Scientists Study Getting an Unwanted Tune Out of Your Head 219
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Richard Gray reports that scientists have found a way to help anyone plagued by those annoying tunes that lodge themselves inside our heads and repeat on an endless loop — when snippets of a catchy song inexplicably play like a broken record in your brain. The solution can be to solve some tricky anagrams to force the intrusive music out of your working memory allowing the music to be replaced with other more amenable thoughts. 'The key is to find something that will give the right level of challenge,' says Dr Ira Hyman, a music psychologist at Western Washington University who conducted the research. 'If you are cognitively engaged, it limits the ability of intrusive songs to enter your head.' Hyman says that the problem, called involuntary memory retrieval, is that something we can do automatically like driving or walking means you are not using all of your cognitive resource, so there is plenty of space left for that internal jukebox to start playing. Dr Vicky Williamson, a music psychologist at Goldsmiths, University of London, says that the most likely songs to get stuck are those that are easy to hum along to or sing and found that that Lady Gaga was the most common artist to get stuck in people's heads, with four of her catchy pop songs being the most likely to become earworms – Alejandro, Bad Romance, Just Dance and Paparazzi. Other surveys have reported Abba songs such as Waterloo, Changes by David Bowie or the Beatles' Hey Jude."
no subject (Score:5, Funny)
great ... now i got Hey Jude stuck in my head
Re:no subject (Score:5, Funny)
Re:no subject (Score:5, Funny)
For me, it helps imagining the tune as sung a capella by the Swedish chef from the Muppet Show.
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That's tame.
Examples of things I remember getting stuck in my head:
- Original Dr Who theme
- Twinkle, twinkle, little star
- Amazing horse (meme)
- They've taken the Hobbits to Isengard! (meme)
- The sound the metro trains going over the bridge next to my house make, every 90 seconds (szszszszszszsz dum-dum, dum-dum--dum-dum, dum-dum--dum-dum, dum-dum--dum-dum, dum-dum--dum-dum, dum-dum--dum-dum, dum-dum szszszszszszszsz)
- Little chunks of music, which bug me for a week until I remember the song they're from.
Re:no subject (Score:5, Interesting)
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Probably don't have to worry much about your sanity til you get Beatles Revolution No.9 stuck there for very long.
Odd thing about this that didn't make their study. Some music is pleasant to get stuck in your head.
1. Instrumental music.Voltaire said " Anything too stupid to be said, is sung" brother, he wasn't kidding. This is the offensive property of "loop music" phenomena.
Having someones blathered obscure references, personal philosophies, obnoxious wordplay stuck in your head over and over is the qualit
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Fortunately I am rendered immune by never having heard a single song or artist that was listed.
I went shopping for clothes and heard all the songs I was happily oblivious to before :-(
I walked out of a couple of shops just because the music was so distasteful.
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Re:no subject (Score:5, Funny)
You're welcome.
Re:no subject (Score:5, Funny)
You sir, make Lex Luthor seem nice.
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You sir, make Lex Luthor seem nice.
Don't worry, be happy now!
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You sir, make Lex Luthor seem nice.
Not a fair comparison. That asshole takes the cake.
Re:no subject (Score:4, Funny)
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8 6 7 5 3 o 9
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Number sequences are incredibly catchy.
My family's business has a radio ad that is infamous in the Denver area for it's use of numbers... specifically they are directions to get there (pretty ingenious of my late grandfather, really)
You take Eyeeeee Twenty Five to exit Twooooo Thirty Five.... then Fiveeee miles west to The Tree Farm!
(those of you who know this jingle... go buy a tree and plant it... that will keep your brain busy!)
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Allow me to demonstrate
It's a small world after all, It's a small world after all, It's a small world after all, It's a small, small word.
It a world of laughter, a world of tears. It's a world of hope and a world of fears. There's so much that we share, and it's time we're aware. It's a small world after all.
It's a small world after all, It's a small world after all, It's a small world afte
Re:no subject (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously not enough Slashdotters have had children...
This is the song that never ends,
It just goes on and on my friend.
