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Not especially often. Couple times a month, maybe.
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Often the same songs, sometimes the same part of the same song. Most common line is “… cold and lonely in the deep dark night, I can see paradise by the dashboard light.”
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Usually cured by a distraction, such as a phone call.
Finally finished. Anyway, I have filed my criticisms in a display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying “Beware of The Leopard”. You may review them at your leisure.
- How frequently are you afflicted by the phenomenon of songs being stuck in your head, a.k.a. “earworms?” (Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Yearly, Longer, or Never)
Daily
- What three songs, tunes, jingles, or melodies have most recently (say, within the last year) been stuck in your head as an earworm?
Instrumental solo from Bastards on Parade - Dropkick Murphys
The intro to the T.V. Show “The IT Crowd”.
The jingle from Robot Chicken’s “The Game Of Life”
- What strategies have you successfully used to rid yourself of earworms?
Listening to something else. When I have earworms it seems the result of part of my brain being restless (or at least it feels that way).
If its a song, sometimes ill try to hum it in my head and when I get to a point where I don’t know the lyrics I start trying to remember the lyrics and it distracts me for a little while.
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Monthly (to use one of the choices provided, but more like every few months.)
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I have a small, but steadfast, rotation. The three most common are:
The Gambler, by Kenny Rogers
Feliz Navidad, by José Feliciano
and the Oscar Mayer jingle, the "My bologna has a first name … " one
- They go away by themselves in a few hours.
The weirdest part to me is that I’m not very musical (I’m tone deaf) and usually can’t “hear” a song in my head if I try to think of it. Yet, once in a while I still get these ear worms! It’s the same bunch of songs since when I was a kid, never a newer song.
1.) Daily. Usually more than one in any given day.
2.) In the morning it’s usually something that I was listening to late last night. They’re in my head as soon as I wake up.
If I’m too late on hitting the mute button, any commercial jingle might get wedged into my brain.
3.) In the case of the morning ones I don’t do anything. Partly because they’re songs I like anyway and partly because I know they’ll go away as soon as I start listening to something else.
In the case of commercial jingles I scare them out. I just play some scary music and the jingles high tail it outta there. The Free Credit Report dot com jingle doesn’t want to be anywhere near Manowar’s Hail and Kill or Disturbed’s Indestructible.
I know I get them, but I can’t think of any right now. Does a dull wooshing sound count? Hoa about tinnitus?
Anyway, my mom told me the best way to get a song out of your head is to relax your jaw. I don’t know if that’s 100% accurate or not, but she was a gym teacher and they know things.
- Daily
- Tainted Love (so much so that the mention of it has me…bop bop run away I’ve got to bop bop get away…argh!)
The Ode to Joy.
It’s a Small World
Other songs on stupid pop raidio at work. Recently Guy Sebastian’s newest one “Hey oh do you like it like that? I’m the only one who can love you like that…” GAH GAH GAH! STOP
- Tears and tantrums when nothing else works.
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Episodes about once per week, but an episode can last hours, with each song or snippet running through my head for an hour or so…
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No particular group of songs stands out as commonly-occurring. The only theme is that it’s usually a song I’m either (a) not too fond of/hate; or (b) only know one or two lines of lyrics from.
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I try to get rid of them by listening to other catchy music I like, but sometimes I just get hour after hour of the strangest songs…
One of my oldest friends and I torment one another by trying to “implant” earworms into one another’s heads. It started when the friend learned how much I hated a certain song, so he learned the guitar and vocal parts, called me at work, and serenaded me with James Blunt’s “Beatiful!” (Gag!) He also randomly calls me to sing a variety of FreeCreditReport.com jingles. Therefore, I feel perfectly justified in posting annoying songs on his Facebook feed just before he leaves for work… Feelings, Afternoon Delight, Wildfire, It’s a Small World… All’s fair in this battle!
There may be a tenuous connection between the frequency of earworms and tinnitus, but tinnitus itself does not exactly qualify as an earworm.
- Daily. Several times a day.
- I don’t know why, but the number one song that pops unprovoked into my mind is “If I Only Had a Brain” from The Wizard of Oz. I swear I am not making this up. It’s like my subconscious is trying to tell me something.
- Kind of like Cartman, I find that the best cure for an earworm is to finish the song. That is, usually I’ll get just a few bars of a song stuck in my head. If I finish the thing, there’s some kind of resolution and I can move on.
The other solution is to get another song stuck in my head intentionally. But that’s just swallowing a spider to catch the fly.
I inexplicably forgot to mention The Safety Dance by Men Without Hats.
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Daily. More like a brain screensaver though - it only comes on when nothing else requiring much thought is happening.
