The song that never ends
Earworms…you love or you hate them. Actually this is a no brainer, you hate them. For those of you that don’t know what an earworm is, it is a catchy piece of music that continually repeats through a person’s mind after it is no longer playing.
Earworms occur at no regular intervals. They just pop up. Sometimes they are predictable. You’re listening to a tune that really gets your feet tapping or plucks at your heartstrings and as soon as it’s over, it starts playing again in your head. Over and over and over again. You can’t stop it or turn it off.
Then there are those earworms that are created by someone saying something that just happens to be words to a song you know, “I met my friend Caroline the other day, and she said the sweetest thing.” You do realize by typing this example I am now playing Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” in my head. Please stop.
There was a library clerk that worked in my school, who had seen me perform some of my songs in the school library each Halloween. After the first performance and for years following, all I had to do was mention, “With her head tucked underneath her arm.” and she was lost in the chorus of a song about Anne Boleyn in her head.
If I’m by myself and can be distracted without causing bodily harm to myself or others, like not when I’m driving a car, and an earworm attaches itself to my mind, I have found a solution that very effectively blocks it and sends it away.
I have a playlist on my iPhone called Motivational. It is a group of 20 upbeat songs that can get me working to a beat. Now each of these songs at one time or another was an earworm. I know the playlist and can pretty much start playing any of the songs in my head at any time. When an earworm begins in my head, it could be a new one, an old one, or just some random collection of notes to a song I might be writing that just wants to play/repeat/play/repeat in my head, I turn on my Motivational playlist. Not the actual one, but the internal one in my head. I start playing the beginning or chorus of each of the songs on the playlist. I don’t play the whole song, for that would just set up another earworm as a replacement. I start one, play a few bars, and then switch to a different one. Sometimes I can’t quite remember the tune in the playlist, but I fiddle around with notes in my head until the tune appears before I switch to another song. At some point, I just stop playing that playlist and refocus on what I was doing and my earworm issue is usually resolved, as long as I don’t intentionally try to remember what song the original earworm actually was.
So beware. If you happen to be talking to me and you say something that might trigger an earworm, that telltale glaze that comes over my eyes that looks like I’m not listening to you, well I’m probably not, I’m just lost in earworm LaLa land.
Damn! Now I’m hearing John Legend’s “Start the Fire” from the movie La La Land, from my Motivational list. Best start playing some of the other ones.
