Those tunes you can’t get out of your head. What’s your worst or best.
For me, actually, I enjoy getting tunes stuck in my head. I find it to be a pleasant sensation. A couple of stand out tunes that get stuck in my head include the Mr Softee tune referred to in the below article and the Food Emporium jingle some East Coasters (USA) will remember from the 80s (Someone made a store just for me/food emporium, food emporium/Someone has my kind of quality/food emporium, food emporium).
Anyway, what gets stuck in your head and drives you mad? Or like me, makes a day pass that much more pleasantly?
The below article is posted in its entirety because the NY Times requires registration, and that’s a drag.
Raphael Lasar
Matawan, NJ
When the Brain Grabs a Tune and Won’t Let Go---- By JESSICA KOVLER
SOURCE: The New York Times
There’s nothing nicer than a tune playing in your head – until you can’t turn
it off.
The phenomenon has spanned the ages. In 1882, Mark Twain wrote in a short
story of an annoying ‘‘jingling rhyme’’ that became indelibly lodged in
the author’s mind until he passed the curse along to another hapless
victim. This summer, a community board in Brooklyn has called for a limit
on the playing of the ‘‘Mr. Softee’’ jingle by ice-cream trucks – a
jingle that can be unbearably memorable for those subjected to it for
extended periods.
Research has helped define, but not explain, the experience.
A recent study by the University of Cincinnati looked at the affliction, which
the author, James Kellaris, calls earworms from the German word ohrwurm.
The ear part is obvious, but the worm part is not incidental. Dr.
Kellaris, a consumer psychologist, says it conveys the parasitic nature of
the unending tunes, which lodge too deep in the mental continuum to be
easily ousted.
He found that some 98 percent of listeners will at one time or another be
bothered by a tune that will not leave their heads. The study also found
some common offenders, including the Kit-Kat jingle (’‘Gimme a break’’),
‘‘Who Let the Dogs Out,’’ Queen’s ‘‘We Will Rock You,’’ the theme to
‘‘Mission: Impossible,’’ ‘‘Y.M.C.A.,’’ ‘‘Whoomp, There It Is,’’ ‘‘The Lion
Sleeps Tonight’’ and ‘‘It’s A Small World After All.’’
The study also showed that musicians and those with compulsive tendencies are
the most afflicted.
The 559 students used in the study had lots of trouble with the Chili’s jingle
for its baby-back ribs and with the Baha Men song ‘‘Who Let the Dogs
Out.’’ But Dr. Kellaris found that most often, each person tends to be
haunted by their demon notes.
There can be a positive side for some. The singer-songwriter Neil Diamond says
those repetitive notes that will not go away have spawned some of his
biggest hits.
‘‘If I wasn’t in the business of songwriting, I’d probably be seeing a
doctor,’’ Mr. Diamond said. ‘‘I’ve tried everything from cold showers to
listening to other people’s music, but nothing helps.’’
Most of his songs spring from a melodic swatch of six notes repeating in his
mind. ‘‘I’ll be driving or watching TV or having lunch, and it just
invades,’’ he said. ‘‘It’s a horrible obsession, but it seems to have paid
off.’’
Graham Nash said the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young song ‘‘Black Notes’’ had a
similar origin. ‘‘I was at a concert with Crosby at Carnegie Hall in
1970,’’ Mr. Nash said. ‘‘He ran offstage to get Young and just left me
hanging there. Well, I had nothing to do, so I started playing a few notes
that had been stuck in my head for a few days. The notes soon became a
verse and then an entire song, right there.’’
The greater susceptibility of musicians may simply reflect how much more music
they listen to. But other research has shown that musical training leads
to changes in brain function and structure in regions like the
rostromedial prefrontal cortex, an area located behind the forehead that
is involved in the perception of melody. Some kind of self-perpetuating
stimulus of these circuits may explain why familiar tunes like
‘‘Y.M.C.A.’’ can literally become branded in the brain. Neural circuits
for music perception also appear in the temporal lobes, which is involved
in more basic sound processing.
Petr Janata, a research assistant professor at Dartmouth who studies music and
the brain, said the effect can be heightened when sound is linked to
motion. ‘‘The brain and the body get involved. When we put specific dance
to the music – like with the ‘Macarena’ or ‘The Hustle’ – the whole body
remembers the tune.’’
Repetition often helps to create a sticky song, as do those whose melodies
repeat or contain an element of surprise. ‘‘Our jingle often ran on all
three networks tons of times a day,’’ said John Clarke, chief advertising
officer of Dr. Pepper/7Up. ''And those phrases were catchy. ‘I’m a Pepper,
you’re a Pepper, wouldn’t you like to be a pepper too?’ ‘’
That jingle also ran longer than a jingle of 2003 would, 60 seconds compared
with this year’s 15. It was a simple tune, the perfect ingredients for an
earworm, Dr. Kellaris said.
Singing the song aloud can sometimes erase it.
‘‘It’s a familiar pattern of itching and scratching,’’ Dr. Kellaris says.
‘‘The only way to ‘scratch’ a cognitive itch is to rehearse the start
involuntarily, as the brain detects an incongruity or something
‘exceptional’ in the musical stimulus.’’
Other advice?
‘‘Don’t worry – be happy,’’ Dr. Kellaris says. ‘‘It’s a small world after all
and one day we will lift up our chin, and grin, and say, whoomp – there
it is.’’
