UBC January 2024 - Earworms

Photo by Mohammad Metri on Unsplash

Do you know the feeling of not being able to silence this song that is stuck in your head? You heard it earlier that day, you've been singing or humming along, and still, hours later, it's there? Maybe you like the song, so it doesn't bother you, but sometimes it's annoying, and you're trying hard to shake it off. 

Earworms can come from any genre in the world of music. The musicologist and music educator Hermann Rauhe sees a motif consisting of just three notes, which is memorized through constant repetition, as the essential basis for the development of a catchy tune.

An evergreen that has endured for decades contains a surprise after this motif has been repeated two or three times. This could consist of a particularly exciting jump in tone, such as the sext jump (an interval that spans six pitches (i.e. five steps) of a diatonic, heptatonic scale) in Tea for Two or Strangers in the Night.

Ha, good old Frank Sinatra. I may have been affected by Strangers in the Night occasionally!

The hookline and the riff are of particular importance for the catchy tune. The hookline is a catchy and catchy text and/or musical passage within a piece of music that increases its recognition value enormously and enables it to be reproduced from memory. The riff, often started in the intro and frequently repeated during the piece, is a concise instrumental sound figure whose striking sequence of notes also ensures a high recognition value.

It has been found that the probability of an earworm being switched on is highest when the working memory is underutilized, for example during routine work, driving or walking. Earworms can then occupy free capacities of the working memory and become established there. 

So true. That's Clocks by Coldplay for me. I used to play it a lot while driving to my then new job with Starbucks. This commute that in theory takes 35 minutes, is doubled, if not tripled during rush hour. During the fast paced day the song seemed gone, but when I went to the bathroom or grabbing lunch, it was back. 

Enough of the theory though - how do we get rid of an earworm, please?

They can best be driven out of the working memory by increasing other demands, such as puzzles (e.g. Sudoku) or an exciting book. Interestingly, this expulsion of the earworm is not successful or less effective if the other requirement is too high. If the puzzle task is too difficult, the working memory is not successfully engaged and the earworm retains its free space there.

Another way to expel an earworm from the working memory is to activate motor programs of the organs involved in speech (articulation). It has been shown that simply chewing gum can activate these motor programs sufficiently. This means that the working memory does not need to be challenged with linguistic or pictorial content. The purely mechanical, content-free activation of the speech organs - when chewing gum - is sufficient.

Interesting! Maybe I should add a pack of gum to my First Aid Baggie?

Apparently there are "cure songs" that help to get rid of the undesired earworm, such as God save the Queen or Happy Birthday - I haven't tried this. If you do, let me know how that worked out for you! To be honest, I'm afraid the original earworm will just get replaced by Happy Birthday. Is that any better?

Similar topic: some mornings I will wake up, and there's a song in my head. I have NO IDEA where it comes from, and whether there is a meaning to it. Today it was More than a Feeling by Boston.

So I looked it up. This phenomenon is referred to as having a morning earworm. Makes sense! The reasons for this occurrence can be similar to those that contribute to earworms throughout the day, but there are also some additional factors that might play a role:

• Dreams: The song may have been playing in your dreams, and as you wake up, the residual memory of the dream and its soundtrack linger in your mind.
• Brain Activity During Sleep: Your brain remains active during sleep, and certain processes, including memory consolidation, continue. The song may be a fragment of your brain's nighttime activity.
• Subconscious Associations: Sometimes, the brain makes subconscious associations during sleep that can lead to a particular song emerging in your thoughts upon waking. This could be triggered by various factors, including recent experiences, emotions, or even random neural connections.
• Random Recall: The brain is capable of random recall, and a song might pop into your head seemingly out of nowhere. It could be a tune you heard recently, or it might be a song deeply embedded in your memory that resurfaces for no apparent reason.

Reading about these possible reasons brings up an explanation. I had to get up to pee at night and couldn't fall back asleep. Scrolling through Facebook I came across a post of a lady that confessed she was in love with her best friend's husband. Definitely more than a feeling!

I will have to pay close attention to these morning eagworms. One day they may want to tell me something!

Tell me about you - do you have a typical earworm? Do they occur in the morning or during the day?