Readers replies: why does a song sometimes get stuck in our heads – and what makes an earworm?

I know a song that’ll get on your nerves, get on your nerves, get on your nerves. I know a so … you get the gist! Why does a song sometimes get stuck in our heads? (And good luck stopping this one now!) Laura Ashton, Haslemere, Surrey

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Readers reply

I don’t know the answer but you have just relaunched Yellow Submarine after a few days in dry dock. billsanderson

If you have an earworm, never try to cut it off: both halves can regenerate and you’ll get a binaural infestation (according to the noted academic, Prof Anna Lidd). EddieChorepost

I’ve only had a problem with earworms over the past 20 years or so. I don’t recall having them when I was much younger. In bed at night it keeps me awake for hours sometimes.

It can be a song heard on the radio, recently David Gray’s This Year’s Love, which lasted a couple of days; or, more irritating, an advert on TV, Pepto-Bismol being a particular culprit. GastonGrimsdyke

If you pay attention to the words of the song in your head, it’s a bit like analysing a dream: you discover it has some kind of message for you from your unconscious. Anne Geraghty, by email

Because it’s a great song with ever-more relevant lyrics! (Once in a Lifetime, Talking Heads). Paul Brittain, Chester, by email

The subconscious jukebox is what I call the moments when I find myself with a song in my head then run through the lyrics and realise that it’s (often quite cleverly and subtly) appropriate to what’s going on at the time. My subconscious likes to make up musical jokes and puns when I’m not looking. inthepapers45

It’s possibly a way for the brain to relax, by tuning out other stimuli. Some people also have rhythms on repeat, and tap their toes or fingers all the time, barely consciously. Earworms are good for you! gleebitz

I feel this could link into fundamentals about consciousness, language development, our ability to create and remember music and stories? I don’t know the answers.

The first tune I hear in the morning always becomes my earworm for the day. Like a footprint in fresh snow! Seabeen

I can tune out my constant tinnitus, but not earworms. teemac

Most pop songs work on the technique of compression, in other words “catchiness”, so if I happen to hear a Boney M song in a clothes shop, that sticks like chewing gum. 33inathird

If only it were legal (or affordable) for educators to find out what the most common earworms are, and to set vital learning components to them – the times tables, or a list of the monarchs of England. Then every time the earworm struck, we could all profit from our shared affliction. As and when we needed specific knowledge, we could summon the appropriate earworm. It worked for Tom Lehrer with The Elements song, after all. daleaway

I have accepted that I have a built-in jukebox. At least my songs change more than daily. My better half is stuck with “I want a hippopotamus for Christmas” all year round!

The Two Ronnies’ brilliant Chas & Dave skit keeps popping up in my mind. My “reset” is to do some repetitive listening to another piece of music. Ariadne_on_Naxos

I envy you lot. At least most of your earworms are proper songs. In recent weeks I’ve struggled with Patrick Moore Plays the Xylophone and Tom Green’s The Bum Bum Song. mutterful

Being on the autistic spectrum, I can get an earworm from all sorts of odd sources. Currently, my battery toothbrush has three speeds and as you go from slow to fast each one just happens to be three ascending notes from a popular kids’ song. I get “Bay” “Bee” “Shark” and that’s my earworm until the next one pops in. Having more than one running is not unknown, either. Iantentdead

I was once told a secret – a song capable of crushing and replacing any ear worm stuck in your head. Next time you’re stuck muttering the chorus from We’re Going on a Bear Hunt just sing Shang-a-lang by the Bay City Rollers. Works every time. Sandra Patterson, Falkirk, by email

My nextdoor neighbour has an electric drill which bites into timber with the exact sound of the wordless opening notes of Immigrant Song by Led Zeppelin. SpoilheapSurfer

There are two main ingredients that could make a song an earworm. The first is a catchy melody/riff/vocal hook. The second (and most important for me) is the brain wash. If you listen to something catchy enough more than 20 times it will stick in your brain.

