WASHINGTON — What makes an earworm? Science may have the answer.
Earworms — insanely catchy songs that get into your head and won鈥檛 leave, even if you don鈥檛 really like them — were the subject of a recent study led by Kelly Jakubowski, of the UK鈥檚 Durham University.
That study, published in the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts, found a few things common to most earworms: They鈥檙e generally up-tempo songs with melodies that are easy to remember.
鈥淭hese musically sticky songs seem to have quite a fast tempo along with a common melodic shape and unusual intervals or repetitions like we can hear in the opening riff of 鈥楽moke On The Water鈥� by Deep Purple or in the chorus of [Lady Gaga鈥檚] 鈥楤ad Romance,鈥欌�� Jakubowski . Indeed, Lady Gaga turned up three times in the top 10 earworms cited in the study.
The study said that earworms often have patterns in which the first melodic phrase rises and the second falls — think 鈥淭winkle Twinkle Little Star鈥� — or has a lot of repeated notes, such as 鈥淢y Sharona,鈥� by The Knack.
The study asked 3,000 people about their most common earworms, took the 100 most-cited songs and compared them to 100 songs that weren鈥檛 called earworms but had had similar chart success at similar times.
Jakubowski says that earworms are a product of聽“spontaneous cognition,” which she defines as “thinking thoughts unrelated to our present task.” She says that people spend about 40 percent of their time in such thought, and that if we understand how the process happens, it’s a building block to understanding how the brain works.
Still, she has practical advice for getting rid of earworms: Listen to a different song, or listen to the earworm song all the way through — often you鈥檙e just stuck on a piece of a song. A different study suggests you could just chew a piece of gum.
The 10 most commonly cited earworms in the study:
- 鈥淏ad Romance鈥� by Lady Gaga
- 鈥淐an鈥檛 Get You Out Of My Head鈥� by Kylie Minogue
- 鈥淒on鈥檛 Stop Believing鈥� by Journey
- 鈥淪omebody That I Used To Know鈥� by Gotye
- 鈥淢oves Like Jagger鈥� by Maroon 5
- 鈥淐alifornia Gurls鈥� by聽
- 鈥淏ohemian Rhapsody鈥� by Queen
- 鈥淎lejandro鈥� by Lady Gaga
- 鈥淧oker Face鈥� by Lady Gaga
