Okay, it sounds more disgusting than it really is. They finally came up with a name for those maddening tunes that get stuck in your head and play over and over (and over and over…). They’re called earworms. They come knocking on the door of your brain completely unbidden: Jesus Christ, Sooooperstar, do yoooouu think you’re what they saaaaay you arrrre? If you weren’t around in the early ‘70’s that might not set one off in your brain, but if you’ve ever owned that album you are now doomed for the rest of the day. And if you’re like me, it will tap you on the shoulder in the middle of the night to remind you that it’s not quite finished with you just yet. It will override an iPod plugged directly into your brain, and it will make you go around humming that brief set of notes until your family starts considering stoning you with the leftover pork chops.
How did they come up with the term “earworm”? Just like so many other interesting English words we borrowed it from the ever clever Germans. They use Ohrwurm to describe this distressing bug in the head. From there it’s a short leap to “earworm.” Even though the term is not at all accurate – the tune is in your brain, not your ear, and there is, thankfully, no worm – it says it all. In reality, it’s just a bunch of intractable synapses having it off with you. Still, the term earworm perfectly nails the process.
Earworms are vile creatures. They play only a tiny portion of a song in an endless loop of brain-eating repetition. At the neurological level the needle on the tone-arm of your brain has gotten stuck in a groove. It can advance no further into the song. The harder you try to drive the fragment to the end, the more resistant it becomes.
Some musical artists are more talented than others at spawning earworms. Pretty much anything by Stevie Wonder will set one off. There is soooperstition, writing’s on the waaaaaalll. The overly catchy tune written for Canada’s 1967 Centennial is especially dangerous: Caaaaa-naaaa-daaaa, one-little, two-little, three Canaaaaadians… That one wormed out in my head for so long that it eroded down into my eye socket and caused era-realted hallucinations - mainly Pierre Elliot Trudeau caricatures. TV commercials finally dethroned it in 1971 by convincing me that I’d like to teach the woooorld to sing, in perfect har-moo-nnyyyy…setting me off on a Coca-Cola buying frenzy.
Sometimes new earworms set up shop in the middle of the night. One minute I am sleeping peacefully, the next I am wide awake and listening to an internal version of Hey Jude…but only the first eight bars. At times earworms even become adulterated. I have been tortured by the alternate Hey Jude lyrics a classmate once wrote: Hey Jude, don’t take it baaad, take a maaaad hog, and knit a sweater… So, so, SO much worse than the original!
So what can you do when you are infected by an earworm? Should you take an Aspirin? Stuff your head under a pillow? Crack yourself over the head with a baseball bat? Place your head in the vice in the workshop and squeeze until the worm pops out? Trust me. None of these work. Save yourself the bother. The only way to de-worm yourself is to find a recording of the song and play it. Somehow this satisfies the ear worm, integrating it back into its source. It nestles back into the song instead of bristling in your brain. Your head becomes clear again, and like a dog on his way home from the vet, you are blessedly worm-free. That is… until you encounter a Stevie Wonder song or one of those patriotic tunes crafted to inspire the war torn masses. It’s a long way to Tipp-errrr-arrrr-yyyy…
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