Earworms, digging down deep

The science behind that catchy song you just can’t get out of your head|

America is a divided nation. On one hand, you have the 2 percent who say they don’t. On the other hand, there is the full 98 percent of Americans who say they do occasionally experience the mental weirdness know as an “earworm.” That is the colloquialism used to describe a song endlessly swirling around in your brain, in the mind’s ear.

The science

The clinical name of the earworm phenomenon is involuntary musical imagery (INMI). It is “spontaneous repetitive musical sound without direct cause.” These songs in our heads fall into the larger category of all spontaneous thoughts and mind wanderings, the mental activity that seems to be unrelated to the task at hand, their instigation involuntary.

Dr. James Kellaris of the University of Cincinnati published a paper in 2008 that summarized research he conducted into the phenomenon. He established the 98 percent experience rate for adults. He also found that men and women seem to experience earworms (or “looptunes” as I like to call them, “earworm” is just so gross) at the same frequency.

Kate Bruno photographed at Juanita Juanita.
Kate Bruno photographed at Juanita Juanita.

Several busy folks from Sonoma shared their typical experiences with earworms. Kate Bruno, of Juanita Juanita, described hers, “Every time I don’t have my Airpods in, I always have a fragment of a song stuck in my head, especially after band practice. When I was fishing on Thursday, ’Yakety Yak’ was stuck in my head all day long. I don’t know any of the rest of the words.”

This one quote of Bruno’s touches on many of the findings and understandings about earworms. The loop is usually just a fragment of a song, “recentness” is a contributing factor, and the earworm tends to take root when the mind is idle.

Supporting that observation, Glen Ellen’s Squire Fridell contributed this succinct comment, “The last song that you heard is the one that seems to stay with you.”

It’s probably the ‘hook’

Kellaris also found that about 74 percent of those looping songs are just portions of the lyrics of the song, often the chorus. The “hook” of the chorus seems to give our minds that thing to hang onto, over and over and over again. The fact that we only know a few lyrics makes little difference, stuck it may still become.

Repetition is also a key factor in establishing an earworm worth its salt, and that is not lost on those devilish songwriters who churn out jingles. I hate to bring this one up, but that commercial for the car donation outfit, “1 877 Kars for Kids,” has the repetition, the simplicity, and the melodic hook our minds can latch onto.

Amy Miller’s earworm is a old jingle.
Amy Miller’s earworm is a old jingle.

That particular jingle is almost Steven King crazy in its vicious tenacity. Amy Miller, of the marvelous Transcendence Theatre Company, said, “That ‘1-877 Kars for Kids.’ Woah, that one gets in your head!”

A mantra-like song, good or bad, is a good candidate to lodge in your brain.

Another song that a local mentioned has a very repetitive quality and easy melody. Renowned artist Chester Arnold said, “I have been harvesting earworms for 69 years. The first I remember was ‘Blue Tail Fly’ from an old Burl Ives album in the ’50’s” (Jimmy crack corn, and I don’t care…). That the song was so very popular and heard so often adds to its infectiousness.

A looptune will usually be a song with melodic, changing notes, not at all drone-like. Sinatra’s “Fly Me to The Moon” is captivating. We try to sing along, making it even more embedded in our noggins.

It’s typically a song with lyrics

Kellaris’s study also found that about 8 percent of the looptunes people reported were instrumentals, but all have that same kind of “hook” that a good lyric has. Think Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood”, or as heard all day long in pre-COVID days at Guitar Center, the lick from “Smoke on The Water.”

Another aspect of earworms and a possible reason our minds work them over is the incompleteness of them. That incompleteness creates the need to resolve it. That need is unserved, and the loop is sustained. The repetition of lyrics, even just one phrase, makes our brains try to finish it.

It is not uncommon that one’s environment will inspire a song to begin its endless loop. Howard Sapper said, “I remember the days when I used to love playing poker in the casinos and I couldn’t get the Grateful Dead song ‘The Loser” out of my head. The last line of the chorus, ‘I got no chance of losing this time’ just kept going.”

Familiarity of the song adds to the probability it will lodge. People listen to songs they like, but that does not preclude an unliked song from repeating endlessly. When this happens, it can be bad news. See Kate Bruno’s comment above.

Stress might be to blame

Kellaris also noted a connection between mental stress and earworms. He hypothosized that a stressed mind will begin a looptune as a way to reduce the overload. Additionally, Ira E. Hyman Jr, wrote in 2012 in Applied Cognitive Psychology, “We found that overloading the cognitive systems with challenging activities increased intrusive song frequency.”

The flushing of a looptune is no piece of cake. Soviet psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik hypothesized that we remember interrupted and incomplete thoughts better than completed ones. It seems the incompleteness of those thoughts drives the repetition, as the brain seeking resolution. A Zeigarnik-discovered technique of ditching a looptune is to listen to the entire song, letting our minds resolve the nagging portions.

Another technique is employing a “cure,” or stand-by, song. Sonoma mortgage banker Sheila O’Neill always has one at the ready. She said, “My solution is to have my standby song ready to start singing to replace the earworm. My go-to song is ‘Psycho Killer’ by the Talking Heads. It always makes me happy.”

There are unresolved questions. What did cavemen have endlessly looping around in their prehuman brains? Before “The Itsy-Bitsy Spider” was written, did humans even have earworms?

Did Michael Jackson have a looptune churning around his brain when he wrote, “Just beat it, beat it, beat it, beat it…”?

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