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.”
What's funny is that I listen to First Wave on XM Radio when I'm home. When they play that song (and they do), I always think of it as the "Rush Limbaugh Song" now.
How to save youtube videos (and upload them elsewhere)
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Curses, foiled again!
Just Molly and me, and baby makes three,
We’re happy in my Blue Heaven.
Interestingly enough, AFAIK ultraleftist Chrissie Hynde hasn’t turned down the $$$ that Rush’s use of that song has put in her pocket.
See post #65.
“If you ever see a rerun of that old Patty Duke Show coming on, run, don’t walk, to hit the mute button.”
Try to get there before they sing, “A hot dog makes her lose control...”
No she has it re-routed to an animal rights group so she doesn’t take the cash directly. It was an agreement between the two of them.
Then at least she’s smarter than the Wilson sisters.
Its more than a feeling, when I hear that old song they used to play (more than a feeling)
I begin dreaming (more than a feeling)
till I see marianne walk away
I see my marianne walkin away
That's part of the lyrics??? (I've never seen the show.)
Yeah,
“Our Patty loves to rock and roll,
A hot dog makes her lose contol...”
Didn’t think much of it when I was a kid but raised an eyebrow when I heard it as an adult.
To turn off an earworm, I select another song and hum or sing it, at least mentally, in opposition to the earworm. A minute of this usually extinguishes the little booger.
Gaaack! I never made it that far, and have been tormented by what little I did hear. That's hilarious.
THE PATTY DUKE SHOW THEME
(Sid Ramin / Bob Wells)
Meet Cathy, who's lived most everywhere,
From Zanzibar to Barclay Square.
But Patty's only seen the sights
A girl can see from Brooklyn Heights — What a crazy pair!
But they're cousins,
Identical cousins all the way.
One pair of matching bookends,
Different as night and day.
Where Cathy adores a minuet,
The Ballet Russes, and crepe suzette,
Our Patty loves to rock and roll,
A hot dog makes her lose control — What a wild duet!
Still, they're cousins,
Identical cousins and you'll find,
They laugh alike, they walk alike,
At times they even talk alike —
You can lose your mind,
When cousins are two of a kind.
"You can lose your mind?" They knew, the bahstids. It's absolutely pernicious.
I was recently stuck in Joni Mitchell hell for 3 weeks. Couldn’t get “Free man in Paris” out of my head.
The most recent song stuck in my head - “Crew Slut” by Frank Zappa. At least that song was funny.
My wife’s getting really pissed at me for walking around whistling the theme from “All in the Family”.......I must’ve picked it up from some TV commercial or sumpin, because I sure haven’t watched any reruns.
Hey now, (hey now)
Hey now, (hey now)
Eiko, Eiko an day
jacamo fino andanday
jacamo finanay
(No idea how to spell it, but it’s one of my earworms.)
Thankfully, I don’t know that one.
Featured in the movie “Rainman”, but a hit in the 60s.
Featured in the movie “Rainman”, but a hit in the 60s.
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