Earworms

[IanEye]

God, this has been stuck in my head for days.

you must be very relaxed then...

[marycarnival]

I am pretty much the 'earworm queen'. At any given time on any given day, I will likely have a song running through my head. Songs I recently heard, songs I haven't heard in years, whole songs, looped parts of songs, and I also make up songs/melodies in my head. Generally, none of this irritates me, even when it's a song I don't particularly like ('Last Christmas' by Wham!, for example), I just ride it out. Just a mention of a song can hit the 'play' button in my mind ('Wildfire' wormed its way in from reading this thread), and the 'muzak' at the grocery store does it to me every time. Some perennial faves..

'Rainy Days and Mondays' --yep, The Carpenters again.
'Rainbow Connection'--this one is a bit irritating, as I usually feel like crying when I get to the 'I suppose that it's probably maaaagiiiic...' part. Not so good in public.
'Ice Ice Baby'--both Vanilla Ice's version and the Richard Cheese lounge version
'Somebody to Love'--and other Queen songs too, but this one will get REAL stuck sometimes.
'Sugar Sugar'--and about 20 other repetitive, catchy bubblegum songs.

I am curious about earworms being related to neurosis. I always thought that I got so many earworms so often because I am a musician and also listen to a LOT of recorded music every day. Which is not to say that I'm not totally neurotic....

[IanEye]

so wonderful to have this stuck in your head while attending a parent conference at a child's daycare....

[Allegro]

[marycarnival]

Funny that this thread got bumped today..I was listening to NPR at work today, and Radio Lab was kind of about earworms. They focused mostly on people who have 'aural hallucinations' tho. Still, made me think of this thread.

[Searcher08]

As soon as I started reading the OP, I started hearing Steve Reich


and then found this video 'skips' so I had to replace my earworm with another one!

Got any grapes?
Waddlawaddle waddle

[justdrew]

this will drive out any earworm...

http://youtu.be/g4ouPGGLI6Q?t=10s

although it MAY tend to simply replace

[norton ash]

There are numerous earworms at work in Hey Ya. I can find about 6 that stick in my head. (Skippy handclap beat, drum and bass beat, bassline, synthline, 'shake-it' break, backing vocals/chorus, Andre's flat notes on the last rhymes...)

Brilliant song.

[brainpanhandler]

this will drive out any earworm...

http://youtu.be/g4ouPGGLI6Q?t=10s

although it MAY tend to simply replace

Wow.

[Allegro]

.
What the hell is happening? As if I needed another distraction from the current one, while looking for lyrics to a song by Dexter Jones, this article on ear worms was on the hit list. I think the article is hilarious! or I wouldnt've taken the time, you know. There are several fun links in the original, links that I've added in here and others were not, because the other distractions are distracting, AGAIN.

• Ear Worm
  
  • This is the song that never ends... It just goes on and on, my friends... in your head. [Allegro's insert of the vid.]
  Ear Worms (from the German phrase Ohrwurm) are those songs that weasel their way into your head like uninvited guests and then proceed to stink up the inside of your cranium by playing themselves there over. And over. And over. And over. They're those songs that just get stuck in your head, and no amount of screaming, pounding, protesting, and banging your head into your desk will get them out. They will check out any time you like, but they will never leave. Someone infected with an Ear Worm may find themselves prone to bursting out into the song in inappropriate places, tugging at their ears in fury, and can end up distracted in the middle of conversation (or other important activities) by the continuous snatches of song wavering between their ears. And it's only a matter of time before, like Darryl Revok, they drill a hole in their forehead to let the voices out.
  
