The Guardian has an article this week called “Tortured by an earworm? How to get it out of your head.” Naturally, I looked at the title alone and thought this was a self-help piece aimed at RFK, Jr., but no! Instead it’s about what elements contribute to a song being particularly catchy, and how you can get rid of them when they’re stuck on repeat in your head. The impetus seems to have been the author having a hard time shaking “Defying Gravity” and other Wicked tunes from her noggin’. In which case, this article is very well-timed to hand us the tools to get through snippets of “DG” being played every time Wicked is announced as a nominee and/or winner when award season kicks into overdrive in January. But I’m jumping ahead. First, listen to the experts:
Earworm 101: Studies estimate that more than 90% of people experience such an “earworm” at least once a week — “so it’s a really common, everyday experience,” says Kelly Jakubowski, an associate professor of music psychology at Durham University. The song snippet is typically about 20 seconds long, and plays on stubborn repeat in your head. Not everyone is equally susceptible. “Mostly, it has to do with music exposure,” says Jakubowski. If you listen to music often, you’re more likely to find some of it gets “stuck”.
‘Mutually reinforcing’ qualities: Wicked, for example, might be particularly fiendish, pairing evocative lyrics with memorable melodies — not to mention being inescapable at present. Jakubowski points to research by Callula Killingly, of Queensland University of Technology in Australia, which suggested a “mutually reinforcing” relationship between the catchiness of a particular song and people’s exposure to it. “Perhaps unsurprisingly, if people feel the urge to sing along to a piece of music when they’re hearing it, they tend to more often get it stuck in their heads later on,” says Jakubowsi.
Songs of note: Songs with faster tempos and “memorable but distinctive” melodies were more likely to be “musically sticky”, she adds. In a 2016 paper, Jakubowski singled out the opening riff of Deep Purple’s Smoke on the Water, the chorus of Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance and (fittingly) Kylie Minogue’s Can’t Get You Out of My Head as having the potent mix of generic and unexpected. Defying Gravity is riddled with interval jumps, including perfect fourths (as in Here Comes the Bride) and fifths (Star Wars) — greater than you might expect of a standard pop song — that catch our attention and get stuck in our heads.
Some ways out: First, listen to a different song — or even just think of it. “It’s nearly impossible to have two songs in your head at once: you just don’t have the cognitive resources to do that,” says Jakubowski. In countering a deeply lodged earworm, it helps to reach for a song that is familiar but not too engaging. One survey led by Jakubowski found that God Save the King was the most effective. “Most people said that that song is so boring you can think of it easily, but it doesn’t get stuck itself.”
Chewing gum helps?? According to 2015 research from the University of Reading, study participants who chewed gum after being played catchy pop songs reported thinking of and “hearing” the song less often than those who didn’t. The lead author of the study suggested this simple strategy might be effective in countering other disruptive thoughts, by disrupting working memory. “Essentially, when you’re singing something in your head, you’re sub-vocalising it … The same muscles that you’d need to actually speak, you need those [available] to mentally ‘speak,” says Jakubowski. … But, Jakubowski adds, it’s important to chew vigorously enough to prevent you from “talking” — and, crucially, not in time with the music. “If you’re chewing along with the beat, it could have the opposite effect.”
You know what I can’t get out of my head now? The name Callula Killingly! How is she a research scientist and not a crime author, or the femme fatale in a film noir?! Anyway, being completely honest, weren’t the research results enumerated here rather basic? A song is likely to get stuck in your head if it has “memorable melodies” and you hear it a lot. So far so obvious. I would’ve been interested to hear more on the science of music, like when they were describing the fourths and fifths in “Defying Gravity,” and how those technical elements, invisible to the lay listener, instigate responses in our synapses while we’re blithely humming along. And the anti-repeat suggestions were fairly self-evident too, no? (Save for the gum chewing. That came out of left field and made me wonder if Wrigley’s funded this research.) “Listen to another song” is hilariously obvious, though. But don’t get me wrong, I’m here for anyone who waxes pointedly on “God Save the King” being such a boring song that it’s nigh impossible to get stuck in your head. The hits keep coming for Charles this Christmas!
photos credit: Wellington Cunha, Charlotte May and Blue Bird on Pexels