Earworms and the message hidden within the pattern
Yes, this title is a small nod to the excellent Netflix series “Arcane”, but that’s not what this post is about.
Today, I want to share some thoughts about earworms, a term that originated in German (“Ohrwurm”) and was later adopted into English as a literal translation. The meaning behind this rather abstract term is catchy tunes—sticky music, as Wikipedia calls it. This phenomenon often occurs unpredictably, especially when our thoughts drift away from the present moment.
While many of my blog-post ideas strike on train rides, while lying in bed, or when I’m simply reflecting on life, the inspiration for this post literally hit me whilst showering, as the good old shower thoughts are intended to be. The reason – as you might be able to guess from the topic – was an earworm about a melody where I could have sworn that I haven’t heard it for a long time, like 4–5 weeks.
And this always seems to be the confusing parts about earworms: Nobody really knows who decides when to play. Is it the brain hitting “play” when it’s a little numb? You know what I mean, those moments when you don’t really know what you are currently thinking and you don’t have to think about what to think, you are just enjoying the moment. There is another Austrian idiom for this exact scenario: “ins Narrenkastl schauen”, which means something like to stare into space. And I think that exactly those absent-minded moments are the origin and reason why earworms happen.
But this still leaves the question: Who decides what to play in someone’s head when it happens? Like who is the DJ? From my own experience I have noticed a repeating pattern, especially if you have just been listening to music in the last half of an hour. My brain at least, likes to repeat parts of the penultimate song heard, in other words the song, which was played before the last song. This theory works even better if the last song was paused in the middle or just not perfectly at the end of it.
The exact reason for that is completely unknown to me, but if I had to guess, I would say that the rhythms of the completed song (the penultimate one) are still ringing somewhere in your mind since the song itself was maybe one of those “I-just-fade-out-my-volume-to-end-me”-songs, which is not my favourite type of ending to music, but it encourages the brain to go on.
At least that’s what I think. I would be very interested if you have experienced similar patterns, so feel free to write your own blog post about it or just share this one with friends so you can discuss it with them!