Some people started singing it, not knowing what it was,
And they'll continue singing it forever just because...
(repeat)
Credits to the late, great Sherri Lewis
Re:no subject (Score:5, Funny)
Obviously not enough Slashdotters have had children
Good or bad thing?
./ers not qualified due to prerequisite - a date (Score:5, Funny)
Obviously not enough Slashdotters have had children
The prerequisite to that would be that slashdotters get a date. Not likely to happen on a large scale.
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And this is crazy
But here's my number
So call me maybe.
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This is the song that never ends
yes it goes on and on my friend
Some people started singing it, not knowing what it was
and they'll continue singing it forever just because
This is the song that never ends, yes it goes on and on my friend. ...
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In the second week of December 2012, the ride broke down in Walt Disney World, and my boat was straddling the wall between the final room and the unloading area. It was bad enough for us. But I could not imagine the horror for the people who were in boats further back. In the boat immediately behind us, a couple had an infant that was screaming and screaming. I felt so sorry for them. The infant could no doubt detect the stress of the
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A little pr0n will clear out the head pronto.
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Or a type WE tin penis. [intriguing.com]
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I'd much rather have Hey Jude stuck in my head than that annoying "Musical Doodle" song from spongebob squarepants. My son was engaged in scientific study of his own, listening to that over and over again while I was half asleep. This seems to be a great way of forcing a song stuck into someone's head.
Nope (Score:5, Funny)
I'm at work right now. I should be programming. Instead, I'm being distracted with Springtime for Hitler (from The Producers) driving me crazy all morning. Get it out!
(Ok, yes, also I'm writing tests, which are boring, so his hypothesis probably *is* right: I could drive that song out if I were working on something that actually engaged my brain and made me want to devote all my brainpower to it.)
Re:Nope (Score:5, Funny)
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Ever since they used it on the intro to The Lone Ranger, as the hero sped across the countryside on horseback, that song has run through my head whenever I'm in a hurry.
Although, I could probably use more bikini-babes in my life.... I'll have to try THAT one next time...
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BTW, I submit another tune for the purpose of speeding things up: "Flight of the Valkyries"
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I'm at work right now. I should be programming. Instead, I'm being distracted with Springtime for Hitler (from The Producers) driving me crazy all morning. Get it out!
Would you prefer Will Ferrel's rendition of Haben Sie Gehurt Das Deustche Band?
Anecdotal Evidence (Score:4, Interesting)
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Yeah this solution was known for years.
It's so fscking easy, nobody seems to notice it:
1. The song is looping, because it's something that loops, duh;
2. By engaging cognition into it, one can extend the loop and thus break past the trigger that keeps it looping.
So here we are, looking at the n-th rediscovery, posted on /.
Re:Anecdotal Evidence (Score:5, Insightful)
Just listen to the whole song and the loop is broken.
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Re:Anecdotal Evidence (Score:4, Insightful)
Thanks! (Score:2)
Now I have the worst mashup ever stuck in head!
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The reason why the suggested solution doesn't work for anyone on slashdot is that it sequires you to think, even a little bit. and, of course, this IS slashdot.
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No, the reason it doesn't work on slashdot is that the cognitively challenging chosen task is usually a classic video game. With looped music. That gets stuck in your head.
Great now lady gaga is stuck in my head (Score:2)
Summertime Song (Score:3)
Even injured? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would have thought being injured and fearing for your life would be enough to drive a song out of your mind, but apparently not! Though I wonder if shock might bring on this sort of "looping" in your mind, focusing on something else as a form of escapism.
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Boney M? Beats being stuck in a wrecked car for 6 hours listening to Wham! [blogspot.com]
Oh, and btw: Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.
Timely topic (Score:2)
I'm trying to drive out an annoying TV theme song right now by listening to Pandora until I find a song I'd rather have stuck in my head.
