Think about a song that’s gotten stuck in your head. Maybe it’s Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby,” the State Farm theme song, or, if you’ve already listened to Taylor Swift’s new album “The Life of a Showgirl,” “The Fate of Ophelia.”
These songs — though wildly different musically — share one thing in common: they’re earworms.
What are earworms? “Music that pops into your head without any deliberate effort to initiate or prolong it,” Susan Rogers, an instructor of music cognition at Berkelee Online, told HuffPost.
Swift has been churning out earworms for nearly two decades. There are entire Reddit threads where people chat about the song currently stuck in their head or the one that automatically starts playing in their mind when they wake up in the middle of the night.
This is all to say: don’t be surprised if you catch yourself humming along to the “TLOAS” tracks this week. It’s neuroscience. Here’s why:
What goes on in your brain when an earworm gets stuck in your head?
When you listen to music, many brain regions fire up to help you analyze the sound and make sense of the emotions you feel in response to it. But there is one part of the brain — the auditory cortex — that does the heavy lifting when it comes to processing songs and storing them as memories.
Certain songs are easier for your brain to remember than others. We’ll dig into those factors below, but, in general, our brains are best at memorizing simple, culturally familiar melodies, like the ones we hear in children’s songs (think: “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”).
What does this have to do with earworms? “Your auditory cortex lights up as if you were hearing the song for real, in real time, out loud,” explained Jenna Marcovitz, the director of music therapy in the department of integrative medicine at UCLA Health.
Typically, the earworm pops into your head when something in your environment triggers a memory of a song that’s stored in your brain. This may be something you read in a book, see on a billboard, hear in another song, or even imagine. Here’s a real-life example from Rogers: “I spotted a car with a decal in the back window with two large cat eyes. Into my head popped ‘Eyes Without a Face’ by Billy Idol.”
In short, the trigger jogs your musical memories. And though not every song will start playing on a loop, simple, catchy tunes you know by heart — i.e., an earworm — can repeat without much awareness or effort on your behalf, Rogers said.
What musical elements make a song an earworm?
There are various musical elements that increase the likelihood a song will be an earworm. As Marcovitz said, catchiness is usually a result of the perfect cocktail of tempo, melody, rhythm and repetition.
Faster tempos tend to stick. The same goes with short, simple melodies, memorable lyrics, predictable rhythms and repetitive chunks of sound played throughout the song. “Our brains are simply drawn to this patterning and organization that music inherently provides, and earworms really seem to capitalize upon that,” Marcovitz said.
One more thing: Earworms tend to be widely popular. The more you hear them on the radio or over the speakers at the grocery store, the stronger your memory of the tune will be. It’s no surprise, then, that a culture’s most popular songs are more likely to be earworms compared to its more artistically complex or avant-garde music, according to Rogers.
Jay Marcovitz, a recording engineer, mixer and producer (and husband to Jenna), noted that modern pop songs often incorporate various layers of hooks (or catchy elements) to be as memorable and addictive as possible.
Take “Please Please Please” by Sabrina Carpenter. The chorus — “please, please, please don’t prove I’m right” — uses harmonic and instrumental hooks heard in the introduction of the song, he says. The lyrics are simple and memorable after only a listen or two. The melody sways down, then up again (this is called a melodic counter), providing a satisfying feeling of resolution.
“Each of the elements — the vocals, the melody, the lyrics, the rhythms, the chords, the sonic ear candy — can all be hooky earworms by themselves, but when they come together as a whole, they create a memorable listening experience with greater chances of being recalled later,” Jay Marcovitz said.
Here’s what makes “The Fate of Ophelia” earworm gold.
It doesn’t take long to find an earworm on “TLOAS.” As one user wrote on YouTube, the first track — “The Fate of Ophelia” — is “already locked in our memory.” Why is this the case?
According to Scarlet Keys, a songwriting professor at Berkelee College of Music, the track contains multiple rhythmic, lyrical and melodic hooks. Lyrically, our brains are drawn to asyndetons (lists that do not include conjunctions) — “on the land, the sea, the sky” and “your hands, your team, your vibes” — along with the tiny rhymes sprinkled throughout — “you dug me out of my grave, and saved my heart from the fate of Ophelia.” “That is so satisfying to the ear, I call it ear crack for the listener,” Keys explained.
The tempo is fast and upbeat, she adds, and the rhythm is simple and repetitive. You can find plenty of melodic contours, that up-and-down swaying, like the one in the pre-chorus line: “And if you’d never come for me, I might’ve drowned in the melancholy.” As a result, many people will find they can quickly pick up on the beat and sing along. “A 4-year-old, a drunk guy in a bar and an 85-year-old could all get in on this,” Keys said. These combined elements lend themselves well to getting 90,000 people in a stadium bopping in unison — and becoming an earworm that sticks in your head.
There are a few ways to get an earworm out of your head.
There’s nothing technically wrong with letting your mind play “The Fate of Ophelia” on repeat, but if it’s starting to bug you? There are a few things you can do to free up some brain space.
First, try doing a strenuous task. Earworms are more likely to occur when our brains are pleasantly idle, Rogers said, so a challenging project can take your mind off the tune.
Other tricks: Play another song, change your environment or try chewing gum (one study suggests doing so “reduces the repetition of sticky tunes”). Some people find that actually listening to the song in its entirety can get it out of your head.
If all else fails, follow Rogers’ example. When she was an audio engineer on tour with Prince in 1984, she took the advice of experienced roadies and would sing “Tonight We’re Going To Rock You” by Spinal Tap after shows. “They say it’s so bad that it won’t stick, but it will wipe out any other music you’ve got going on,” Rogers said.