Earworm
Annie Lennox
I have an earworm and it’s Why by Annie Lennox. It was the last song I listened to on my YouTube playlist and now I keep humming it. It’s a really good song and when it gets stuck in my head, I keep repeating, “Tell me why.”
Meaning
Do you ever get a song stuck in your head? Maybe you keep repeating the lyrics or humming the music. We call that an earworm. An earworm could also refer to the North American insect that eats corn and other vegetables. However, today we will focus on the idiomatic earworm. It is usually a song that is annoying but it can also refer to a good song that keeps repeating in your head.
Example: My daughter likes to listen Baby Shark and now that earworm lives inside me.
Origin
There is an insect called an earwig. It is ugly and gross. People believed that the earwigs would crawl into peoples’ ears at night. So, earwigs were also called earworms. Of course, this is not true. Well, it is possible but not more likely than a spider, tick, or fruit flies. This myth was widespread and existed in many other languages as well, including French, Latin, Danish, Swedish, Dutch, and German. In German, an earwig is ohrwurm. Earworm (insect) first appears in English in 1598.
In the 19th century, people stopped using the term earworm to refer to earwigs. This is when earworm started being applied to the insect described above and not earwigs. However, in Germany, people continued to use ohrwurm to talk about earwigs. In the late 1950s and early 1960s ohrwurm started to be applied to music that gets stuck in your head. It was adopted into English in the 1980s with the first written attestation by John Robert ‘Haj’ Ross in 1982. He used it to talk about poetry that he couldn’t get out of his head. 90% of people experience an earworm at least once a week.
The Problem
We made be predisposed to earworms because our brains crave patterns. Evolutionarily, pattern-recognition helped us develop our intelligence. It allows us to understand, process, and recall information. Patterns also help us to tell stories and make them more memorable. Some story telling techniques make use of rhythm, rhyme, repetition, and alliteration. These are also very present in music. But why are some songs more likely to become earworms?
In a 2016 study, earworms were found to have upbeat tempos, pitch patterns similar to other popular songs, and big up-and-down leaps in notes. Notes can be held for a long period with small pitch intervals. These things also make songs easier to the example that Today give is Somewhere Over the Rainbow. The top nine earworms from the 2016 study were:
- Bad Romance – Lady Gaga
- Can’t Get You Out of My Head – Kylie Minogue
- Don’t Stop Believing – Journey
- Somebody That I Used to Know – Gotye
- Move Like Jagger - Maroon 5
- California Gurls – Katy Perry
- Bohemian Rapsody – Queen
- Alejandro – Lady Gaga
- Poker Face – Lady Gaga
The Cure
If you want to get rid of an earworm, you can try one of the following techniques: engage, distract, or accept. You can engage with the song by singing it or playing it all the way through. There is evidence that songs can stuck in your brain if you don’t finish it. You can also try to distract your brain by thinking about other things or listening to other music to get it out of your head. Finally, you can just accept that the song is going to stay with you for a while. Enjoy the music!
See Also: Under my skin, Drake
What song gets stuck in your head? My favorite one is The Song That Never Ends from Lamb Chop’s Play Along. Give me an example of an earworm.
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Resources:
https://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/veg/corn_earworm.htm
https://www.today.com/health/study-shows-what-makes-song-earworm-t104651
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/earworm-meaning-origin
https://wordhistories.net/2021/11/10/earworm/
https://www.today.com/health/study-shows-what-makes-song-earworm-t104651
https://qz.com/751614/justin-biebers-songs-are-neuroscientifically-engineered-to-get-into-your-head-and-stay-there/
https://www.moyerpest.com/blog/post/the-full-truth-about-earwigs-crawling-in-ears