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“Cognitively Infectious Musical Agents”
News Magazine in 1987
“Jingling Rhymes”
Mark Twain’s A Literary Nightmare
“I had a song stuck in my head..I realized the song was about you..I can’t get you out of my heart”
Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory finds his true feelings.
Sheldon gets in touch with his true feelings for Amy.
The Big Bang Theory
Ever had a song stuck in your head? You know, a persistent catchy chorus or melody that keeps humming in your head despite any effort to make it go away. Perhaps one intruded during a stressful time, like before a big exam. Maybe it struck when you first woke up in the morning. In Paul McCartney’s case, the melody persisted through breakfast and became the song Yesterday.2 However it happened; it goes by the name of “earworm.” The name might sound a little grisly at first, but it stems from a similar-sounding German word, “Ohrwurm,” also referred to as “stuck song syndrome” [SSS].
Chances are you’ve had one, perhaps many times before. According to studies, about 99% of the population experience earworms, 92% have them at least once a week, 33% find them “unpleasant,” and 15% consider them disturbing.3a
Musicians experience them most, and those suffering from OCD often find the phenomena perturbing. In severe cases, the haunting melody can contribute to insomnia, and for a subset of individuals, medication is necessary to alleviate discomfort.4
Earworms are typically 15 to 30 seconds long, but in rare cases, they can be an entire song.3b Some tunes are more likely to get stuck in your head than others, and several factors play a role in the likelihood. These factors include predictability, rhythmic repetition, melodic potency, longer note duration combined with smaller pitch intervals, etc.5a To simplify the music jargon, it comes down to two things: repetition and simplicity.
There’s more to earworms than meets the eye, and so far, we’ve only scratched the surface. Things get pretty interesting if we dig a little deeper by asking a few questions. Why simplicity and repetition? Why is music so unique? Why not an earworm of something useful, like a speech or a lecture? We begin with…
Why Repetition & Simplicity?
Early hunter-gatherers stored a catalog of sounds in their memory for basic survival. The subtle difference between the sound of a deer moving through the forest, and that of a saber tooth tiger getting into position for an attack, would signal very different reactions from a hunter. An early human’s ability to quickly identify a sound and have the correct fight or flight response could be the difference between life and death. Sounds could have been helpful to aid visual cues for navigation too. The sounds of the lake might bring you back to your nearby camp; a bird’s call might let you know you’re approaching a body of water.6
The ability to store sounds for later use was paramount for survival. And so, our ancestors would repeat these sounds over and over until they were committed to long-term memory. The simpler the sounds, the easier they were to remember.
In today’s day and age, having a catalog of predator sounds is not necessary to evade a ferocious lion while you wait for your Uber. However, it could be that the mind still uses the same mechanism of repeating sounds for memory and has now adapted to our music-saturated culture.
Why Only Music?
Music is a powerful force, and many of us would be surprised to know how much of our brain activates when we hear a song. It involves not only the portion concerned with audio but also ignites areas involved with emotion, attention, movement, decision-making, and, as you might have guessed by now—memory. What’s particularly interesting is these same areas can light up in the absence of hearing music. Just “imagining” a song is enough to produce the same effects. EEG brain scans from Neuroscientist Petr Janata showed that it’s nearly impossible to distinguish between someone listening to a song or merely imagining one.
Musical Memory
Earworms stem from memory, and we have an impressive capacity for a specific type of memory—musical memory. In general, our brains are wired to seek patterns, repeat them for memorization, and store them for later use. Since music is entirely comprised of repetitive and rhythmic patterns, storing a tune comes naturally. When we remember a song, our brain replays the memory through the same neurons used during reception. This helps explain the difficulty in differentiating between Petr Janata’s brain scans.7
It appears these neurons don’t need your permission to trigger. They anxiously wait for a cue, a sign, a memory, anything they can associate with a song, and bam! “Because I’m happy, Clap along if you know what happiness is to you, Because I’m happy. (Happy by Pharrell Williams is considered one of the catchiest songs ever. Don’t you agree, now?)