Most songs with potential have only the first ingredient. The lucky ones with a major label by their side can have the second ingredient as well. What would Don’t You Want Me? be if the TV and radio didn’t play it? Nick Bitzenis (AKA Nikonn), music producer, London, by email

They are a bit of a bane for me since I retired. Each one lasts about a week. I try to work out the chord structures at the same time. Even more annoying.

Sample menu: Abba: Don’t Shut Me Down, When Time Stood Still (Bill Lloyd but written by Jeff Lynne), I Saw The Light (Rundgren), Break Away (Beach Boys) – the list never ends. JimCarDacian

A song gets stuck in the head because it’s unfinished – and because stress makes unfinished things harder to let go. When we hear the first fragment of a familiar tune, we often try to stop it. We distract ourselves or resist it, which interrupts the musical sequence before it resolves. The brain, which prefers completion, keeps replaying the fragment in an attempt to finish it.

Stress makes this more likely. Under stress, the nervous system is biased towards interruption rather than completion. Experiences are more easily set aside unfinished – into a kind of mental “overflow bin” – and they return repeatedly for resolution. Earworms are usually not whole songs but short hooks or phrases caught in this state.

This same mechanism appears in more serious forms in trauma and PTSD, where unfinished emotional or sensory experiences loop involuntarily. In that sense, a stuck song is a mild, everyday example of the same principle: the mind returning again and again, not for pleasure, but because something hasn’t quite been completed.

Ironically, the harder we try to suppress the tune, the more incomplete it becomes – and the longer it stays. John Boulderstone, Speldhurst, Kent, by email

A good earworm needs two components: simplicity of melody and repetition. We each have our favourite that drives us up the wall until it recedes into the distance. If unlucky, it returns with a bang the following week. My all time No 1 earworm is the “Boom-Oo-Yatatata” version of Are You Lonesome Tonight? by Morecambe & Wise.

We had a hod-carrier once who kept up that blasted Smurf Song incessantly: “LA, LA-LA, LA, LA, LA-LA”. It turned easygoing, good-natured tradesmen into a quartet of foaming, bulgy-eyed psychopaths. After an urgent meeting of minds a solution was found. Each time he came up the ladder we went: “MANAMANA-DO-DO-DE-DO-DO.” bricklayersoption

I get stuff like Donald, Where’s Your Trewsers or Don’t Stop Me Now or Mississippi round in my head all the time.

I know that when I wake up and there is music in my head, I won’t be able to fall asleep again. Like today. At 4.30am. The worst thing is that the songs are not the ones I know best, just brief snatches that loop around and around for hours, days, even weeks. nina1414

I had “With her head tooked oonderneath her arm she waaaaaalked the bloody tower”, all in Lancashirese. jno50

I have been plagued with “Transformers / More than meets the eye, Transformers / Robots in disguise” every day since 1984. SpottedRichard

Earworms are good for learning tunes (eg Irish trad). I’ll play a new tune a few times, it’ll then become my earworm for a while and I’ll have memorised it for a long time. I also have an inner jukebox so am never bored on public transport. Liminal_lamina

I am being particularly annoyed by This Charming Man by the Smiths turning up in my head. I didn’t like it when it was in the charts and don’t like it now. SpoilheapSurfer

Barbie Girl. You’re welcome ;-). Vegasted

I grab the melody and sing the wrong words to it, otherwise known as playing OSTTTOA, One Song to the tune of another ;). HendreUchaf

I love a good earworm. ForfrocksakesGibbons

I like the Portuguese term “chiclete no ouvido” (chewing gum in the ear). Mine last for decades. Barry Manilow’s Copacabana, Huey Lewis’s Power of Love, Cinderella Rockafella, the theme from Bod. They’re permanent afflictions.

For some reason, I can’t get John Cage’s 4’33” out of my head.

