The song in my head... 46 years and still going strong!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Had I had enough sense and foreknowledge to save the date, I would know… to the day… I entered puberty.

Regardless, it was sometime between September 1978 - March 1979. I turn on Atlanta’s channel 17 (in a few years this would become cable’s TBS) and the old Incredible Hulk cartoon begins.

(male voices)
Doc Bruce Banner
Pelted by Gamma Rays
Turned into The Hulk
(then a female comes in, in a much higher pitch)
Ain’t He Unglamo-Rays!

And thus it began. My brain began to repeat this…

Doc Bruce Banner
Pelted by Gamma Rays
Turned into The Hulk
Ain’t He Unglamo-Rays!

Looping over… and over… and over… for, I’m sure, at least two weeks.

Couldn’t stop it. I tried other songs. I tried immersion. I tried singing along with it. I tried crying in frustration. I tried convincing myself that I’m not going crazy, but none of it…

Doc Bruce Banner
Pelted by Gamma Rays
Turned into The Hulk
Ain’t He Unglamo-Rays!

… fucking stopped the loop. (And it was that last line, about “unglamo-rays” (which some lyric sites have as “unglamourous”, which also works, but I don’t care enough to research it in full), that got me. It was that jump in pitch (he says from experience).)

It eventually died down, only to be replaced by another (not so irritating song)… and another… and another…

… for 46 years now.

I call it “the music track”, the constant song that plays in my head whenever I’m doing anything that doesn’t require my 100% concentration. Sometimes up to a half-hour may pass without the music track on, but it’s never off for long.

(Currently, it’s an old favorite - Mozart’s 22nd piano concerto, mvt 1 - which means it’s calm now.)

Most of the time, I ignore it. Or hum along.

My musical tastes have been shaped by this - God forbid I get something ugly (like heavy metal) stuck in my head, that would be simply horrible. Lots of classical (Mozart, Bach), lots of easy listening pop, tons of Tin Pan Ally standards, Broadway (and movie) tunes, stuff like that. I mean, if it’s stuck in my head, it might as well be pleasant to ‘listen’ to.

After a while, I never gave it much thought. It just was. You learn to deal, and that’s that. I don’t even think I mentioned it here, and as some of you know, I talk very openly about my life.

But… the reason I bring this up now was because I was at the doctor’s a few days ago and when she asked me how I was (I’m typically in excellent health), I mentioned something about “Doing fine. Last week was a bit rough as I had Gaga playing constantly in my head, lol, but it’s now faded and Mozart’s back on the music track.”

(And it was Gaga - Paparazzi was playing in the HEB, and then I heard Poker Face, and that was it. Worst it has been in a while.)

She looked at me.

“What?”
“Oh, I’m just joking. I have a song always playing in my head, since the age of 12 or so, and last week it was some very persistent Gaga motifs. But it’s OK now.”
“It stopped?”
“No, it went back to the typical Mozart or Bach piece.”
“Wait, are you serious? This has been happening since the age of 12?”
“Uhhh… yeah?”

So she starts talking about this, and I’m getting a bit irritated at her persistence:

Associated with hearing loss? Uh, only if I’m very gradually losing my hearing for the past 4+ decades.
Schizophrenia? I’m not hearing voices, just music.
Auditory Hallucinations? No, I’m quite aware that the music isn’t being heard, it’s just in my head. You know, on the music track. If you want to call that an AH, go ahead, but by my current understanding of the words, that’s not what’s happening.

So now she wants me to get tested and I frankly just wish I had shut my damned mouth.

Anyway, that’s my mundane and pointless story I wanted to share. Anyone else deal with this situation (‘persistent music in your head’, not ‘unwanted advice from doctors’ :wink: )?

2

What causes the music track to change?

3

You’re just weird :blush:

In the best sense. You tell doc I said so.

It aint easy being green.

4

I’ve noticed that when I get an earworm, it tends to stay in my head for years. Fortunately, I don’t usually hear it during the day. It’s at night, when I get up to go to the toilets. I’ll be there doing my business and then it’ll pop up, always the same part, to boot.

For over a year, it’s been Terence Trent D’Arby’s Wishing Well. Especially the instrumental bit right after the chorus, for example at 1:03 in the video.

5

All sorts of triggers. Was thinking of Inna while in the shower and then one of her favorite songs… Muse’s Endlessly… started playing.

Other times it’s other songs, like the Bruce Springsteen “Born To Run”/Manferd Mann “Blinded By the Light” duet I had going on yesterday. Heard them while at the gym, and there you go.