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Catchy tunes (Score:4, Funny)
Obligatory xkcd [xkcd.com]
Even easier (and older) fix (Score:5, Insightful)
There was a similar study long ago not dealing with how to get the song out alone, but also what the cause of the song being stuck was. The majority of cases tended to be related to the brain not being able to remember or work out a part of the song. That study also gave the easiest remedy to the issue: Listen to the song from start to finish without interruption. In a majority of their test cases, the playing of the song jogged the memory and filled in the gaps allowing the brain to move on to other things.
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That works in some cases, certainly, and it has for me in the past. In many cases, however, it simply doesn't work. For instance, I've had a song stuck in my head since Friday, and it's now Monday. It's a pleasant enough song that I heard for the first time on Friday, and since then I've listened to it several more times uninterrupted, yet it's still stuck in my head. I woke up this morning to it stuck in my head again.
The only thing I find that works for me is engaging my brain fully by doing an activity o
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You may try the song backward as well as forward. The brain does process things that way more often than people will admit, and perhaps it needs something in the fore from the song in reverse?
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The power of the TV side... (Score:2)
The only song there I even recognize is Hey Jude, and it doesn't ever get stuck in my head.
I don't think any of those have the same power as TV show themes do. I can get anything from the Facts of Life to Thundercats to the Knight Rider theme stuck easier than anything else, as well as several Phineas and Ferb songs.
I'm not sure that even those can compete with the dark power unleashed by Friday's announcement of the remastered Duck Tales game. Odds are good that was an evil plot to study the effects of get
Re:The power of the TV side... (Score:5, Interesting)
The best ever was when I called Symantec about fifteen years ago. Their 'Muzak on hold' machine had broken and someone had run out to their car in the parking lot and brought in their Sony Discman to plug into the phone system. The CD in the player was Bill Cosby's 'Wonderfulness' album. By the time tech support finally picked up the phone I was in a pretty good mood. Only good experience I ever had with Symantec tech support.
I have another perspective on these findings (Score:2)
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Didn't you get the memo? This is the US of A, around these parts we're expected to be fully engaged for a solid 8 hours (including breaks and lunches) in our work. Longer if you're salaried, because that means legally they now own you and every moment of your conscious being. This includes reserving the right to wake you from unconsciousness without warning to call you into the office (and you'd best think about what you need to do once you get to work, on the way to work.)
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It's an email that says "memo" at the top?
Humor aside, when I left Michigan the company I worked for gave us a verbal memo dictating that we all had to work 2080 hours per year whether we liked it or not (I had good reason to leave MI). We also got a nice 5% pay reduction due to the poor economy. The verbal memo was to save them from a law suit that would have been provable if they wrote something down.
The best way to get a bad song out of your head... (Score:2)
Works every time, until you hit the bottom.
For me it's either an airhead singing about the end of a work week, or a giant imaginary purple dinosaur singing about how he can't stick to a single lover.
Interesting... (Score:2)
She Loves You so catchy it gets stuck twice (Score:5, Funny)
Some of the easiest songs to get stuck in your head (as used by the researchers)
Alejandro – Lady Gaga
Bad Romance – Lady Gaga
Call me Baby – Carly Rae Jepsen.
Single Ladies – Beyoncé
She Loves You – The Beatles
I Wanna Hold Your Hand – The Beatles
She Loves You – The Beatles
SOS – Rihanna
You Belong with Me – Taylor Swift
Apparently She Loves You is such a catchy song that it gets stuck in your head twice.
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So tell me ... (Score:2)
[Thanks a lot, Nurse Ratched.]
About unwanted tunes. (Score:5, Funny)
A gut goes to the doctor and says he has " She's a Lady " playing over and over and over in his head. The doctor says, you may be suffering from Tom Jones disease. The guy asks, is that common? The doctor reply's, well, It's Not Unusual .......
Meditation (Score:3, Interesting)
Ha! (Score:5, Funny)
One of my (so far unused) fake headlines:
"Music 'Stuck in Head' is Theft, According to RIAA Chief"
Solution here! (Score:2)
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Chico (playing piano, somewhat repetitively): "You know, I can't think of the ending"
Groucho : "I can think of nothing else"
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The way I get them out (Score:2)
Is to play them on the piano. Once played my brain can move on to other things. It's like nudge nudge, it goes like this.... try it out... nudge nudge... it goes like this .. try it out...... and so on, until it is satisfied.
