JAD ABUMRAD: Hey, everyone. Jad here. This is Radiolab, the podcast. And today's subject is earworms. Earworms like what we did in season four for the pop music show. You may remember that. Well, we did a larger thing about people who have, like, really, really bad earworms. But we all have songs that get stuck in our heads, so what we did was we put a message onto the blog asking you to call us up on our voicemail, leave us a message saying what are your stickiest songs? And more importantly, how do you—when they get stuck, how do you unstick them? What are your techniques for getting them out? And we got great responses, so we thought on this little podcast we would put forward some of those responses. The world's stickiest songs as defined by you, our panel of experts, and some very, very clever solutions for how to unstick them.

[LISTENER: My earworm song is "Rocketman." I find that when I'm walking down the street, the speed that I walk at matches the tempo of the song. So it's like step, step, step. [singing] And I think it's gonna be a long, long time." You know, when I'm walking down a crowded street or sitting on the subway or something, it just kind of pops in there as a way to think that, well, I'm here, but I'm not really here because I'm a rocket man!]

[LISTENER: [singing] It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, everywhere you go.]

[LISTENER: [singing] Hit me, baby one more time.]

[LISTENER: I think the world's stickiest song is "Don't Stop Believin'" by Journey. Maybe I'll sing it for you. [singing] A singer in a smoky room, the smell of wine and cheap perfume. For a time, they can share the night—it goes on and on and on and on. Strangers waiting ...]

JAD: You know, an interesting aside is that a lot of the people who called us up and sang on the voicemail actually sang exactly on pitch. And the music wasn't there in the background, so there seems to be some kind of, you know, perfect pitch out there in the world when it comes to earworms. In any case, how to get them out. That's what we really want to talk about right now, earworm removal techniques. I'm gonna present to you three of the ones that you presented to us. The first one, which was by far the most commonly suggested, was to simply replace the song, find some other song that's louder, funkier, somethinger, and stick it in your ear holes.

[LISTENER: I guess it's just a good way to try to force whatever you had in your head out.]

[LISTENER: Hello, Radiolab. This is Andrew in San Francisco. And I don't have a particular earworm to call out, but I do have a tried and true earworm neutralizer, which is James Brown's "Sex Machine."]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, "Sex Machine" - James Brown]

[LISTENER: I don't know if it's because you have to really concentrate to get the lyrics and melody outside of all of the grunts and hoo ha's or what, but it works for everyone I know.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, "Sex Machine" - James Brown]

[LISTENER: I will go to the Inspector Gadget theme from the original cartoon. The do do do do do do do. And then of course, The Doors. Do do do do do do do do do. Nice little catchy bass line.]

[TATIANA HERNANDEZ: It really was another sound that ended up getting it fully out of my head.]

JAD: That is Tatiana Hernandez. She told us this story.

[TATIANA HERNANDEZ: So our meditation group is sitting, beginning our practice, our meditation for that evening, and suddenly this song just pops into my mind out of nowhere. ["Umbrella" - Rihanna] Just the Ella's. And that's what kept repeating in my head. And it's on repeat, basically. And then the gong goes off. It's very deep, it resonates. And it really did the trick.]

[LISTENER: My trick is to remember a song that leads to no other song. In my case, it's from the Akira original soundtrack. It's a track called "Tetsuo," and it uses polyrhythms, non-traditional scales, and it's put together in such a way that it leads to no other song. And once you get a song stuck in your head that leads to no other song, when it's over, I finally have no tune in my head and I can get on with everything else.]

JAD: That was technique number one. Now onto technique number two. And this one was a little counterintuitive. Rather than replace the song, this approach was to embrace the song.

[LISTENER: I'll listen to it over and over again.]

[LISTENER: Right. So about a week ago, I could not get "Land of Confusion" by Genesis out of my head. I ended up sort of dissecting the song and learning it, and remembering every part of it so that I could pick it apart and sort of say, "Well, that bit's really clichéd." Like the refrain. "So long ago I held your hand. The stars were shining." And stuff like that. And then I sort of went further and I listened to the rest of the song in detail. But when you actually learn the whole song, you can just play through it. Your sort of memory is finished and you can move up. At least that's my theory.]

JAD: Pretty good theory. But there's a different way to do it. And here is technique number three, which is my favorite.

[LISTENER: I sing the song and then at a certain note, it doesn't much matter which one, I hold the note. In musical terms, it's called a fermata. As long as I can keep concentrating on that note, the music will effectively stop at that note. So that way the song is gone. Well, the song I had stuck in my head recently was "Alone Again, Naturally" by Gilbert O'Sullivan. That will go like. "And when she passed away I cried and cried all day ..." And then I can't hold the note anymore with my breath. But in my mind I can hold it longer.]

JAD: Definitely think he's onto something there. Now, if none of those three techniques work for you, here is one last thing you can try.

[LISTENER: Hi, this is Dave from Seattle, and I've found the best way to get rid of a song in your head is to give it to somebody else. Walk up to an unsuspecting friend, family member, coworker, and just start singing it, and then that'll put it in their head and somehow it gets it out of yours.]

JAD: And that does it for our earworm removal suggestions from you guys. Thank you to everybody who left us a message, took the time to talk to us on the phone. Thanks also to Lulu Miller, Jessica Benko, Anna Boyko Wearock, Linda Everts and Rob Christiansen. Our website is Radiolab.org. You can get more information on earworms or anything you've ever heard on Radiolab at that address. Radiolab.org. We are supported by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Science foundation, and the Sloan Foundation. I'm Jad Abumrad. Thanks for listening.

 

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