HEALTH

Can’t get you out of my head: Why songs get stuck in your mind

22 April, 2023 . 0

Are you struggling to shake an earworm – you know, those melodies that keep playing on repeat in your brain? Here’s what to do about it.

You’re getting ready for work when there it is … Who Let The Dogs Out or, please no, Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up, stuck on repeat in your brain.

This can’t be happening because I have to get myself out the door, give an important presentation in an hour, get three kids to school, live with myself. And It. Won’t. Stop.

Why the brain grabs a tune and won’t let it go

Earworms, also known by the less inventive names “sticky music”, “stuck song syndrome” or “involuntary musical imagery”, are those annoyingly catchy tunes that seem to burrow into your brain and stay there for hours, days or even weeks.

Imagine weeks of Achy Breaky Heart.

An astonishing 98 per cent of people have experienced an earworm, so why does it happen?

That question has been occupying the mind and time of Professor Emery Schubert, a researcher with the University of New South Wales Empirical Musicology Laboratory.

His new study reveals certain songs become earworms, not because they’re catchy tunes, but because they’re repetitive and our brains are more familiar with them.

The most reported earworms are the choruses of songs.

You know, like, “Here’s my number, so call me, maybe”.

Why hooks and repetition lead to earworms

“Research on earworms to date analyse what’s in the hook – the short riff or passage to catch the ear of the listener,” Prof Schubert says.

“But what hasn’t been considered is that the so-called hook is invariably repeated in the music, most commonly in the chorus – and the more repetition, the better it is for the ‘earwormability’.

“It largely doesn’t matter what the music is, as long as repetition is part of the structure.”

To get wormed, we must also be in a low-attentional state, according to the study.

“It’s sometimes referred to as mind wandering, which is a state of relaxation,” Prof Schubert says.

“In other words, if you’re deeply engaged with the environment you are in, really concentrating on a task, then you won’t get an earworm.”

Chewing gum and finding a “cure” song have also been found to successfully rid earworms.

Which songs are the most common earworms?

While Prof Schubert is reluctant to name the most persistent earworms (“your readers won’t be able to get them out of their head”) he can’t go past Pinkfong’s Baby Shark for its endless repetition.

And a previous study from the UK’s Durham Universityfound Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance is one of the most frequently named earworms, followed closely by Kylie Minogue’s Can’t Get You Out Of My Head.

Who would have thought?

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Written by Liz McGrath.