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.”
Dr. John’s version’s nice too
I bet it is. Did a search...couldn’t find it tho.
I actually met Gene Austin in 1960. He was playing at a hotel in Seattle, with a girl drummer and a country-western type guitar player. Thirty-three years down the road from My Blue Heaven, and later he turned up running a club in Dallas, then moved to Las Vegas and ran for governor of Nevada.
Sometimes, in my head I just yell at it to STOP IT when the brain gets into a feedback loop..
The really frustrating thing is the information your looking for oozes into your brain hours after you need the information...The brain needs to be defragged like a computer...
The good news is you don't have Alzheimer's, if you did the information is gone forever and not just late showing up..
Or just smashing yer guitar to smithereens and walking away from its wreckage in utter disgust .. THAT'LL get rid of 'earworms' fer sure! Then again, there is always yelling at the radio or television or whatever got the stuck tune into your head in the first place and then throwing a shoe at it ... what the heck? Gotta work better than all the psycho-babble this article suggests .....
I know that YS piece well, as a Beatles fan m'self, when that part comes on I always exclaim: "Ahhhhh BACH!", in keeping with Hawkeye's advice to Radar when Radar wanted to get friendly with the chick Nurse (in M.A.S.H.)
Have you considered switching to decaf?
hahahahaaaa :)
see post 48! :^)
“Did a search...couldn’t find it tho.”
What-where did you search?
“I bet it is. Did a search...couldn’t find it tho.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JESFMO1Hl4M
Works for me!
1-8-7-7 Kars for Kids
K-a-r-s Kars for Kids
1-8-7-7 Kars for Kids
Do-nate your car ta-day
-PJ
I don't think that I can take it, 'cause it took so long to bake it, And I'll never have the recipe again,Oh, Nooooooooooooooooooooooo!
This’ll Killya!~
“Men you been lookin’ all around for the women
But they always been right there
Nowadays a woman has to haul off ‘n hit a man
T’ make him know she’s there
Other night a woman came up ‘n hit me
Like I wasn’t even there
Yeah, hmmm dawned on me, man
That a man been doin’ a woman unfair
Y’ gotta wait for your woman
Let her know you’re there
I knew I had to go out ‘n tell all of the women
That I knew they were there
Now ev’rywhere I go
The women all know that I know
Mmm, there ain’t no other place to go but there
I’m talkin’ about women
Yeah, I’m talkin’ about women, man
They don’t have to hit me
To make me know it’s there
None o’ my women have tears in their eyes
You can ask ‘em about me I swear
‘n they’ll tell you
That’s one man I swear
Yeah, that’s a man
‘nuff about tellin’ you this
Hmmm, y’ gotta wait for your woman
Let her know you’re there
I knew I had to go out ‘n tell all of the women
That I knew they were there
Now ev’rywhere I go
The women all know that I know
There ain’t no, there ain’t no other place to go but there
I’m talkin’ about women
They don’t have to hit me, man
To make me know it’s there
None o’ my women have tears in their eyes
You can ask ‘em about me I swear”
-Don Van Vliet, aka Captain Beefheart, 1972
Ah, Boston! I love that stuff! “More Than A Feeling” is wonderful, beautiful guitar work. “Hitch a Ride” is another Boston favorite of mine.
And people say I’M evil!
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