Let’s talk about earworms. You know what earworms are, right? If not, let me sum it up for you:
Earworms are those little fragments of a song (sometimes just irritating theme music from bad telly programming) that get stuck in your head, seemingly on a never-ending loop. No matter HOW HARD you try, you can’t seem to shake it. Like right now, I’ve got that annoying song, ‘Shake it off’ in my head, just because I said ‘shake it’ in the previous sentence. See how easily they can be triggered? Yeah, I know you get it. I see that look in your eyes, that look that says, ‘Oh, yeah, I getcha, girl. I am right there with you!’


So, I got to thinking recently about earworms and how they work. No one really seems to definitively know, from what I’ve found in my research. There are several theories about it, but given how precious little we know about the human brain as a whole, well, it honestly comes as no surprise that there’s no definitive answer to why earworms happen, just that the tiniest thing like a phrase or a person’s voice or inflection when speaking can trigger such. It’s wildly frustrating!
I digress.
So, now, modern human minds are prone to such a thing, right, but… I wondered one day when I was out for a walk and battling a frustrating earworm from out of the blue of the theme song for ‘Brady Bunch’ and ‘Three’s Company’ trying to do a deranged mash-up from hell that I could not escape at all no matter how hard I tried: What about people from the old Medieval times? No, I’m not referring to the amazing restaurant franchise (which if you haven’t been, you should totally go sometime!), I’m speaking, specifically, about Shakespeare’s day. I’m completely serious. I wonder if the old Bard himself had earworms he couldn’t shake. I wonder if people when the first instruments were being forged and designed, how did they get rid of theirs if they even had them? Hmm.
I have to ask, though, what are the most frustrating earworms you’ve ever faced down? What’s your secret for getting rid of them? Do you watch telly, do you listen to other music completely unrelated to the genre bugging you? Sound off in the comments below, I’m curious!
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