My brain does have a rotation of favorites, though:

Mozart: 20th piano concerto, 3rd movement. The 1st movement of the 24th pc (as mentioned above). Sinfonia Concertante in E-Flat Minor (aka @K364), 1st movement. Fleetwood Mac’s Silver Springs. Off the Record as sung by James Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy (and the entire Little Johnny Jones sequence as well). Instrumental selections from the Beauty and the Beast soundtrack.

There are more in the rotation, of course. As to why these songs and not others, ¯_(ツ)_/¯

ETA: Well, one thing that ties a lot (but not all) of this together, is a sudden shift in pitch. For example, the Off the Record piece has a piccolo which is much higher in register (if I didn’t use that word correctly, don’t kill me) than the rest of the instruments. Shifts in tempo can trigger it too - that’s my issue with Poker Face.

6

I have this too. Always have. Mine changes at random: I’ll wake up with a new one. I don’t have any metal fillings and don’t THINK the NSA is interested in me, but I still call it “the radio in my head”.

7

Ironically, I’ve sometimes had this song in my head.

8

I have occasional earworm and dislike it. It hadn’t occurred to me that it could be much worse. Yikes. I see from the internet that the diagnosis is INMI: Involuntary musical imagery. Band name, I guess.

Wow, there’s been a fair amount of study devoted to the phenomenon: there’s even an Involuntary Musical Imagery Scale (IMIS). One citation dates from 1953 (Earworms (stuck song syndrome): Towards a natural history of intrusive thoughts). This article gives 44 people with INMI an MRI:

Tunes stuck in your brain: The frequency and affective evaluation of involuntary musical imagery correlate with cortical structure - ScienceDirect.

9

I sometimes get songs in my head that’ll last the better part of the day… Until I put more music on. So my advice is to make one big giant playlist of every song you’ve ever liked, and put it on random shuffle whenever you realize you’ve got a song in your head you don’t want there anymore.

10

I don’t have inner dialogue, I have inner music. Currently Beethoven’s 5th piano concerto, but it could be anything from rock, jazz, classical, reggae, etc. There’s nothing wrong with that. As far as I can tell, having a virtual DJ in your head is absolutely normal, and that doctor either is shockingly ignorant or mistook your meaning. IU mean, the word earworm is widespread for a reason.

When a track gets dulled by too much repetition, I recommend singing “Hey Jude” by the Beatles as a mental melodic palate cleanser that should reset your playlist.

11

I’ve heard of people getting hiccups for years-- years-long earworms sound almost as bad.

My wife had an earworm cure she shared when I first met her-- start singing or just listen in your head to the song ‘Luka’ by Suzanne Vega. It actually seemed to work-- no idea why, but it seems to be a song that can supplant earworms without being catchy enough to become an earworm on its own.

If the theme song for the old ‘Hulk’ cartoon became such an earworm for the OP, I hope they never heard the ‘Spider-Man’ cartoon theme song of the same era. I think that became an earworm of mine for a few years there, off and on. Do not click this link if you are earworm-prone!

12

Ever since I figured out the ‘unglamorous’ part the Hulk song has been lodged somewhere in my brain. It’s not at the surface all the time but hearing similar tunes brings it out. Those tunes probably don’t sound that similar to most people but I suffer from stannum otitis.

Most don’t realize that song was originally intended for the Ironman show:

♫ Ironman! Ironman! Does whatever an iron can.
Presses clothes - nice and flat
Drives from the rough - just like that
Watch out! Here comes the Ironman! ♫

13

Haha, nice :clap:

14

Yeah, as long as you aren’t actually hearing music, I think you’re good.

I wake up with new songs in my head every morning. It’s usually something ridiculous, like a track off of Big Willie Style or a terrible Christian rap song from the 90s. I’ve found a way to use this creatively, though. When I work on puzzles, I sometimes get solutions to my writing problems, and the solutions come from earworms that show up when my brain is idle. It’s like there’s something about the song, the tone, the meaning, something about it unlocks whatever I’m struggling with in my story. Usually those songs are not dumb songs, but they are occasionally like, “Why this? Why now?” They are usually not songs I’ve ever had in heavy rotation at any point in my life.

I never really get an answer, but it works.

Creative work is every bit as mysterious to me now as it was thirty years ago.

15

After seeing The Simpsons Movie, I had Homer’s version stuck in my head for a while.

Spider-Pig, Spider-Pig
Does whatever a Spider-Pig does.
Can he swing from a web?
No he can’t; he’s a pig.