Ear Worms We Know And Love

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: There’s been a lot of talk in the news the past few months about brain worms (yuch!!) but I want to steer the conversation in a different direction. You might say I want to bring it right round baby, right round, like a record baby right round round round.

Did I ear worm you?

Some of us are more susceptible than others, but everyone gets a tune stuck in their head once in a while. Honestly, I’m constantly humming or singing two bars of the last thing I heard in a show/ Alexa streaming/ an ad. Sometimes I wake up with a song already going in my head - what’s up with that? Is there some truth to the old conspiracy theory about radio receivers in dental fillings?

There are songs that for some reason or another seem destined to become earworms. Karma Chameleon. Oklahoma. Pretty much anything by Shakira. Then there are others that are more tailored to an individual. Lacking any other input, for instance, I will hum phrases from Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro Overture. I will do this over and over and OVER again, something I don’t notice at all, but, sadly, anyone around me will experience. I have to be very alert when traveling by train because of this.

How about you, Reds? Are you afflicted by ear worms? What tunes are your triggers?

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I am, although probably not as much as more musical folks. I have been watching The Voice this season for the first time in a couple of years (Adam Levine is back as a coach, yay!) and a recent contestant–from Dallas, no less–sang a gorgeous version of Dream a Little Dream of Me and I’ve had it stuck in my head ever since!

LUCY BURDETTE: This mostly happens to me around Christmas. There are a few truly dreadful holiday songs that get stuck in my head if I hear them. I won’t say the whole thing out loud for fear of reactivating for me or for you–but hint, Mommy and Santa Claus. And anything to do with those blasted chipmunks!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Oh, isn't it so funny how this happens to all of us? Because: It’s a small world after all. AHHHHHHHH why did I type that?

 

Once I started singing Super Trouper in the car when Jonathan was driving me to the airport for book tour, but I don;t know all the words, so I would just sing the first two lines, over and over, and finally Jonathan said: honey, do you know the REST of the song? Which I did not.

 

Don't get me started on Kars for Kids. (Which I think I read somewhere, was composed specifically to stick in your head.)

And, news you can use, I also heard that if you have an immovable earworm, start singing Jingle Bell Rock, and that will erase it.

JENN McKINLAY: LOL. I’ll get you for that ear worm, Hank! Like Julia, I sing all the time without realizing it. Hub does, however, and frequently suggests I change up my top 40 hits, which inexplicably include Bobby McGee, Shake It Off, and Here Comes the Sun. No idea why.

RHYS BOWEN: I think I’m the queen of the earworms. I hum all the time when I’m concentrating on something (but not when I’m writing). Since I sing in a church choir it’s often one of the hymns we are practicing that’s stuck in my head.  If not I find that what I’m humming/singing has to do with what I’ve been talking or thinking about. Disputing some statement in the news? I find myself singing “It Ain’t Necessarily So.”  

But the writer of Kars for Kids should be hung, drawn and quartered. Ditto the writer of It’s a Small World.

HALLIE EPHRON: Ear worms R us, too. For the longest time the theme for Masterpiece Theatre was stuck in my head. In competition with Shake It Off. And, of course, I am constantly Defying Gravity… quite inspirational.

It’s so nice to be able to “watch” TV these days and mute the commercials. Katy bar the door.

 

Hummingbirds.

RHYS: I have a confession to make. I hum. Quietly, to myself, a lot of the time. I didn’t realize I did it until my children pointed it out to me years ago. Now I’m conscious that I’m doing it. Sometimes it’s a tune I’ve heard recently that becomes an earworm, stuck in my head. Other times I have no idea what I’m humming or why. And the interesting thing is that when I stop and ask myself why I’m humming a particular tune, I’ve come to realize there is always a psychological connection or some kind of word association connection to something that has happened or been discussed.
I think it’s my way of stopping my brain from thinking about things too much. When I’m stressed, I hum. I have to stop myself from humming when I walk through airports, or I get strange looks. When I’m writing a book and my brain is hyper-creativity mode and I want to take a break I hum too. Because the thoughts don’t whirl around my head as much when I hum.

