shifting time signatures.
A 2003 study by Kellaris showed that nearly 98 percent of people experienced earworms, usually involving sung rather than instrumental tunes. (Una’s Vivaldi was a relative rarity, obviously indicating her superior intellect.) While women and men experienced earworms equally often, women had to put up with them for longer and were more likely to be peeved. Kellaris’s research also suggests that musicians and those inclined to worry are particularly susceptible to worm attacks.
In the early 1980s Chicago parking garage bigwig Myron Warshauer used earworms as the basis of a patented “musical theme floor reminder system,” in which a different well-known song plays in each floor’s elevator lobby. When you come back hours later and can’t remember what floor you parked on, all you have to do is pay attention to the tune that’s (theoretically) still running through your head — the song titles are listed opposite the buttons in the elevators.
Despite all this, no one really knows what causes earworms or how to get rid of them. Common removal techniques include replacing the tune with a different one, trying to distract oneself with something else, listening to the piece in question, talking to others about the earworm, or just waiting the worm out.
In an unscientific poll on the Straight Dope Message Board, more than half of 91 respondents reported experiencing earworms daily, with popular music by far the most common culprit. About half could get rid of an earworm only by putting something else in its place; 30 percent said nothing worked reliably. Another survey of 286 people found earwormants typically had heard the song three times or more just before the earworm set in and were in a “neutral to positive emotional state” but alone and bored. So avoid ennui, my friends. That’s when the earworms strike.
A final infobit: A 2005 survey found 7.5 percent of respondents were inflicted by their least favorite song as an earworm, and more than a third hated the song’s lyrics more than anything else about it. The most loathed tune? No surprise here: Billy Ray Cyrus’s “Achy Breaky Heart.”
Maybe just because I’m “Stuck on a Feelin’” “High on Believin”
Thank God that empty suit Obama didn’t have a campaign song.
I’m trying to get Nat King Cole’s “Mona Lisa” out of my head for the last few days.
Rush Limbaugh uses a certain song in his bumper music every now and then and it’s always around 1:45 to 2 PM EST. I know it’s a song from the 1970s and the tune gets stuck in my head. I just cant recall the name. Drives me crazy!
The song that gets stuck in my head the most is the one from
a movie in the mid-60s called “Rome Holiday” or something like that. Had Suzanne Pleschette and Troy Donohue in it. During the movie was a song at a restaurant called “Al Di La” or something like that. Everytime I see the movie, the song’s in my head for days.
Its a sound track.
OK... The all time BEST cure to get any song out of your head... The theme song to “Flipper”.
The only problem is... *nothing* gets the theme song to “Flipper” out of your head.
go figger.
Pretenders, “My City Was Gone”?
None that I’m aware of...
To this day I can’t listen to Clinton’s “Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow” by Fleetwood Mac. It set the stage for the platitudes that infected this last election.
I have always felt that earworms are caused by the link between music and emotions.
A song triggers an emotional response and your mind keeps repeating it to continue creating that response.
I have always found strong emotions can eliminate earworms more effectively than logic. I think this is why other songs can get you on another emotional path,, eliminating the earworm, but potentially replacing it with another.
o/~ In the year 2525... ~\o
You went back to Ohio?
The only way to get it out of my head is to hum the theme from Bonanza.
The only way to get that out of my head is to whistle the theme from The Andy Griffith Show.
The only way to get that out of my head is to sing You Spin Me Right 'Round.....
Everytime I open my garage door the theme music from Sanford and son starts running in my head.
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