![\"Cartoon](\"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Earworm.jpg\")
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Do you get a song stuck in your head and just can\u2019t shift it?<\/p>\n
Of course you do! If you listen to music and have at least one musical bone in your body, you can\u2019t fail to. And if you\u2019re musically-inclined, you likely suffer more than average.<\/p>\n
The phenomenon is known as \u201cearworm\u201d. I should reassure those of you who know what lugholes are that we are not talking about lugworms\u2014real worms that burrow not into your head but into the sand on ocean beaches. Earworms are worms in the figurative sense only.<\/p>\n
For me, catching an earworm can be the result of a chance hearing of a snippet of a catchy song, or repeated exposure to one\u2014perhaps when I\u2019m editing a video or creating karaoke tracks for a musical play. Either way, I find it annoying when a song insinuates itself into my consciousness and won\u2019t take the hint that it\u2019s not welcome.<\/p>\n
Case in point; I\u2019ve had Blue Rodeo\u2019s \u201cHasn\u2019t Hit Me Yet\u201d in my head for over a week now\u2014the result of listening to the band I play in rehearsing it. I wake up during the night with it. It comes back to me whenever my mind isn\u2019t fully-occupied. Heck, it even joins me in that small room where privacy is appreciated, like a three-year-old joins its parent. Unlike a three-year-old though (my then-three-year-old never joined me in the bathroom with a drum or xylophone), it\u2019s the instruments that play on and on and on in my head and not the vocals\u2014I don\u2019t even know the words to \u201cHasn\u2019t Hit Me Yet\u201d.<\/p>\n
It could be that the reason earworms annoy me is that I am, by nature, a pessimist. I say this because Mrs. H. is, by contrast, an optimist, and she loves<\/em> earworms; she welcomes them and uses them as a force for good.<\/p>\n She\u2019s a member of anywhere between three and six choirs at any given time, and she harnesses the power of earworms to learn her parts. She plays the tracks over and over and over until they stick to the inside of her skull like poo to a blanket. Then, when she gets on with whatever else she needs to do, she can instantly tune into her earworm to continue learning her songs.<\/p>\n Pure torture! I knew there was a reason why I embrace my pessimism.<\/p>\n Why would someone actively encourage an earworm? The thing is, I\u2019m so susceptible to them. Just the act of looking at example sentences for the word in the OED has planted \u201cLast Christmas\u201d by Wham! in my skull. Nothing personal, Messrs. Michael and Ridgeley, but get the heck out of my head!<\/p>\n Apparently, musicians and music lovers are more susceptible than \u201cnormal people\u201d to earworms, which makes sense. Our brains are more receptive to music, and if I\u2019m in any way typical, we absorb the music in order to analyze it. (This is why I can\u2019t listen to music when I need to concentrate.)<\/p>\n In addition, musicians inadvertently provide succour for earworms when practising. They improve their skills by repetition, in the same way that soccer players improve their penalty kicking or actors improve their character portrayals. However, I\u2019ve never heard of \u201cballworms\u201d or \u201cfootworms\u201d or \u201cbeing-stabbed-and-falling-dramatically-over-the-back-of-a-couchworms\u201d.<\/p>\n There is one way I\u2019ve found of evicting earworms. However, the cure is usually worse than the disease. I\u2019m not talking about decapitation (even though it might work); I\u2019m not prepared to risk trying it only to discover that the darned song\u2019s still there post mortem! Just imagine having to spend the rest of eternity with Rick Astley\u2019s \u201cNever Gonna Give You Up\u201d in your head. The ultimate \u201cRickroll<\/a>\u201d!<\/p>\n No\u2026 the only way I\u2019ve found of evicting earworms is to get another, even less desirable earworm to squat on the premises.<\/p>\n Mrs. H.\u2019s suggestion is that I embrace optimism, and with it, earworms. There are some things I will not do for my good lady wife, and relinquishing my mastery of pessimism is one of them.<\/p>\n I\u2019m sure I could convince Mrs. H. of my point of view if her choirs ever add \u201cIt\u2019s a Small World After All\u201d to their repertoire.<\/p>\n (**The title of this piece is the title of a Chesney Hawkes song from 1991, which was the only thing I ever found could dislodge “It’s a Small World After All” from my head.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Do you get a song stuck in your head and just can\u2019t shift it? Of course you do! If you listen to music and have at least one musical bone in your body, you can\u2019t fail to. And if you\u2019re musically-inclined, you likely suffer more than average. The phenomenon is known as \u201cearworm\u201d. I should reassure those of you who… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1413,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[488],"tags":[633],"class_list":["post-1410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bbs","tag-earworm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1410"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1415,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1410\/revisions\/1415"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}