Most of us would find it difficult to recite a famous speech, lecture, or art from memory. They often contain a fair amount of meaningful and engaging information, yet we struggle to remember. The inability to store this information can be due to its lack of repetition. Also, unlike the average lecture, music is something that we deeply enjoy. It shares a strong bond with our emotions, which aside from repetition, is a critical factor in memory retention.
We are attracted to repetition..we want the stimulus and the reward again and again, and in music, we get it.
— Oliver Sacks
Stress
Earlier in the article, we talked about earworms encroaching during stressful times. Studies show that stress and repetition in the brain share a special bond. Repetition can serve as a tension-reducing mechanism by redirecting our attention away from unpleasant thoughts. It also gives us a sense of control that we lack during stressful situations. In other words, a brain under stress latches onto a repetitive idea and sticks with it until further notice.8
How to Get Rid of Earworm
Pharrel Williams’ “Happy” song is amazing for many reasons, and its catchiness creates a recipe for an earworm. If you have the tune stuck in your head and are trying to get it out, we’ve some ideas to help. You can try chewing gum or engaging your working memory with puzzles, like Sudoku or reading.3c In my experience, getting rid of an earworm is similar to getting rid of hiccups. Some methods work (sometimes), some never do, and everyone seems to know the cure they swear by. The reality is they go away on their own.
In any case, I’d like to offer a method that simultaneously engages your working memory while embracing the earworm. Let’s say one pops into your head without hearing it from an external source, such as a speaker or someone singing. Instead, it was triggered by an abstract cue such as an emotion, a memory, or a feeling. My advice is: don’t fight it—figure out why it came up. I’ll share one of my experiences to help explain what I mean.
On one of my catering days, I had to pass a delicious tray of smoked ribs. After a 20-minute battle with the mouthwatering smell, my frontal lobes surrendered all willpower. The BBQ aroma wrapped around my body and lifted me off the ground to a hiding spot where I could safely inhale one. As I brought the rib closer to the black hole in my face, the smell intensified, and the song Castle on the Hill by Ed Sheeran began blaring in my head. It made no sense. It wasn’t playing at work, nor did I have the song on my playlist. I exercised my working memory to solve this riddle…15 ribs later (for research), I figured out why. The smell of smoked ribs > reminds me of Texas > my close friend lives there > she’s a stan of Ed Sheeran (aka Sheerio) > I’m visiting her in a couple of days.
By focusing my attention elsewhere and plotting how I would devour dessert safely, I got rid of the earworm.
There might have been some hindsight reasoning in my solution, but I embraced and enjoyed solving the mystery. You can too unless you’re having a musical hallucination—earworms generally have a trigger and don’t occur randomly.
Now you wonder, what if the song doesn’t stop? You’ve tried everything, but the 15-second fragment plays incessantly in your head for days, weeks, and even years. Is it possible? Can this happen? Find out with Musical Hallucinations.
References:
- “The Earworm Reverberation” The Big Bang Theory, S9, Ep10.
- ^ Denison, Charles & Chuck. The Great American Songbook: The Stories Behind the Standards. Author’s Choice Publishing, 2004.
- a b c “How Do You Solve a Problem Like an Earworm?” SA Mind, November 2015. | Scientific American by Harriet Brown
- ^ a. Anne M E, Menno O, Ingrid van B “Stuck song syndrome: musical obsessions — when to look for OCD” British Journal of General Practice 2016. https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp16X683629
b. Levitin, Daniel. This Is Your Brain on Music. Plume/Penguin in 2007.
- a b Bede Williams, Contribution for Mirror UK, University of St Andrews, 2016.
- ^ Sacks, Oliver. “Brainworms, Sticky Music, and Catchy Tunes – Footnote” Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. First Vintage Books, 2007, p. 386
- ^ Levitin, Daniel. “You Know My Name, Look Up the Number – Ch. 5” This Is Your Brain on Music. Plume/Penguin in 2007. pp 152-155
- ^ Srini Pillay, MD “Why you can’t get a song out of your head and what to do about it” Harvard Health Blog, October 4, 2017
