Darn ear worms, and the great songs that surround them.....

[RABid]

I'm taking the ear worm talk from a different perspective. Albums that you really like that contains a song that you try to avoid because it always becomes an ear worm.

 

For me, the album is Dizzy Gillespi - Dizzy's Diamonds - Best of the Verve Years [Disc 1]. This is the big band era disk. Some of my favorite jazz is here. There are three songs at the beginning that may be the best three songs to start out any album ... except ... the inclusion of one horrible song in the middle.

 

1. Prelude (Straight up big band jazz done right. It cannot get any better than this.)

2. 'Bout to Wail (Hey! It just got better.)

4. The Chains (A deep piece about the history of black America.)

 

But at number 3, Umbrella Man. Ugggg. Every time I hear this song it gets stuck in my head, like ALLLLLL day. The fan side of me refuses to delete it out of respect to Dizzy. The mad side of me thinks this is a forced selection from white corporate management and the frivolous junk pretending to be jazz does not belong. So I'm stuck, trying to hit skip before it comes on yet refusing to delete it. I'm such a mental mess at times.

 

So what is the song that drives you crazy and is right in the middle of the best part of one of your favorite albums.

[KuruPrionz]

It's been years since I listened to ABBA's greatest hits and I can still hear the opening male vocals on Take A Chance On Me. I like the song, ultimate bubblegum but flawlessly executed in all respects. Still, it won't go away!!!! 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-crgQGdpZR0

[RABid]

You evil man. Did you post a link hoping we would click on it and catch your ear worm!?!

 

(I always said, the best way to get rid of a bad mood is to give it to someone else.)

[KuruPrionz]

Well, I do love that song, I just get tired of "Take a chan, Take a chan, Take a chan cha cha chance" crawling out of the depths of my brain and going on repeat. 😇

[RABid]

9 hours ago, KuruPrionz said:

Well, I do love that song, I just get tired of "Take a chan, Take a chan, Take a chan cha cha chance"

Makes me think of what could be a great song if it did not set the record for mispronounced words. “With or without chew. With or without chew. I can’t live with or without chew.” Sounds like a smokeless tobacco commercial.

[Anderton]

Here's what intrigues me about ear worms. Why do they sometimes come out of nowhere, with nothing to trigger them? Last night "Disco Inferno" by the Trammps (specifically, the bass line) wormed its way into my head. I cannot for the life of me figure out what triggered it. Nothing at that moment in my life related to anything about the song, the title, the era, the musical form...nothing.

 

Then this morning it was a 1950s pop tune written by Irving Berlin. A couple days ago it was a Jeff Beck riff. Again, there was zero basis I can identify for any of these pieces of music worming their way into my brain.

 

So where did they come from? I know there's a relationship between music and memory. Is it like dreams, where some memory fragment bubbles up from your subconscious? Damned if I know.

[Anderton]

Happened again this morning. About 10 minutes after getting out of bed, "Rock Around the Clock" earwormed its way into my brain. Going back over everything I did and saw in those 10 minutes, I can think of absolutely NOTHING even remotely related to "Rock Around the Clock."

 

I've always thought that music is somehow involved in accessing database memory. If it was possible to find out where unexpected earworms come from, it might help explain the connection between music and memory further. It might also somehow relate to dreams, and how they sometimes bubble up from the subconscious.

[KuruPrionz]

If brains made sense we would already know why. 

I am haunted by various ear worms constantly, they are just suddenly there and suddenly gone. 

 

There are worse afflictions, I'll take it!!! 

[spokenward]

3 hours ago, Anderton said:

Happened again this morning. About 10 minutes after getting out of bed, "Rock Around the Clock"...

Don't underestimate the influence of the lyric. 

 

For me, this morning was Hendrix  "Manic Depression" and that seems just about right.

[Ivan May]

Almost every Heart ballad (namely Alone and These Dreams) tends to pop into my head while shopping at the local Value Village.

[surfergirl]

Emmylou Harris, Pancho and Lefty.

[JohnG11]

My antidote to ear worms is ... another ear worm (at least this one is for me)!

Being a fairly ancient geezer, I returned as a teenager to the UK at the end of '62 (I spent my youth as a colonial Brit in East Africa),

Can you imagine the sudden exposure to bands like the Beatles and Stones and all the others?

So many ear worms they almost drove me cazy. (Some say they did.)

So many songs from the late fifties and early sixties can still be conjured up.

 

It wasn't until '68, or was it '69, when I bought the LP of Switched on Bach by Walter Carlos that I found my ultimate ear worm, the Chorale Prelude "Wachet Auf".

That one used to go round and round and round, but now, whenever I'm haunted by one I want to get rid of, I hum Wachet Auf to myself and in moments the other's gone.

Yea, I know, maybe I did lose my marbles back then.

[Notes_Norton]

I like my earworms. I can hear the entire arrangement, all the nuances, and it's like having a radio playing in my head.

 

They are usually songs I love, and if I get tired of one, I just "change the station".

 

Sometimes they are a little loop of a song, it gets a few lines, and repeats. The first cure is to consciously force the next lyrics out, and if I can't do that, just start another song.

 

Insights and incites by Notes ♫