It’s all about the music. Great music that you love. The kind of stuff you find yourself humming and moving along to — especially in the morning. Gets you going in the morning, right there with the coffee.
It’s a favorite song. It’s a hit. It’s a classic. It’s the kind of thing you just listened to on your playlist. You’ve heard it everywhere. Yeah, you’ve heard it for years and years and years.
And NOW — just now! — that snappy ditty found its own little happy home in your head! Congrats! Welcome to ... My Little Earworm!
I’m plagued by these things. Alla time. I’m interested in the history of music. I listen to all kinds of music. I was once in a band that played bluegrass and a band that covered old rock hits. I’ve played a lot of this stuff. And it doesn’t go away. I hear a song on the radio and I immediately know where I should be singing the harmony part.
You can wake up at night with these things! The song goes over and over again. Endless repeat. Loop and loop and loop.
“Swee-ee-eet Caroline! ... dah, dah, DAH!
Good times never seemed so good
I’ve been inclined ... dah, dah, DAH!
To believe they never would!”
There’s a crazy science to this. It’s been figured out by the pros. There’s TONS of money here ... write a song that spawns earworms and it lives forever, rolling about in some little corner of your cranium. It’s a perpetual moneymaker. Royalties let the songwriter buy a palace in Spain!
I find myself “Leaving on the Midnight Train to Georgia,” just wondering about that “Hot Child in the City.” It’s “Take on Me,” until I see that “Brown-Eyed Girl.”
How do you shake these things? How do you shake them ... sometimes a song just seems written so it’s an endless loop. There’s no conclusion, just a revert back to the top and again, and there you go. The only good I can see here is that earworms can get you up and moving in the morning. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and Bob Seger is already hard at work rockin’ it in my brain. Sometimes I don’t want Bob Seger in my brain. He’s got other places to be.
There’s a great YouTube video. Native American Indian humor: a traditional medicine man counseling patients having silly modern First World problems. He listens. Then he slaps them and gives them common sense. Stops them flat. It’s pretty funny. So now when I’m facing a plague of earworms, I think of “slapping medicine man.” Just stop it! No really! ... stop it! — SLAP!!!
- Todd Volker lives in Ottawa with his wife and son, and they enjoy reading, kayaking, hiking, tennis and camping. He’s a lifelong learner with books in his hands.