🎄Earworms I Fear🎄

Unwanted guests that take up residence in our heads

It’s the most wonderful dangerous time of the year! The time when I do everything I can to avoid a certain Christmas song. I don’t even want to mention which song, because just thinking about it for a moment can get it — quite painfully — stuck in my head. It’s my most dreaded earworm.

Another reason not to mention The Song is that some people will use it against me. Even people who call themselves my friends. My opinion isn’t a popular one, and friends have been known to tease me about my apparently dubious taste by trying to force me to listen to The Song. Some even seem to question my moral character; How can I be a good person and not like The Song?

It’s hard to explain what bothers me so much about this particular song. It’s something akin to the feeling I get from a Hallmark card — only much worse. The Song makes my skin crawl.

The fact that it’s catchy makes The Song particularly likely to become an earworm. Is the ease of getting it stuck in our head part of what makes a bad song bad?

You might think I hate Christmas music. But that’s not the case — though I don’t love a lot of it, and its ubiquity at this time of year can get aggravating. I once had a Christmas job at a mall. Not just a mall, but a booth in the middle of a mall. A booth just outside an electric organ store. I got pretty sick of hearing Christmas songs played repeatedly on electric organs while I inventoried hideous painted glass decorations. Still, I don’t mind a lot of the specific songs and even enjoy a few of them; there’s only one that elicits such a strong negative reaction.

Some non-Christmas songs have the same effect. Or, I should say, a similar effect — because for me, The Song is the worst of them all.

Recently, my mother discovered one of my other all-time least favorites, “Seasons in the Sun.” It turns out to be based on a Jacques Brel song that isn’t bad, but something was definitely lost in translation. What was a stiff drink was transformed into bubble gum. “Seasons in the Sun” brings back memories of when it was my nemesis in the ’70s. My friend who’s a professor of music theory — and who was always up on top hits — tells me it was was the #2 song of the year in 1974! What other era gave us so much outstanding and atrocious music all at once?

As surprised as I was at my mother’s positive reaction to “Seasons in the Sun,” of course it’s common for people to have very different responses to music. Barry Manilow is up there for me in terms of ’70s mishaps, but for one friend, his music is inextricably linked with good memories. Even I can feel some nostalgia in hearing old tunes that I once passionately loathed.

“Macarthur Park” has been ranked the worst song ever written, but I don’t think it’s so bad. Compare it to “Having My Baby,” “Delta Dawn,” “Wives Should Always Be Lovers Too,” “Dark Lady,” and, of course, the worst one of all: The Song. Those are just a few off the top of my head that are (objectively 😊) far worse than “Macarthur Park.”

Whatever makes your top worst list, it adds insult to injury when a song you hate is catchy.

Why do songs get stuck in our heads?

Experts say that songs most likely to become earworms have upbeat tempos, repetition, patterns similar to those in songs we’re familiar with, and large up-and-down leaps in notes. But earworms tend to be individual and can be caused by a song having an emotional charge for the listener.

I’d heard that women are more susceptible to earworms than men, but apparently, earworms are simply longer-lasting and more irritating for women. People with OCD are more susceptible; having some OCD-ish tendencies myself (not to minimize the actual condition, which I don’t have), I can see why I’m prone to earworms.

I didn’t realize just how prone I was till I attended a silent meditation retreat. Sitting in silence with my thoughts, I became aware that I always had a tune in my head — and it would often get stuck there for a while.

That was during a time when I walked to work. My 45-minute walk could feel meditative, but often I’d find unwanted songs intruding. I devised a trick to get rid of them: humming “Desafinado” to myself. Not only was the song soothing, but it didn’t have a tendency to form an earworm — and if it did, who would mind?

I just got a notification to move my car for street cleaning from a service called Don’t Fear the Sweeper. You can guess what song gets stuck in my head every second and fourth Tuesday.

There’s a Seinfeld reference for everything! Luckily, I don’t know the song in this clip:

Not that knowing a song is a prerequisite for an earworm; if you hear enough of it, any tune can worm its way into your ears. I often get hold music stuck in my head, even if I’ve never heard it before. That may seem like a bad thing, but according to this clip from “This American Life,” there’s at least one piece of hold music that people enjoy.

What about the background music that people insist on putting on ALL videos these days, even if they’re instructional or informational? If I can, I mute the sound. It would take only a few minutes for it to get stuck in there!

I experience plenty of earworms featuring songs I do like. When I discovered “Hamilton,” I played it obsessively every morning for months. Many of the songs became friendly earworms, but they could still become aggravating with excessive repetition. Yes, you can have too much of even great works of art like “Hamilton.”

It’s now December 12, and I still haven’t heard The Song. I no longer do Christmas shopping, which not only makes Christmas far less stressful but also lowers my chances of hearing The Song in a store. We’re still not venturing out much, which generally makes the season safer when it comes to The Song.

But I’m not kidding myself. I know it’s a Christmas minefield out there. I must be prepared, at any moment, for the possibility of having to cover my ears and sing something else as loud as I can.

I got the Christmas song “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” stuck in my head just from having written it at the beginning of this post. Luckily, it’s not The Song. Are you prone to earworms? Are they songs you like or dislike? Let me know in the comments!