My father was a whistler. You'd always hear him coming by the whistle. My son-in-law ditto. John dislikes this so much that my son-in-law made a CD for him one Christmas called The Royal Family Whistles the Classics. The numbers were all whistled by Tom including "I'm Dreaming of a Different Son-in-Law, Son-in-Law is Coming into Town" etc. We still have it!

So, fellow Reds, do you hum, whistle, have a tune in your head that won’t go away? Have a default tune that hums around inside your skull when you are stressed. My current one is Puff the Magic Dragon. Don’t ask me why. I can’t analyze that one.

HANK: I just burst out laughing! I don't hum, but there is often a song in my head, and I agree, it comes from somewhere. And it's fun to figure out where. Puff, for instance. Anyone you know live by the sea? And it's autumn, right? Anyone bring you string, or sealing wax, or other fancy stuff.
And thanks a lot , sister, now that song is in my head. And I know exactly where it came from.
(Sidebar: I'm told that if you have a song in your head--called an "earworm," by the way--you can get rid of it by singling Jingle Bell Rock.) (And, they say, Jingle Bell Rock does not replace it.)
Worth a try.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Rhys, that is so funny! I don't hum, and I can't whistle (one of my many failings.) I do occasionally get a song stuck in my head, especially when Rick is learning something on the guitar and plays it over and over, lol. And, Hank, if Puff the Magic Dragon wasn't enough, you started me on a Joni Mitchell earworm (it was the sealing wax...) so now I'm going to try Jingle Bell Rock. Which I hate. If that sticks I will never forgive you.

LUCY BURDETTE: I am not trying the Jingle Bell thing--the cost could be too dear! I don't hum, but I do sing. Mostly to my animals. The song in my brain today goes like this: T-T-Tonka, beautiful Tonka. You're the only d-d-dog that I adore....

HALLIE EPHRON: I am not a hummer, mostly because I'm so off key I make myself cringe. When I sang my daughter a lullaby she'd ask me to stop. I do sing along with the radio, turning the radio up loud enough so I can't hear myself. And I get tunes stuck in my head all the time. Like the music that goes with the opening titles of NCIS? Aaaggggh.

JENN McKINLAY: Hummer, here! Hub and the Hooligans say I have my own top 40 countdown which includes Me & Bobby McGee, Someone Like You, Redbone, and Love Like a Bomb, just to name a few. I also sing and whistle and had no idea I was doing any of it until my men clued me in. Thankfully, they just ask me to turn it down instead of asking me to stop. LOL.

INGRID THOFT: I do not hum, and honestly, it drives me nuts if someone around me is humming.  Or whistling.  I'm like Debs in that I can't whistle.  It's part of the family lore that if you ask me to whistle a tune, one long, dissonant sound will come out of my mouth.  Interestingly enough, I actually have a decent singing voice and can carry a tune, but it doesn't translate to whistling.  My hubby is the worst when it comes to ear worms.  He'll often say, "you know what song I can't get out of my head?" and then proceed to sing a few lines, which lodge themselves in my brain.  The ear worm that reoccurs often?  "It's a Small World."  Ugh!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Ingrid, the penalty for lodging "It's a Small World" in someone's ear should be death. Swift death. I would drive you crazy, though, because I'm another hummingbird. The girls and I will often sit together of an evening: the Smithie reading, Youngest doing her homework, and me on my laptop. Humming. They ask me to stop, and I will...right up to the point where I lose awareness of "not humming" and begin again. I've caught myself humming while in an airplane, and I'm always embarrassed! What could be more obnoxious than being forced to listen to your seatmate humming the same three bars of Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 over...and over...and over again.

Actually, I know something more annoying: the Sailor, who's been a percussionist since age 11, beats. He jiggles his leg, taps his foot, thumps his fingers on the table. At least with unwanted humming, you have the option of putting in earbuds and listening to your own music to escape. With percussion, you FEEL it.

RHYS: Julia, I'm with you. "It's a Small World" is the most earworm-likely song in the universe. When we took the kids to Disneyland when they were small that pesky song wouldn't leave my head for weeks, nay months!  But I'm not sure I want to try Jingle Bell Rock either. That wouldn't exactly induce a calm state of mind!

So readers and friends: who hums? Who whistles? Who hates it when others do?