We’ve all experienced an earworm at some point in our lives. A catchy tune that buries its way into your head and remains there until you’re begging for mercy.
If you’re lucky, the earworm is a good tune. Four years ago, scientists named Queen’s ‘We Will Rock You’ as the most addictive earworm. If you’re unlucky, the earworm will be something like ‘Baby Shark’. Good luck encouraging that horror show to swim out of your head.
In 2016, a report published by the American Psychological Association (APA) found that a song is more likely to become an earworm if it ‘had achieved greater success and more recent runs in the U.K. music charts’.
In case you were wondering, there is an official term for an earworm. It’s Involuntary Musical Imagery (INMI). Not quite as catchy as earworm, is it?
The early bird
Which brings me on to the point of this section of IDGOM (I DON’T GET OUT MUCH). Every day, I wake up to a different earworm. It’s not an instant thing – it takes a while for my brain to find the right frequency, Kenneth.
But by the time I’ve crept downstairs, wiping the sleep from my eyes, it’s there. Not in my head. Oh no, I have what can only be described as ‘Earworm Tourettes’. To borrow a phrase from two bearded chaps from Sweden, all I want is to sing it out loud.
You know what they say about a problem shared? I hope that by sharing my daily earworm on IDGOM, I can vanquish the Lumbricus terrestris from my head and leave it clear to face the day in peace.
Either that or I’ll hear from fellow sufferers and this will become a sanctuary for those troubled by our tuneful tickle sticks.
To kick things off, I’ll demonstrate the randomness of my daily earworm by recalling a period in my life when the morning song was repeated EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.
That song was ‘Americanos’ by Holly Johnson. I didn’t like it when it was released in 1989, so why did it raise its irksome head so many years later?
It took me a while to work it out, but it was linked to the simple act of making an instant coffee using Kenco Millicano. That was it. My twisted brain linked ‘Americanos’ with ’Millicano’, which meant that ‘blue jeans and chinos’ were the second, third, fourth and fifth words I uttered every day for many months.
Fortunately, I’ve moved on from the misery of instant coffee, so Holly Johnson no longer forms part of my morning routine. Not that I can Relax, because there’s always another earworm waiting in the wings.
Here, stick this song in your head. You can thank me later.