I've had a song in my head for days (Score:2)
It happens when you don't know the end. (Score:2)
I find that songs that are stuck in my head are ones that have a repetitive section, but I don't know the end of the song. To get a song unstuck, I sing a song that I know from start to finish (out loud if possible, in my head if not) and then distract myself.
For me the most successful song for this purpose is the Muppet Show Theme.
New mind the tunes (Score:2)
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Mountain climbing (Score:2)
FTFY (Score:2)
"... so there is plenty of space left for that infernal jukebox to start playing."
Works for me anyway.
happy birthday song (Score:2)
I heard the trick is to play the "happy birthday" song in your head. Like some comment said, when the brain plays the song from start to finish, it moves on. The Happy Birthday song will very rapidly replace the song stuck in your head and when it comes to the finish, the brain will naturally move on from songs.
You'd have to make a voluntary effort to go back to the song you wanted to remove from your head.
all the lady gaga songs are the same (Score:2)
Alejandro chorus: IV-I-V-vi
Poker Face vi-IV-I-V
others are similar or the same (one uses a closely related minor instead, as I recall) - the cycle is identical, it just starts on a different chord.
I remember hearing somewhere that 36% of pop music used that progression (or maybe it was #1 songs for a specific year). Axis of Awesome makes fun of it. Rob Paravonian nailed it in his Pachelbel rant (as a fellow cellist that plays guitar that had gone on a similar rant, beautifully done).
Have you tried a magazine...? (Score:2)
Ode to an earworm (Score:2)
We're no strangers to love
You know the rules and so do I
A full committiment's what I'm thinking of
You just wouldn't get this from any other guy
I just want to tell you how I'm feeling
Gotta make you understand
Never gonna give you up,
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around, and desert you
Never gonna make you cry,
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie, and hurt you
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I have this in its most extreme form :(
I am quite serious when I say that if I hum another tune to clear my head - the other tune becomes the new earworm stuck in my head. Almost any music I hear can result in another snippet stuck in my head. I spend probably 60% of my waking hours with some annoying thing stuck in my head. Worse yet I tap them out with my fingers or hum them outloud. It can often be nothing more than the same 2-4 bars of a song without the lyrics - off and on for say 10 hours. Every time
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Apparently Paul McCartney from the Beatles does the same thing, but unlike me his tunes are original. McCartney would wake up with a brand new tune in his head, he would not write it down straight away but rather play with putting words to it in his head for a few days, he figured if he couldn't remember the tune after a couple of days it wasn't worth keepi
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I do a similar thing. I sing a song I know all of. When a song gets stuck in my head the whole song doesn't get suck in my head, a minute at most does. If you can sing through a whole song it tends not to get stuck because it's too long.
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When I'm a-walkin', I strut my stuff, and I'm so strung out,
I'm high as a kite, I just might stop to check you out,
Let me go on, like a blister in the sun,
Let me go on, big hands I know you're the one
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Re:Tactical Nuclear Memes (Score:4, Funny)
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I think this joke is better:
"Michael Jackson was proof of the American Dream, that you can become whoever you want to be. He was born a poor black man, and died a rich white woman."
Re:Tactical Nuclear Memes (Score:4, Funny)
He was born a poor black man...
That must have been a painful delivery.
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Re:Just block it with your hosts file (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Great! Please help me get rid of this one: (Score:5, Informative)
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Now the songs that do get stuck I usually don't know that well, so I maybe have a chorus or a couple of lines and can't complete it, and I think that's possibly related to your theory it's about resolution. What I don't k
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God no!, You think having one song stuck in your head is bad, having 5 or 6 is a terrible!
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So my, my this here Anakin guy
May be Vader some day later
Now he's just a small fry
He left his toys, kissed his mommy goodbye
Saying soon I'm gonna be a Jedi
Soon I'm gonna be a Jedi
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