Earworms. Those dastardly little songs that wriggle into your brain and just won’t leave. They can be beyond annoying.
We’re conducting an unscientific poll: What is the song most likely to get stuck in your head?
Comment below!
Or, better yet, leave us a message. And we just may use your voice in a sound piece.
Call (212) 669-8976. At the beep, tell us about what you think is the stickiest song in the universe. Sing it to us! And tell us why you think it’s so sticky. Is it something about the melody? The lyrics? when do you find it pops up? When you’re at work? Trying to sleep? And please, let us know if you have ANY great tricks to get it OUT of your head.
Oh, and be sure to tell us your name and where you’re from!
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42 Comments
Kylie Minogue - Can’t Get You Out of My Head
I’m not at all musical, and I have to say it rarely happens to me… or when it does, really after a little while it vanishes…
But what doesn’t disappear – is the theme tune to radio shows I’ve worked on. I just started on a new one last week and kept humming the sig tune in the office. A less forgiving bunch would have thought I was brown nosing…
And the themes from the first few shows I works on, nearly five years ago – when I hear one, it roots me to the spot and wells up in my chest. It sounds more familiar than any song I’ve ever hears.
Ask me to hum it now though and not a hope!
Dexy’s Midnight Runners - Come On Eileen
Suzanne Vega = Tom’s Diner
Good King Wenceslas
Fah-na na-na do dooo do doo do
Fah-na na-na do do do do
Fah-na na-na do dooo do doo do-
do do do
do do do do do.
… or any song written/performed by Louis Prima.
“Sometimes behave so strangely… sometimes behave so strangely… sometimes behave so strangely… sometimes behave so strangely… sometimes behave so strangely…”
I blame Abumrad & Krulwich for this!
I agree with Brian — “Sometimes behave so strangely…”
And any Beatles song. Ever. The Beatles have forever changed the landscape of my brain with their melodies.
The song that tends to bang around in my head all day after hearing it is “If I had a Million Dollars” by the Barenaked Ladies.
A cute and catchy song, but a real pain of an earworm!!
One other notable earworm is Bruce Springsteen’s “The River.” I never tire of his songs, except when they become an earworm like this one tends to.
Any camp song ever. I mean isn’t that the point - If you keep ‘em singing, they won’t eat dirt?
to name a few:
”
“99 bottles of beer on the wall”
“Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar”(Ali always did)
“Great green gobbs of greasy grimey gopher guts”
“Nobody likes me, guess I’ll go eat worms”
“This is the song that doesn’t end…”
etc…
The theme song to The Andy Griffith Show.
Especially if you like to whistle…
“Bad boys, bad boys, whachoo gonna doooo? Whatchoo gonna do when dey come for you?”
I despise that song.
When that starts to drive me crazy (which doesn’t take long) I try to whistle “Simple Song” by Bim Skala Bim.
Jingle Bells or We Wish you a Merry Christmas.
My family goes carolling every Xmas Eve. We don’t know very many holiday songs, so these are the ones we usually end up singing — when we realize on Xmas Eve that, again, we forgot to learn a new song. Then these songs are stuck in my head for days.
This year I found a Christmas song in Spanish, with words that were far above my level of conversational Spanish. We could only just-barely sing it, but it wasn’t stuck in my head afterwards! because I couldn’t remember the words! yay!
The most infectious songs I can think of would be “You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)” by Dead or Alive or anything written by ABBA…
Once I get Barbara Ann (Beach Boys) going, it lasts for days. Then I think of another song, and so on. It’s less annoying than commercial radio by all means.
Tony Orlando and Dawn’s “Tie a Yellow Ribbon” - just the mere mention of the song to and it’s in their head all day. I’ve driven more people crazy with this one.
Here is a song that stuck in my brain every time I or someone else sings it: an old Israeli song “Tzena Tzena”. Here is a URL for its performance:
http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2004/01/04/tzena-tzena-an-old-hebrew-chestnut/
My remedy for getting rid of the persistent humming in my brain is to listen to a piece of classical music, such as one by Beethoven or Mozart.
Saul Maayani
Twisted Nerve (Bernard Herrmann) from the Kill Bill vol. 1 sountrack.
At the end of the day (full of whistling if I may add) everyone that I have spent that day with has to go to a psychiatrist
Ales
Rufus Wainwright’s “Oh What a World”
It’s got that theme from Bolero… it’s impossible.
under my umbrella-ella-ella-ella eh eh eh
At work on a trading desk we used to play this game: You had to whistle a song and see if you could get someone else to unkowingly sing or whistle it during the day. There are two songs the CRUSHED all the competition:
Do The Hustle (Van McCoy)
Lowrider (Foghat)
My most memorable earworm experience was when The Decemberists’ “July, July!” ran through my head nonstop the entire time I was taking my ACT. I did rather well in spite of it.
