♫ Mahna Mahna, Do doo be-do-do ♫

Dean Burnett looks at why we get earworms?

If we mention or even just allude to a catchy song, we risk having part of it playing on a loop in our head, for days on end. What's that about? And what can we do about it?

I have a very extensive CV. You could even call it ‘unwieldy’. It’s actually one of the reasons I am and remain self-employed; the very notion of having to condense that down into one or two pages of A4 makes me break out in a cold sweat.

But among the many things I can claim to be on paper, I am, first and foremost, a Dad. Which means that, if and when I think of an absolutely terrible joke (which is very often), I am honour bound to share it.

Unfortunately, I am a Dad who happens to have a decent media profile and online following. So when I share a terrible joke, countless innocent individuals end up suffering needlessly.

But I persist, because (adopts ‘Omar from The Wire’ voice) a man got to have a code. And I adhere to the code of Dads.

Which is my roundabout way of explaining this recent offence.

I won’t bore you with the details of how I arrived at this ludicrous epiphany. But I am reliably informed that many people needlessly suffered as a result of me posting it.

However, if you’re thinking I got away with posting this without consequences, rest assured that karma works in mysterious ways.

Basically, for several days afterwards, I had Bonnie Tyler’s ‘Total Eclipse Of The Heart’ going around my head again and again and again and again and again. I had to endure an entirely self-inflicted earworm.

If I walked past my wife and she asked me a question, I had to ♫ Turn around ♫

When I was working late again and everyone else in the house was asleep, I realised I ♫ get a little bit lonely ♫

I saw the latest bleak news about yet more political chaos and realised ♫ We're living in a powder keg and giving off sparks ♫

And so on. It was, as they say, deeply annoying. Serves me right, I guess.

But that’s earworms for you. Sometimes a song, or chunk of a song, just gets lodged in your head, and will. Not. Leave!

Why, though? Why do our brains do this? What’s the mechanism for this well-known but endlessly frustrating audio phenomenon?

♫ Can’t get you out of my head ♫

How does music affect the brain? The answer is, in lots of ways, and on multiple levels. From the most fundamental processes that recognise pure rhythm and beat, to the higher analytical regions that recognise and enjoy complexity and flow. That’s why music can so often be such a rewarding and enriching experience.

As a result, there are many possible explanations or routes, for Involuntary Music Imagery, aka Stuck Song Syndrome, aka Earworms1. Which also means we don’t really know with 100% certainty why earworms happen. But, there are theories.

They tend to focus on the the fact that music stimulates parts of the brain involved in, firstly, Auditory stimuli, sound. Which should be obvious. But bare in mind that the auditory cortex recognises and processes all manner of sound, whether it’s it’s language or patterns or rhythms or whatever.

Interestingly, there are those that argue that we respond to music as strongly as we do, and that it’s so ubiquitous across all human culture, because the sensory experience of it has a lot in common with voice perception.

On top of this, music also stimulates the brain regions involved in memory (music is a very powerful evoker of certain memories and experiences), and emotions (music undeniably makes us feel stuff very strongly).

Of course, the brain regions for memory and emotion are heavily intertwined in any case. But they’re very complex and variable in what they do. Throw the similarly sophisticated auditory processing systems into the mix, and you’re got an incredibly complicated suite of neurological interactions going on.

Which means there’s ample opportunity for problems and glitches to occur. And it can arise from any part of this particular musical network.

This means that, technically, anything can be an earworm. Like, Total Eclipse Of The Heart. Not exactly the shortest, catchiest song, but apparently if you attach it to a joke you’re unjustifiably pleased with, it’ll end up being lodged in your head for days.

Because certain songs become linked with certain memories or feelings, and once you’re triggered or recalled them, the song starts playing in your head, which refreshes the memory or feeling, which restarts the song, which… and so on. So that’s one potential feedback loop.

However, certain tunes and songs are notorious earworm triggers, whether or not you have any particular experience involving them. There is something fundamentally different about them, that let’s them lodge in your brain and stay there.

♫ Never gonna give you up ♫

What makes for a good earworm?

Based on what research there is, the most potent earworms tend to be short, simple, and repetitive. And catchy, but that’s probably the culmination of the previous three things.

If a piece of music is short (be it the song itself or a particular bit of it) then your brain can replay it quickly and easily. Ditto if it’s simple. Both these traits allow it to be very easily recalled and replayed. So that helps.

It probably helps if it’s a pleasing, or stimulating sound too. To make you want to remember and recall it. At least on some fundamental level.

But the repetitive aspect may be the most crucial.

You might think, of course an earworm is repetitive. Anything is repetitive if you keep repeating it in your head! Valid point. But I meant the audio structure of the music is repetitive.

I’ve flagged up two common earworms so far; Kylie Minogue’s ‘Can’t get you out of my head’ and the Muppet’s ‘Mahna Mahna’. These songs are widely considered to be ludicrously catchy, and it’s likely to do with the way that they, or parts of them, have a repetitive structure.

Basically, when Kylie sings “La-la-la, la-la-la-la-la”, she does it several times in a row. So your brain learns that pattern quite quickly.

But one thing your brain tends not to like is gaps, or missing bits in patterns. If it encounters them, it tends to fill them in. If you see a sequence of familiar numbers with elements missing, you ‘know’ what’s meant to be there. Because your brain has filled in the gaps.

So, if there’s a pause or a cut-off in a familiar musical sequence, your brain will fill in what it expects to be next. And with earworms, it’s often… it starts again. So your brain enters a sort of cognitive perpetual motion process. “I remember that tune, let’s replay it… what happens at the end? It starts again, so let’s replay it… what happens at the end? It starts again, so let’s replay it… what happens…” and so on.

This is likely made easier by shorter, simpler songs thanks to the phonological loop, the element of the short term/working memory system where we store information that we’re thinking about. It tends to work with, and regularly rehearse, small chunks of information. An earworm may fit in this loop very snugly.

Where do earworms come from in the first place? Because we can often just start playing them seemingly apropos of nothing, having not heard the actual song they’re from for a very long time.

Maybe it’s just the result of a random spark of activity in the memory system inadvertently triggering the particular engrams that represent an infuriatingly catchy tune, like someone cheerfully throwing a stick for their dog and accidentally hitting a wasp nest.

Others link earworms to intrusive thoughts, those regular bubble-bursts from the underlying cognitive froth of our minds. Just by chance they’ll throw up an earworm every now and then.

And why are they so hard to dislodge? Aside from all the properties I just described that mean they cling to your brain like barnacles to a turtle’s shell, any active effort to dislodge them means your brain is directing more resources and attention to the earworm, meaning it occupies more brain capacity, making it stronger and more prominent, and thus harder to dislodge.

This is ironic processing. The more you try not to think about something, the more aware of it you become. It’s why we never think of food as much as when we’re on a diet, and thus trying to avoid it.

So that’s earworms. They’re ultimately a bizarre, often annoying, but invariable harmless quick of the human brain. And if I’ve infected you with a few in the course of reading this article, I can only apologise. Just try not to think about it.

Take your mind off earworms altogether by buying one of my great brain books, like Why Your Parents Are Hung-Up on Your Phone and What To Do About It, or Emotional Ignorance.