“Make the world go away, and get it off of my shoulders. La la-la la-la, la-la…”
You’ve just interrupted an earworm in the throes of wriggling through this column’s consciousness. Earworms are those snatches of song that get stuck in your head and take hours, perhaps days, to dislodge.
Songs with lyrics are more common than instrumentals when it comes to earworms, according to university researchers. I blame elevator music for the one I’m now experiencing. Sure, it was an instrumental, but memory filled in the words and now I’ve got the world on my shoulders. I don’t mind telling you that it’s getting darned heavy.
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Trouble is, earworms can be catching so I hope the mere reading of this doesn’t start something in your own head. I’ve worked with a woman who hummed the first few bars of Deck the Halls at intervals throughout the day. Yes, it’s a catchy and festive song, but in July? And August? And September?
Yet I found myself humming it while mowing the lawn on a hot Labour Day weekend. I didn’t experience the same reaction upon hearing another co-worker whistling an aria from Carmen. My earworm is the unsophisticated sort.
Similarly, a journalist at an adjoining desk in a not-so-distant newsroom repeated this lyric with melody: “I don’t wanna be around to pick up the pieces.” He never sang more than that, nor did he sing less. I don’t know the rest of the song, but often wonder if it was a commentary on his job satisfaction.
A cursory search on the internet yielded a list of the most annoying earworms, among them It’s a Small World After All, Achy Breaky Heart and, in a departure from the lyric commonality, the theme from Jeopardy. Each would indeed be playing in the elevator on a trip to purgatory.
I once spent a harvest season in a combine sans radio with I Get Around, by the Beach Boys, running through my head. I did, in fact get around many rounds of the field, but given the age of that old shaker, Good Vibrations would have been more appropriate.
Researchers say 99 percent of people surveyed have had an earworm at some time. Researcher James Kellaris explains it thus: “The process can start involuntarily, as the brain detects an incongruity or something exceptional in the musical stimulus. The ensuing mental repetition may exacerbate the itch, such that the mental rehearsal becomes largely involuntary, and the individual feels trapped in a cycle or feedback loop.”
Fine, but that doesn’t help much.
“Say the things you used to say, and make the world go away….”