I don’t just get earworms, I get whole composer oeuvres. The worst/best is Schubert’s Trout Quintet. I get it from start to finish and then it’s on repeat. Pretentious, moi? But after the second complete mental performance, it’s enough.

I was seriously advised that concentrating hard on the opening bars of Mickey by Toni Basil, an earworm could be banished for a while. (You don’t have to watch the video, but I suspect you are now seeing bits of it in your deepest brain recesses.)

It works. It also works for that dreary Waltz 2 by Shostakovich, which can be heard on many a classical music programme, if you’re not careful, because dammit, people request it.

Oops. There goes The Trout again. Oh well, just one run through, then it’s Mickey time. Gina Jolliffe, Brixham, Devon, by email

There’s been talk of a remaster and even a 12-inch remix but nothing’s ever come of it. All together now: ………………… CHARISMATA

I once heard that the best way to get rid of an earworm is to sing Jack & Diane by John Mellencamp. Works for me anyway. MaritaFrances

A musical friend said a certain cure for earworms is to sing a couple of choruses of Postman Pat. I just daren’t try it – I think I’ll maybe have to live with a head full of the Italian national anthem on repeat. Daisydelight

My colleagues call me the human jukebox because I have a whole setlist of catchy tunes constantly playing in my head, and every now and again I’ll mindlessly sing out loud “West End Girls doo doo doo do do do do” or some such banger and in doing so I’ve infected their empty minds with an earworm. GuardianAngelo

For normal, day to day earworms I can recommend singing the British national anthem loudly and firmly a few times through. For some bizarre reason this seems to work for me and, no, the national anthem rarely takes over the earworm slot! However, the worst, most intractable earworms (often a tune I’ve been trying to play on the piano) establish themselves when I am trying to get back to sleep in the middle of the night and they are immune even to the national anthem treatment! All suggestions welcome … Nicksy

Both my daughter and I continually have music playing in our heads, but the rest of the family don’t. Interestingly, we both have aphantasia [inability to voluntarily create mental images]. I wonder if this is connected. allsorts

One reason I’m a bit equivocal about Christmas is the predictable return of Wham’s Last Christmas. It’s an earworm, but it at least gave a new word to the English language – “gev”. DocLobster1960

I have a very good memory for music, and especially for lyrics and words. For example, I have usually passively absorbed most of the melody and lyrics to at least the first verse, chorus and bridge by about the fifth listen, even without trying. This means I have a long mental playlist of songs I know and love that I can recreate easily in my mind – so if I have an annoying earworm I imagine a song I do want to hear, and it comes very easily. artisticallyinclined

Sometimes they lie dormant for a bit before making themselves known. An unfamiliar tune will pop into my head and it’s something I heard for the first time on the radio a few days ago. For longevity I find Abba worst – can linger for days. The aptly titled Don’t Shut Me Down being one example. BeckyDavidson

Putting a picture of the Baby Shark video at the start of an article about earworms has to be one of the cruellest things I’ve ever seen in print. It’s been three hours since I first read this article and it’s still going round and round in my head. Thanks so much for ruining my Sunday afternoon. Thirdhandluke

My current earworm is Mozart’s Voi che sapete. Lovely! Every bit as good as Beethoven’s Ninth, or Vivaldi in all his richness. The best earworm I have ever had, though, is the sound of beloved granddaughter constantly asking “Why?”, or “What’s that?” Raimoh105

The best way I’ve found to get rid of an earworm is the theme to Roobarb and Custard. wrbski

An earworm is like a screensaver. “I’ll just water the houseplants,” you say to yourself, but the brain pops that off the stack, overwrites it with Bill Withers and redirects the energy towards a new varicosity charm for your ankle. pencilFriend

I read that the best way to get an earworm out of your head is to mentally sing the song through to its conclusion. Otherwise, your brain is constantly attempting to close the loop and finish the snippet which got stuck. By this rationale, maybe one key aspect of an earworm is how predictably and logically the notes progress. Paknaloid