The Early Bird Gets the Earworm

It happened again last week. My clock/radio alarm pulled me out of dreamland with that catchy tune A Cold Road by Danny Michel. Again. This was about the fourth time I'd woken up with the song. The thing was, I didn't even know the song - or Danny Michel - even existed until my first sleepy-eyed experience with it the week before. But A Cold Road would go on to dominate my thoughts for most of the day, playing like an internal recording on a loop.

It's a pleasure to have a First Aid Kit tune stuck in my head all day long

I don't like being jarred awake by obnoxious blathering DJs or loud abrasive music. So for several years now, I've set my clock/radio on CBC Radio 2 on the FM dial. At the 103.3 frequency, I'm more likely to be gently woken by softer, less shocking sounds. Stuff like indie rock and pop, sometimes lively, but at least less anarchic than the heavy rock stations. I was pleased recently to wake up to the song Emmylou by the folk duo First Aid Kit. A soft, warm rootsy tune that I really love. Perfect for starting the day. And it ended up playing in my head long after that. 

Whatever I wake up to, loud or quiet, it can stay with me. Sometimes for hours, sometimes all day long. That can be aggravating, especially when that wake-up song keeps intruding on my thoughts as I trudge through my daily tasks at work. I try my best to beat the tune out of my skull by summoning up other, hopefully catchier songs to replace it. Sometimes that works; sometimes it doesn't, or at least not for long. 

The radio isn't always the culprit. A song can just pop into your head early in the day and stubbornly hang around for hours and hours. On the odd occasion, I won't mind if it's a great song that I love... like Van Halen's Mean Street or maybe Judas Priest's Stained Class or Beyond the Realms of Death (I've been re-visiting this classic a lot lately). Or more recent fare like Ghost's Mummy Dust. The repetition can get annoying but at least it's something I enjoy. 

The worst is when an unpleasant Nickleback, Rihanna, Taylor, or Kesha tune (all of them?) invades my mind grapes. At my workplace, the employees must endure modern pop on satellite radio all day long, and it ain't pretty. I can stand only a tiny percentage of the playlist, so the rest is either annoying at best or downright irritating at worst. It affects my mood. The "artists" I mentioned there are among my least favourites, but sadly they dominate the endless loop playlist. As a result, even the awful tunes sink into my subconscious, just waiting to re-emerge as an earworm at a later time. 

I'll take a David Lee Roth-era Van Halen earworm over Rihanna any day

I've heard the term "earworm" described as "stuck song syndrome". Many researchers have studied and written about the phenomenon. Some statistics suggest that songs with lyrics account for nearly three-quarters of earworms. It sort of makes sense... I rarely get instrumental music stuck in my head. Unless it's some fantastic Rush track like La Villa Strangiato or portions of Cygnus X-1 (Book One). But I never get jazz or classical songs running through my mind, even though I've listened to those genres a lot over the years. 

It's repetitive music that is most likely to become a "stuck song", which explains why dance and pop songs are the worst offenders. The lack of variation within the tune means the listener is hearing the same riff or hook repeated from back to front of the song. And that snippet sinks into your mind, whether you like it or not.  

An experience, hearing a word, or an emotion can trigger an earworm. Music is inextricably tied to experiences and emotions, so it's not surprising that even fleeting moments in our day can innocently set off an earworm. Some interesting data states that earworms typically last half a minute or less. And that's why it's catchy hooks, riffs, and melodies... vocal and instrumental... get re-played so often. Occasionally, if I'm stuck with something I actually like, I'll do my best to draw that brief hook out so that I can at least enjoy the whole song in my head. And that might even dispel the earworm, since I've seen the whole song through to completion. Another study pointed out that breaking the repetition can end the cycle... so it looks like I found a cure all on my own (I did that before I read about the study's findings).

So-called experts say that you can eliminate an earworm by doing moderately difficult tasks like reading a book, doing puzzles, or even chewing gum. I've never put any of those ideas to the test, but I might in the future. 

Author Daniel Levitin wrote in This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession that research has shown that musicians and people with obsessive-compulsive disorder are more likely suffer earworm attacks. So people with an interest in music, either as musicians or as avid listeners, are at greater risk. It might sound laughable but this sort of thing really can drive you up the wall when you just want to clear your head or focus on something else. 

Now that I've written about the earworm, I'm sure to have an attack of Kesha... better cue the Van Halen antidote.