How to Defeat an Earworm

Written by Dr. Mike ~ Guest Writer

Photo credit to enterprise.press. 

The popular music business is all about the hooks. Quickly memorable bits of music or appealing lyrics lock our attention onto a song. The ultimate goal is to motivate us to pay a bit of money to hear that song again or to at least expose us to a bit of advertising when the song is over.

The problem is that the human brain is often very good with sounds. The things that we enjoy get stuck in our heads, but so do the things that we do not enjoy. Those earworms can be maddening.

When I was younger, I used to say that I hated popular music. These days, I am not sure why I ever said that. I have a particularly deep nostalgia for the popular songs from the 1970s and 1980s, the very time periods in which I did all of my complaining. 

Looking back, I think what I hated was the repetition of music I did not enjoy. When I was in high school, I had a job working at a pharmacy. We always had music playing for the usual reasons—customers liked it and it helped the day go by for the employees. 

Our radio was tuned to a popular music station. That is my fault. I think it was my second day on the job when I asked if I could climb up to the dusty top of the display cases to adjust the tuner away from a country station (sorry country fans, but I never could listen to that genre for long). This really bothered a couple of the adult employees (mostly mothers of my friends), but I think the pharmacist who ran the place backed me. I suspect he was always looking for a chance to make that country music go away too. 

The station had a tendency to repeat a song list about every two hours. On any given shift, I would hear the same song sometime around 3 p.m., 5 p.m., and 7 p.m.. Plus there was a good chance the song would occur again during the “Top Eight at Eight” format that kicked in an hour later. That repetition exposed me to many earworms. They seared into my brain. Those songs would stay stuck in my head, the little hooks sometimes replaying when I least expected it. There’s nothing quite like catching yourself humming a tune you hate. 

I had no power to stop those earworms then but I do have a strategy now. It’s a bit like fighting fire with fire. 

Basically, the trick is to have another song ready to go in your head. As soon as you realize you are experiencing an earworm, just mentally hit play on your preferred song.  That music should have its own powerful hook. I use instrumental pieces with a strong start, something that blasts the earworm out of my head.

Specifically, I recommend the main theme to The Magnificent Seven. The 1960 film is one of the greatest Westerns ever made. Composed by Elmer Bernstein, the theme starts with a quick blast of music and then soars up into music that powerfully invokes the grandeur of that genre. The theme also reminds me of just how much I enjoy that movie. If that does not appeal to you, another great earworm clearer is John William’s “The Imperial March.” First used in 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back, we tend to think of it as Darth Vader’s theme. Lately I’ve also had success with Morton Stevens’ 1968 theme to the television show Hawaii Five-O. Like the big Pacific wave it accompanies in the show’s intro, the quickly building percussion that washes everything else away.