👂🐛Earworms: The science of sticky musical intrusion

You’re in a loop, haunted by a tune, and there’s no escape. Your brain just keeps playing one catchy song over and over and over and over and over again. You’ve been infected by an earworm—and you’re not alone. Scientists who study earworms (yes, these scientists exist) have found that [99% of people]( experience the phenomenon known as Involuntary Musical Imagery (INMI) at some point. This mostly harmless form of madness is, in psychological terms, a kind of auditory rumination that’s related to anxiety and depression, which involve the incessant repetition of negative thoughts. Unlike anxiety, earworms don’t always suck. Most people report finding them benign or even pleasurable. (So much so that there are a variety of sites like [YoutubeOnRepeat]( that exist solely to take the effort out of looping songs for free.) Let’s see if we can scratch the itch of the unforgettable song. 🌐 [View this email on the web]( Brought to you by [Quartz Obsession] Earworms May 10, 2018 Can’t get you out of my head --------------------------------------------------------------- You’re in a loop, haunted by a tune, and there’s no escape. Your brain just keeps playing one catchy song over and over and over and over and over again. You’ve been infected by an earworm—and you’re not alone. Scientists who study earworms (yes, these scientists exist) have found that [99% of people]( experience the phenomenon known as Involuntary Musical Imagery (INMI) at some point. This mostly harmless form of madness is, in psychological terms, a kind of auditory rumination that’s related to anxiety and depression, which involve the incessant repetition of negative thoughts. Unlike anxiety, earworms don’t always suck. Most people report finding them benign or even pleasurable. (So much so that there are a variety of sites like [YoutubeOnRepeat]( that exist solely to take the effort out of looping songs for free.) Let’s see if we can scratch the itch of the unforgettable song. 🌐 [View this email on the web]( By the digits [1:]( Number of earworms people report experiencing on average in a week [15:]( Percent of people who describe earworms as “disturbing” [15-30:]( Seconds in a typical earworm episode [33:]( Percent of people who find earworms “unpleasant” [92:]( Percent of people who experience at least one earworm per week [3:]( Songs by Lady Gaga in a scientific survey of the top 10 earworm tunes from 2010 to 2013 Giphy Million-dollar question What makes a song sticky? --------------------------------------------------------------- Pop songs aren’t the only type of tunes to intrude, but they do tend to stick more than most. And many pop hits do follow a formula—[as Joe Bennett notes in the Washington Post,]( successful singles tend to stay in one key, are in 4/4 time, are three to five minutes long, organized into chunks of four or eight bars, repeat the chorus two to four times, include the title at least three times, and repeat short melodic bits. Although classical music fans can get a symphonic earworm and TV watchers will get stuck on a show’s theme song, earworms across genres generally share certain qualities. “We found three melodic features to be key in predicting whether a song had been named as an earworm,” [musical psychologist]( Kelly Jakubowski [writes at the Conversation](. 🐛 Earworms are speedy: The songs that tend to get stuck in our heads are typically fast in tempo. In fact, there’s a relationship between movement and “involuntary musical intrusions,” as scholars call them. Researchers have found that many people get earworms when in motion, whether walking, running, or just brushing their teeth. 🐛 Earworms are easy: They have generic melodic shapes, or contours, rather than unique melodies. A common melodic contour, for example, is a rising pattern followed by a falling one (think “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” or Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance”). This simplicity may well make these easy for the brain to remember (even involuntarily). 🐛 Earworms can leap: In contrast to their easy melodic contours, intrusive tunes often have unusual interval patterns—a little something unexpected. Jakubowski posits that this satisfies the brain’s need to find a “Goldilocks level” of complexity. (To say, they’re not rocket science, but a teensy bit tricky.) Brought to you by INFINITI Great things take time. --------------------------------------------------------------- After 20 years of development, INFINITI has delivered the world’s first production-ready variable compression turbocharged engine with the all-new 2019 QX50, designed to give you the on-demand power of a sprinter and the fuel efficiency of a marathon runner.[Learn more about INFINITI’s all-new 2019 QX50]( Quotable “I like it when a song is like a journey, building up along the way. That they start out smaller than they end. Along the trip, you add elements that make the listener less likely to tire. Then, at the end, euphoria.” — [Grammy Award-winning songwriter Max Martin]( on his [formula for an addictive pop song](. Giphy timeline [1876:]( Mark Twain writes a short story about earworms. The narrator of “A Literary Nightmare” is tortured by a musical jingle he first sees in a newspaper. It takes over his brain and incapacitates him until he transmits it to a friend, who suffers the same fate. 1947: Tips for creating especially catchy tunes are revealed in Russian composer Nicolas Slominsky’s book, Thesaurus of Scales and Musical Patterns. 