It starts innocently. You catch a few seconds of an old song on the radio or hear a commercial jingle. Hours later, that same little tune is still looping in your head while you fold laundry, drive, or try to fall asleep.
The short answer: scientists call these stuck songs earworms, and they're a very common form of involuntary memory. They're often triggered by recently hearing music, but also by anything that reminds you of a song, like a word, a few notes, or a feeling. Usually it's just a short snippet of the tune that repeats.
Almost Everyone Gets Them
If you've had an earworm, you're in good company. According to research by James Kellaris, 98 percent of people experience them. Men and women get them about equally often, though earworms tend to last longer for women and irritate them more.
The word itself comes from the German Ohrwurm, which literally means ear worm. Its earliest known use in English is in a 1978 novel called Flyaway by Desmond Bagley.
What Makes a Song Stick
Researcher Vicky Williamson at Goldsmiths, University of London, found that earworms were linked to how much music people heard. They could also be set off by reminders, such as seeing a word connected to a song or feeling an emotion tied to it. The songs people reported had no special pattern, other than being popular.
Lyrics seem to help songs stick. Kellaris's numbers suggested songs with words account for about 74 percent of earworms, while instrumental music caused only around 8 percent.
A 2010 study in the British Journal of Psychology supported the idea that earworms usually last 15 to 30 seconds, and that they're more common in people with an interest in music.
How to Get Rid of One
Researchers have tested a few tricks. Scientists at Western Washington University found that giving your working memory a moderately challenging task, like an anagram, a puzzle, or some reading, can stop an earworm and keep it from coming back.
Chewing gum may help too. Research from the University of Reading in 2015 suggested gum can interfere with the silent inner rehearsal your brain uses to replay music.
Another approach is to listen to the whole song from start to finish. Because an earworm is usually a fragment, hearing it through to the end can break the loop. Some people use a cure song instead. "Happy Birthday" is a popular choice.
When to Pay Attention
For nearly everyone, an earworm is just a harmless nuisance. Rarely, a stuck sound that won't go away, especially for more than a day, can be linked to medical conditions. If that happens, talk to your doctor.
Stuck Songs in Stories
Earworms have inspired writers for a long time. Mark Twain's 1876 story "A Literary Nightmare" is about a jingle you can only get rid of by passing it on to someone else.
Science fiction took the idea further. In Arthur C. Clarke's 1957 short story "The Ultimate Melody," a scientist invents a tune so perfectly matched to the brain's rhythms that the listener becomes completely enraptured by it, and never snaps out of it.
So if a tune is stuck in your head right now, grab a crossword or a stick of gum. And whatever you do, try not to hum it to the people around you.