  You may find relief by hunting down the lyrics and learning the words, but this is more effort than most people are willing to expend on a briefly-heard ditty. Worse, if the song is in a language you don't speak, this becomes pretty much impossible. And when the song is an instrumental... Some people also claim that just listening to the song in question from beginning to end could help, because as their theory goes, an Ear Worm really is a fragment of the song stuck in your head, while your mind attempts to resolve how it continues — in vain. Actual success of this method varies (from person to person and from song to song) though, so it might only serve as a temporary release or none at all. And even worse is the fact that some Ear Worms are songs that were made cyclic to begin with (say, video game soundtracks). Therefore, listening the song through will just complete the loop, rendering the Worm Nigh Invulnerable. Naturally, you can always distract yourself with another Ear Worm, but you might find it just as annoying as the first, and some people even develop a "playlist of Ear Worms" this way, being able to switch from one song to the other, but unable to silence them. As a general rule of thumb one could say: The more you care, the worse it gets.
  
  The Internet is a particularly notorious supplier of Ear Worms; lots of music memes tend to be irrationally catchy. (This is probably how they got to be memetic in the first place.) Other prime offenders include commercial jingles, Broadway musicals, whatever Top 40 hit is being overplayed right now, and video game music (including licensed music) and songs with chipmunk voice. Let's not go into show theme music, especially when they repeat and shout the name of the series over and over and over again.
  
  Just because a song is listed here as a particularly bad Ear Worm doesn't mean it's not awesome. In fact, an awesome song can be just as catchy as a... uuhm... not as awesome one. In fact, a song may even be awesome because it's an Ear Worm, and a song may be an Ear Worm in part because it's awesome.
  
  In fiction, Ear Worms are frequently the tool used to produce Psychic Static. Especially powerful ones can also serve as a Brown Note.
  
  Not to be confused with the mind-warping parasites from Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan.
  
  Compare The Tetris Effect, the video game equivalent.
  
  TV Tropes would like to apologize to any readers susceptible to these things who, getting reminded of a song on this page, feel compelled to hear it again. For your convenience and further suffering, links will be provided whenever possible. (And sometimes this isn't possible, for various reasons; if you find a broken link, please remove it or fix it. Thanks! ...)
  
  [REFER.]

POST 1334

[Project Willow]

Two words: Tiny Tim
.....

Did I get ya???? Hmmm?? Tiptoeing, Tulips??

..........

I definitely have an orchestra pit in the theater of my consciousness. I notice my own perpetual soundtrack when I'm in crisis or conflict. Whoever conducts that thing has some wisdom. It plays songs that describe, and/or suggest solutions to the problem at hand, especially if I'm blocked from a solution because of a neurosis. If I'm sad it commiserates with a sad but empathetic song. I don't notice it all the time, but I'm fairly certain it's almost always playing something. Thirty years ago I thought of a performance piece where I'd walk around with an auto-response sound track playing to animate every scenario I encountered, except of course the tech for such a thing did not exist. That reminds me, you should see my rendering of an "electronic letter" from same time period, looks just like a laptop.

[Searcher08]

Two words: Tiny Tim
.....

Did I get ya???? Hmmm?? Tiptoeing, Tulips??

..........

I definitely have an orchestra pit in the theater of my consciousness. I notice my own perpetual soundtrack when I'm in crisis or conflict. Whoever conducts that thing has some wisdom. It plays songs that describe, and/or suggest solutions to the problem at hand, especially if I'm blocked from a solution because of a neurosis. If I'm sad it commiserates with a sad but empathetic song. I don't notice it all the time, but I'm fairly certain it's almost always playing something. Thirty years ago I thought of a performance piece where I'd walk around with an auto-response sound track playing to animate every scenario I encountered, except of course the tech for such a thing did not exist. That reminds me, you should see my rendering of an "electronic letter" from same time period, looks just like a laptop.

Tiny Tim... that was evil, Willow I have to suppress my urge to play 'Air Ukulele' when it gets played

[IanEye]

*



you are here & warm
but eye could look away
and you'd be gone...

*

[brainpanhandler]

[crikkett]

Hocus Pocus helped, thanks justdrew. The record is better than the live version.

On edit: it's still an earworm, even if you can't get through the whole lousy song, which does really stink. The echoes in my head were better.