Oh, by far-
Don’t you want me Baby - Human League
A few of us at work had a contest to see how many people we could ‘pass on the song’. For one day, we sang, hummed and whistled, ‘Don’t you want me baby’. In a department of about 100 people, it was quite interesting.
Running to “Rubber Band Man” by Tavares is a high school memory that I cannot expunge. The beat kept me going for miles — especially the doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo part.
Sorry, it was the Spinners! But still an earworm song.
Pirates of the Caribbean - Yo ho, yo ho, a pirates life for me.
Come on Eileen … Dexy’s Midnight Runners.
Also … Midnight Train to Georgia … Gladys and the Pips.
Whooooooooo… lives in a pineapple under the sea….
SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS
By far the catchiest has to be the Muppet “Ma-Na-Ma-Na” song. You just say it and people can’t help but carry on with the tune and its annoying enough to get stuck in your head.
When that Dr.Pepper commercial used it I couldn’t get it out of my head and I probably ended up buying their product just because of that.
I wonder if there is something to nonsensical words.
Surfin’ Bird by The Ramones and Seven Nation Army by The White Stripes have been driving me insane! PLEASE HELP ME!!!
How timely! My wife just announced last night that she has awakened every morning for the last ten years with the Counting Crow’s “Mr. Jones” playing in her head. You would think that we never talk– but I suspect she had become increasingly embarrassed at the brainworm’s tenacity and concerned that I might think she was losing her mind. This morning, she woke up “Mr. Jones”-free… If she stays “clean,” maybe we can chalk it up to some sort of internal anxiety feedback loop…
My musical brainworm always manifests itself when I walk for extended periods of time– the Police’s “Walking on the Moon” or sometimes “Wrapped Around Your Finger.” Both songs were embedded in my subconscious during a 7-month solo backpacking vacation in Europe in the mid-1980s.
Songs most likely to get stuck in my head are the songs that my 4 year old daughter listens to. There’s something about some kids songs that makes them ultra catchy but also ultra annoying if you’re an adult. In particular, the theme song to the kids show Zoboomafoo.
The worst song I have ever had stuck in my head, which got worse and worse for a couple of weeks, is The Magnetic Fields’s “Meaningless”. It isn’t just catchy, it’s judgemental. I would be thinking to myself “hmmm, what kind of yogurt do I want for lunch today” or “I like this brand of pencil” or “Ooh, new ‘Office’ tonight” and it would start up “Meaningless, I guess it’s all been meaningless. Every whisper and caress, yes, yes, yes it was totally meaningless.”
It really depressed me, actually. I felt like my subconcious was judging me.
“Acuna Matta” - From the Lion King
This is probably because of my little sister, Lauren, who watched the videotape repeatedly when she was young. Now anytime someone says “Lion King,” or even the name “Disney,” that song starts playing in my head.
don’t make fun of me for this, but “Cruisin’ around in my 64″ by Eazy E has been in my head for years. Also, around tax season, “Taxman” by the Beatles finds a home in my head for a few months until I cut the check to the IRS.
“I swear” By All for One. It’s particularly insidious to me because I hate the song, yet I know all of the lyrics despite never have listened to it all the way through in one setting. Just hearing the title gets the worm in my head burrowing. In fact it’s playing in my head right now. I think I’m going to volunteer as a water-boarding test subject now.
“It’s a Small World After All” is the most infectious and yet also the most annoying song that exists in my experience.
I tend to wake up with a new different song in my head every day. I don’t even usually notice it’s in my head until I get into the shower. Most times it’s a song from the latest album I’ve been enjoying, but sometimes it’s a song I haven’t heard in a long time. This morning, because of a certain campaign video on youtube, I woke up with the Laverne & Shirley theme in my head.
Definitely”Tomorrow” from the musical Annie. I was in the video store and just picked up the DVD “After Tomorrow” about all the girls who played Annie and I have had not just the song, but many different versions stuck in my head ever since. It’s like a kind of tinnitus. And, all those Annies- do you think they will be hearing that song in their heads forever?
“The Beautiful People” by Marilyn Manson - Repetitive, simplistic and powerful
and …
“O Fortuna” (Carl Orff) performed by just about anyone. Listen once, if you dare >-)
I’m surprised no one has mentioned
What I call the Taunting Tune
(na, na, naa, na, naaaa, na)
Aren’t we all born with that one?
Also any number of over played tv ad jingles… Lately for me it’s “The Limbo Song” …how low can you go…..
The mexican hat dance has been stuck in my head for four years. I whistle it constantly (unconsciously). It drives my friends crazy. They have all attempted to replace it with another tune, but with no luck…