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Some tune I though up myself sticks in my head the most. Across the Universe - Beatles. Charlie and Lola tune - because I hear it every .bloody .morning. Recently - Taumattawakatuni…etc (NZ town name) - if that counts. And many other depending on what I have heard recently.
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Occupy my self with something else.
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Monthly, on average. But it happens in waves.
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Could be anything. Some things, like Magical Trevor, are more apt to become earworms.
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I usually just go with the flow, letting them run in the background while I go about things. Sometimes, though, I get a song caught in my head and I don’t know the words. It’s irritating because it will just replay the small bits that I know, making it more than normally repetative.
If that happens and it keeps going for more than a couple of days, I set out to learn the words and oversaturate myself with the song. I’ll find the lyrics. I’ll play it and sing it over and over. It usually still takes a couple of days for it to fade away, but it feels much better to at least be experiencing the whole song.
The last one that caught me like that was the ending song from the game Portal.
I’m in line with a lot of the others here: I get earworms ALL THE TIME. Couldn’t list 'em because it’s a fairly constant thing with me, and I do often get a couple of songs battling it out in my brain.
Sometimes, listening to the song - the actual song, on an iPod or whatever instead of inside my own head - will help dislodge it. Risky, because sometimes that cements it more.
I once got the “Star Spangled Banner” stuck in my head. Thought very seriously about eliminating it from my head by shooting at it.
At least weekly, maybe more often, but not daily.
Songs: I just called to say I love you.
Theme from “The Love Boat”
Ditto “Gilligans Island”
My Coworkers torment each other with the most likely songs to stick, so they can actually reinfect each other by singing ONE LINE of a previously offending tune.
Never have found anything that works but time and distraction by other things…like WORKING instead of playing around!
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I ALWAYS have a song going on in my head. I listen to a variety of music, but the earworms are not always predictable. Sometimes, it’s something that I cannot stand.
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Right now, it’s Pretty Wings by Maxwell. Recently I’ve been listening primarily to hip-hop, and songs by Drake, Lil Wayne and Kanye have been taking turns. The more annoying ones that I’ve had are: Popular from the play Wicked and this and terrible Ramones cover in a local cable ad.
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I don’t do anything actively. They just replace themselves.
could be daily if exposed.
Yummy Yummy Yummy I have love in my tummy.
Theme to Airwolf.
slinky commercial.
don’t listen to crap. the musical composition techniques that cause that are used in advertising, top 40 and children’s music and tv themes. that is actually a preventative and not a cure.
listen to some really long nonrepetative music like a jam band or maybe classical. probably best if something you don’t usually listen to or maybe don’t like.
AAAAAAAAgh. Damn, I have to stop reading this thread.
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- Daily. I typically have one every morning when I wake up.
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- Champagne Supernova (Oasis), Love Rears Its Ugly Head (Living Color), Willin’ (Little Feat)
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- Typically, I just let it die a natural death. Failing that, I sing Fly Like an Eagle by the Steve Miller Band. Never fails to wipe out a particularly nasty infection.
[QUOTE=Una Persson
- How frequently are you afflicted by the phenomenon of songs being stuck in your head, a.k.a. “earworms?” (Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Yearly, Longer, or Never)
If the answer to Question 1 is “Longer” or “Never”, then you can skip the next questions.
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What three songs, tunes, jingles, or melodies have most recently (say, within the last year) been stuck in your head as an earworm? If you have more than three, feel free to list them. If possible, please name the artists.
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What strategies have you successfully used to rid yourself of earworms?[/QUOTE]
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It varies, but in the past year or so, I’d say I get them about twice a month. They last for a few days to a week sometimes.
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I can’t think of the songs themselves, but most of the time it’s a song I like by my favorite band, Def Leppard. I have an earworm right now that started about 20 minutes ago and it’s “You Belong With Me” by Tayor Swift. I can’t figure out why. It’s possible that it’s a song that was on the radio on my way home yesterday and it got interrupted…
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If the earworm song is either a song I like, or was caused by the song being interrupted when I was listening to it, listening to, or singing, the song in it’s entirety will make it go away. That’s not a hard and fast rule, though.
If it’s a song I hate, it’s hard to get rid of it. I have to let it go away on it’s own. It will always come back when I’m not focused on something else.
Sometimes one song will go away and be replaced almost immediately with a new song. It’s like my brain is trying to be a radio or something! 
Lacunae Matata, the best revenge earworm song in the world is the theme to the** Andy Griffith Show**. A friend and I in high school got a fair amount of the population of our school whistling it and they didn’t know why! It was hysterical to see teachers walking down the hall whisting the tune, then stopping and shaking their heads wondering why they were doing it! 