Earworms

[Prof. Maxim Trevelyan]

What exactly is an earworm? Sometimes also known as a brainworm, sticky music, stuck song syndrome, or Involuntary Musical Imagery (IMI) is a catchy piece of music that continually repeats through a person's mind after it is no longer playing. Basically, that song that gets suck in your head after you hear and it constantly plays in your mind.

Some of the songs that tend to stick in my mind are mostly those that are extremely popular for a short amount of time. Baby Shark, Despacito, Gangnam Style, California Gurls, Don't Stop Believing, Bad Romance and Poker Face. Now, due to the neighbors' kid bellowing it out at all times, Dragostea Din Tei (Numa Numa song) is stuck in my head, which is a shame, because I do like it otherwise.

What is your earworm music? Do you have a specific song or does it come and go with popular music?

[Sebastien Crowley]

Mine comes and goes. One that gets stuck in my head hundred percent's Bad Romance no doubt. Beginning the most.

[Zee Chibuike]

Haha, there's the amazing Beat It by MJ the weird Banana Boat, the lovelyyyyyyy Everything Stays which flats in and out, so many more lol it can really drive me but it's still really fun cos im a big music lover

[February Fortescue]

I don't know why I dislike this song so much and I why it gets stuck in my head every November and December, but for me, it's Last Christmas by Wham!

Over and over...

Last Christmas, I gave you my heart
But the very next day you gave it away
This year, to save me from tears
I'll give it to someone special

In despertation, I try to replace it with another earworm, which annoys me the other 10 months out of the year, but STLL can't top that one: Aqua's Barbie Girl:

Come on, Barbie, let's go party!
ah-ah-ah-yeah
Come on, Barbie, let's go party!
uu-oooh-u
uu-oooh-u
Come on, Barbie, let's go party!
ah-ah-ah-yeah
Come on, Barbie, let's go party!
uu-oooh-u
uu-oooh-u

[Berley Bey]

Any genre will do, as long as I like it. My earworm will be a lot before the pandemic, such as Baby-Anne Marie was there, Black Eyed Peas, Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez-Naturally and many more.

[Benjamin Solace]

My earworm music usually is the last three or four songs of my most recently played playlist (spoiler alert: it's metal and rock music) but most recently it's been:

Put your hand in mine
You know that I want to be with you all the time
You know that I won't stop until I make you mine
Until I make you mine
Put your hand in mine
You know that I want to be with you all the time
You know that I won't stop until I make you mine

[Marcus Darkwood]

I tend to think that earworms are typically those songs that are just extremely catchy; so much that you end up humming them or keeping them on repeat in your mind even though you might not even think you like them that much. At least for me, my earworms aren't usually the songs I love most - it can absolutely be that song I only half-like, that just refuses to get out of my mind because it's so catchy.

For example, I'm a rock/metal guy when it comes to the music I like most. It's not the only genres I like, but it's what I listen to most often. But I can still get pop/dance songs stuck in my head if I heard them on the radio or something. One of my recent earworms (from a couple of months back) was "My AI" by Erika Norwich & Super Rob. (I'm not sure I'm allowed to post the link here, but it's easy to look it up if you want to.)

I mean, this is a cute pop song, totally different from what I normally listen to. Yet, I could still not get it out of my head for some time, so in that sense it was absolutely an earworm

On another note, I love the word Earworm - it's such an accurate description of the feeling! My mother tongue does not have its own word for that. I could phrase it as "having a song (stuck on) the brain", but that's a whole sentence, not a single word.

[Hiya Debnath]

My earworms keep changing and I don't think it's necessarily always songs that I like. I have often had earworms from songs that I absolutely hated. It just happens after I hear it a few times, typically if I don't have too much to think about. : )