The only thing worse then having an
annoying song stuck in your head is not knowing the name of that song. That
thought then proceeds to eat into your daily routine and suddenly all you can
think of is, ‘What is that song?’ So you whip out your smart phone, open Shazam
and sing the line into your phone. Unfortunately, you’re not as good a singer
as you thought and Shazam can’t help you. Eventually, you phone a musician
friend who finally puts you out of your misery by naming that song. A couple of
hours later, your friend calls back to curse you because now, HE can’t stop
singing that annoying song.
What are these songs and tunes and why do
they bother us so? A little research on Google (Yes, the one with the new logo)
reveals a bunch of web articles with lists of 20+ annoying songs that get stuck
in your head. Excellent! now you have 30 songs stuck in your head on a loop.
Dig a bit deeper, ignore the lists and you come across some research by some
reputed scientists with a bunch of test subjects. Which only means that someone
thought the condition was serious enough to spend a lot of time and money to
figure out how to solve it. The solutions suggested vary from chewing gum and
solving sudoku puzzles to doing anagrams.
Oh and it has a name too. Earworm. Not the
little creepy crawly kind that one would find in the garden. It’s the kind that
just crawls around in your head giving you an itch you just need to scratch.
The more you sing it, the more you scratch it; and the more you scratch it, the
more the itch. These earworms also have the worst timing. From a Justin Bieber
‘Baby Baby’ that will strike during an important lecture/presentation to the ‘Macarena’ when you’re at church. Your
friends don’t really care for ‘what does the fox say’ and your co-workers won’t
appreciate you humming ‘it’s the final countdown’ when their project is due on
deadline day.
While earworms affect up to 99% of people,
research suggests that musicians, women and people who are tired and stressed
are more prone to earworm attacks. It’s not always annoying songs as well.
Quite often it is popular, catchy, upbeat tunes that get stuck in your head.
They also vary in duration from a few minutes to a few days. Most earworms will
go away on their own but if you really need to get one out, you could try singing
another song, doing something that requires your attention like solving puzzles
or even just listen to that song straight through to the end. Just remember
that next time you think someone is an alcoholic because he keeps saying ‘main
sharabi’ over and over again, it just might be a Honey Singh earworm.
