Sunday e-mail 1st June: Stuck song syndrome

Earworms; music; titles; the law

Jun 01, 2025

That song. You know - that one. They play it in some shop somewhere and next thing you know, you’re stuck with it all day. Yeah, that one…and the others like it. Certain songs have the ability to follow you around, invade your thoughts, distract you when you’re supposed to be working, keep you from sleep…

Well, I may be exaggerating…but not by much. Some people suffer from what are technically called ‘musical obsessions’. There are only about 100 such unfortunate souls in the world, as far as we know, but the scale of their suffering is out of all proportion to their numbers. Musical obsession brings a hammer to a person’s quality of life. One woman (a qualified psychologist as it happens) reported episodes of ‘musical fragments such as the chorus lines or portions of known or unknown songs by various artists’,[i] which invaded her thoughts for an average of one to two weeks at a time. She couldn’t read, converse, or even sleep. Take your or my experience of of stuck songs and multiply it by a thousand… Sounds nightmarish, doesn’t it? I’m tempted to add ‘especially if you don’t like the song in question’, but, honestly, how long would you continue to like any song under those circumstances?

Like you, I’m sure I’ve had a tiny taste of this myself. A friend (back in the days when you did these things) bought me the CD I Love You, Honeybear by Father John Misty. Good tunes, indeed, but I could play the CD only once. One of the Father’s songs, called ‘The Night Josh Tillman Came to our Apt.’ could not find the exit door from my head. It racketed around, bouncing off walls, ceilings, floors, and furniture but it could not get out. I thought it might never go. It was the only time in my life I have ever appreciated what it might be like to feel one’s sanity slipping.

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Earworms – that’s the name you and I are more likely to give to the phenomenon that specialists, more prosaic that you or me, like to call ‘stuck song syndrome’.

What makes for an earworm, exactly? You will not be surprised to learn that psychologists have asked exactly that…

At least one specialist has argued that there’s really nothing special about earworms at all. What makes them interesting is our own ‘visceral negative reaction’.[ii] In other words, while plenty of stuff does get stuck in the grooves of our brain, we only notice, or are disturbed by, it when it originates in disco or country music.

I’m not so sure, are you? I don’t get bits of poetry, or conversations, traffic-noises or bird-song, trapped in my head: Only music. Music, which, it seems, has certain identifiable qualities:

The song has to be ‘catchy’. That seems obvious. It’s more or less what ‘catchy’ means. Less obvious is what we mean by the word. Simplicity and repetitiveness seem to be important.

So too does ease of singing. Earworms tend to be songs that even the untrained masses like you or me can sing along to (whether our friends, family or flatmates agree that we can is a separate matter, outside the scope of this newsletter).

Earworms tend to have lyrics. The most-maddening, most easily-contagious pieces of music are rarely instrumentals.

Earworms tend to have high tempo. Slow songs seem, for whatever reason, to be less sticky.

Earworms tend not to be too radical in form. They tend towards familiar melodic structures, ones we can recognise and predict, but with perhaps some uncommon interval patterns.

Earworms like to creep in when the mind wanders. Psychologists speak about ‘low cognitive load’. Try to keep your mind occupied. Not too occupied, though. High cognitive load is equally dangerous. No surprise, stress is often a factor.

Want to avoid earworms? You want medium cognitive load, complex musical entertainment with a slow rhythm, and no lyrics, not ever.[iii]

And what’s my excuse for telling you all this? Only that this Wednesday’s newsletter has a title that’s going to have you humming all afternoon. Make sure to pass the time with co-workers, bureaucrats, in-laws, or anyone else you want to irritate. We’ll be looking at the law, why we have it, and what Psychology has to tell us. We’ll answer some questions you may never have thought to ask.

Want to know that maddening title? You’ll have to wait till Wednesday, Crime & Psychology fan! The newsletter is and remains free, but if you’d like to buy me a coffee, please feel at complete liberty to do so.

Remember, if you enjoy Crime & Psychology, please share and subscribe. Tell one other person about the Substack!

This week’s bullet list features five of the most earwormy pieces in recent history. Click the links if you dare, but don’t blame me if you’re still humming when the next Sunday e-mail comes along. I take no responsibility:

Perhaps the most ubiquitous earworm ever produced – ever - is this one. This song has every attribute on the earworm list.

Many people would put Disney’s unbelievably-irritating song, It’s a Small, Small World, not only at the top of their list of earworms, but at the bottom of their list of cultural artifacts to save in the event of a nuclear holocaust.

One chap on Spotify has this song by 4 Non-Blondes as the number one earworm and, be honest, you can hear where he’s coming from.

Any list of earworms is practically guaranteed to contain at least one theme song. It’s practically what theme songs are for. Here’s the one that does it for me (and gets right on my wife’s nerves): Hong Kong Phooey. Just be glad I didn’t pick the Banana Splits.

Finally, if you want to try the Father John Misty song I mentioned above, here is a link: The Night Josh Tillman Came To Our Apt. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Sunday e-mail 1st June: Stuck song syndrome

Earworms; music; titles; the law

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