Recently I made a playlist titled “rev up” that was designed to lift my mood and get me excited about moving. I sprained my ankle a couple of weeks ago and have been way more sedentary than I’d like and cranky than my family’d like. A lot of the songs are up-tempo numbers from the ‘70s and ‘80s, along with some ‘90s hits and a few tunes from the 2000s. Besides reminding me of my days teaching aerobics, the songs trigger cheerful memories of hanging out on the North Avenue Beach with my friends, watching the sailboats on Lake Michigan, a transistor radio tuned to a Top 40 station. It’s always summer or a six-thirty high impact class in a gym during these flashbacks. Many of the songs are good; some are on the cheesy side but make it onto the playlist for a great brass riff or a beat that fits perfectly with jumping jacks. Not that I should be doing them now, with the ankle and all, but that beat still evokes the sheer physical elation I got from jumping jacks, back in the day.
I listened to the playlist a few times and discovered that some of the songs hadn’t aged well. So I deleted them, but bits of the worst stayed stuck in my head. I’d sowed a crop of malignant earworms and needed an exterminator, stat!
The word earworm, in the sense of a musical fragment that keeps repeating in your head, is of German origin (ohrwurm) and around a century old. Wikipedia classifies the earworm as a form of ”involuntary cognition,” meaning a memory that’s activated by environmental or sensory cues instead of a conscious effort to remember. Think Proust and his madeleines. Up to 98% of people are reported to experience earworms, although for some reason in women they tend to be longer lasting and to be perceived as more annoying.
I have some musical phrase going through my head more often than not, and I generally find this pleasant, or at least useful. Frequently it’s a phrase from a piece that I’m learning or have just performed, and I see it as my brain processing a tricky spot. After I’d edited the playlist, the bad boys started to fade, only to be replaced by a bunch of equally irksome earworms courtesy of Sonny. Sonny’s always been drawn to “old songs” (to him, this means music of the ‘70s and ‘80s), and he also loves list videos and snarky videos. Recently he’s taken to playing these videos on the TV in the family room around dinner time. Our kitchen is adjacent to the family room, so I’ve been making dinner to “Top 100 songs of the Disco Era” and the like. I think that I’m focusing on boiling water and chopping things, but somehow songs I never cared for sneak onto the repeat cycle in my head. Boogie Wonderland. Eye of the Tiger. I’ve Got You Babe. Escape (the Pina Colada song). The Macarena. Ayiiiee!
Ohrwurm’s original meaning in German is “earwig,” referring to a nocturnal insect that feeds on plants and other bugs and is found on every continent but Antarctica. Several origins are suggested for this word, including that in Roman times these insects were ground up and used to treat ear ailments. Another speculation is that earwigs’ hindwings have an ear-like appearance. The sources I found insisted that the word earwig has nothing, nothing at all! to do with the folk tales that suggest that these insects are eager to climb into humans’ ear canals in order to burrow into our brains and lay their eggs. No matter what your counselor may have said by the campfire that night when you were nine, earwigs are not bent upon carrying out a hideous revenge for the Romans’ medical practices. I can only hope that the experts are right.
When I have an earworm, however, it does sometimes feel like I’m hosting a vengeful spirit. Another of Sonny’s dinnertime favorites is “Trainwreckords.” This series is about albums that derailed a once-successful artist’s career, and it features some hauntingly terrible songs. Intuition. Mr. Roboto. Blurred Lines. Kokomo. Bam! they go, straight into my skull.
Fortunately there’s plenty of advice for dealing with earworms. The number one suggestion is to listen to the whole song. For some of these tunes, that cure may be worse than the disease. The entirety of I’ve Got You, Babe? Also, what if that hatches a worm from a different part of the song? Other tips include 1) engaging in an activity that involves working memory, like a Sudoku puzzles, reading, watching TV, or having a conversation, 2) chewing gum, 3) turning to a “cure” song like Happy Birthday, or 4) letting time take care of it, since most earworms don’t last all that long.
The ankle’s getting better, slowly. If none of the remedies works, I’ll try my own idea: If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. I’ll boogy down to Kokomo, Pina Colada in hand, singing “I’ve got you, Babe.”
the jeanSpace 