1979: German psychiatrist Cornelius Eckert comes up with a name for intrusive, involuntary musical memory that sticks: Ohrwürmer, or earworms. 1982: Jordan Roseman, a San Francisco mashup artist better known as [DJ Earworm]( is born. 1988: The song “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” by Scottish band The Proclaimers is released. In 2016, it will be named [Britain’s top earworm]( of 500 sticky songs. [2019:]( The Kickstarter-funded party game Earworm will be released. Reuters/Brian Snyder Pop quiz Which is not prescribed as an antidote to an earworm? Doing sudokuChewing gumSinging the British national anthem slowlyGargling with saltwater Correct. To be fair, we're not sure anyone has tested this. Incorrect. Also acceptable: Mentally generating random numbers. Chewing gum seems to help degrade short term memory (!); but these other distractions are also useful, for obvious reasons. If your inbox doesn’t support this quiz, find the solution at bottom of email. Giphy Because science! The study of stickiness --------------------------------------------------------------- Researchers study musical intrusions to better understand the brain. Neuroscientists aren’t searching for the secret to a perfect hook or a universal hit single, though they might alight on these. The mind spends a lot of time wandering, according to Kelly Jakubowski—about [40% of each day]( is devoted to thoughts unrelated to present tasks. Studying sticky songs informs psychologists’ understanding of [involuntary memory]( specifically and the vagaries of cognition more generally, providing insights on perception, emotion, memory, and spontaneous thoughts. Research is exploring whether “earworms might serve any functional purpose in our lives, such as helping us to memorise newly learnt music or regulating our moods throughout the day,” [Jakubowski writes.]( Take me down this👂🐛hole! Here’s just a sampling of the papers published on “Involuntary Musical Imagery (INMI)” in the past few years: - The effect of individual[personality traits]( on the earworm experience - The role of “articulatory motor planning” in experiencing earworms (in other words [why chewing gum is a helpful distraction]( - The relationship [between movement and earworms]( Watch this! Over the last few years, a very specific musical phrase has taken over pop music. What (and why!?) is the millennial whoop? Fun fact! A song interrupted is more likely to become an earworm than a tune played to the end. [Blame it on the Zeigarnik Effect:]( A psychological phenomenon that describes our tendency to recollect an incomplete task more than one that’s done. 🐦 [Tweet this fact]( [Click here for this writer's earworms]( Giphy Poll Do you loop tunes to indulge involuntary musical obsessions? [Click here to vote]( That’s for crazy people.Hair of the dog is the best cure for an earworm.I only obsess over things that will advance my career. The fine print In yesterday’s poll about [electric scooters]( 81% said you haven’t scooted since grade school. Today’s email was written by [Ephrat Livni,]( by [Jessanne Collins]( and produced by [Luiz Romero](. don't get it twisted 🙀Correction section --------------------------------------------------------------- An image we used [earlier this week]( showed DNA molecules twisting to the left. Several astute readers pointed out that it should twist to the right ([only the very rare Z-DNA is left-handed)]( in fact, this is an [all too common mistake](. Our after-the-fact research led us into this great rabbit hole. At the Guardian, [Adam Rutherford writes]( “Once, I procured the rights to use a picture of Cookie Monster on the cover of a magazine, and Sesame Street specifically stipulated that Cookie’s right eye was always higher than the left, so we couldn’t flip his image. Arguably, the correct form of DNA is more important that Cookie’s googly eyes. The exclusively right-hand twist is one of the central pieces of evidence that indicates a single origin of all life on Earth. A mirror version of DNA could perfectly well exist, but it appears that the coin was flipped about 4bn years ago, and every life form since has twisted right… Everyone needs to try a bit harder to avoid this hazard.” We agree! sound off ✏️ [What did you think of today’s email?](mailto:obsession%2Bfeedback@qz.com?cc=&subject=Thoughts%20about%20earworms.%20&body=) 💡 [What should we obsess over next?](mailto:obsession%2Bideas@qz.com?cc=&subject=Obsess%20over%20this%20next.&body=) 🤔 [What have you been obsessed with this week?](mailto:obsession%2Bprompt@qz.com?cc=&subject=%0ATake%20us%20down%20a%20rabbit%20hole.%20&body=) 📬 [Forward this email to a friend](mailto:replace_with_friends_email@qz.com?cc=obsession%2Bforward@qz.com&subject=%F0%9F%91%82%F0%9F%90%9BEarworms%3A%20The%20science%20of%20sticky%20musical%20intrusion&body=Thought%20you%27d%20enjoy.%20%0A%0ARead%20it%20here%20http%3A%2F%2Fqz.com%2Femail%2Fquartz-obsession%2F1274674%2F%0ASign%20up%20for%20the%20newsletter%20at%20http%3A%2F%2Fqz.com%2Fquartz-obsession) The correct answer to the quiz is Gargling with saltwater. Enjoying the Quartz Obsession? [Send this link]( to a friend! If you click a link to an e-commerce site and make a purchase, we may receive a small cut of the revenue, which helps support our ambitious journalism. See [here]( for more information. Not enjoying it? No worries. [Click here]( to unsubscribe. Quartz | 675 Avenue of the Americas, 4th Fl | New York, NY 10011 | United States [Share this email](