Earworms: Somebody, please, get ABBA out of my head
And while Fultz's job may not sound like it's dangerous, there is one very real occupational hazard: earworms.
The insidious infection drills its way into your skull and causes normally sound-minded people to hum uncontrollably. At its most advanced stages, victims have been known to sing aloud and even belt out show tunes.
For Fultz, who spent two weeks within earshot of ABBA tunes, earworms were inevitable.
"The title song is the one that has most been stuck, because ever since (the show was announced), I've been singing that to everybody, and they all hate me for it," Fultz says. "But today, I've been singing 'Take a Chance on Me'; 'Knowing Me, Knowing You' and 'Dancing Queen,' of course."
Don't worry, earworms are not as yucky as they sound.
The term was coined by James Kellaris, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Cincinnati, to describe the phenomenon of songs getting stuck in people's heads. Kellaris was so fascinated by it, in fact, that he did a study and became a niche expert on the subject.
Kellaris, in an e-mail interview, set out to explain this melody malady. And when I mentioned "Mamma Mia!," it got him going a little bit.
"Oh, thanks! Now that I have 'Dancing Queen' stuck in my head, I certainly hope it's not a message from my subconscious mind," Kellaris wrote. "ABBA tunes are notoriously sticky because they're simple, repetitive, 'catchy,' and have enjoyed high exposure levels over a period of many years."
Some earworms have obvious triggers. "Mamma Mia!" is one; so is that song that was playing while you were on hold, or that one playing at Starbucks, or that last one you heard before switching off the radio. Often, it's not even a song you like.
"That's the funny thing about earworms — there is an element of randomness," Kellaris writes. "Sometimes we can point to the source of an earworm episode ... but often they seem to come out of nowhere. Some people believe that those 'left field' earworms are our subconscious trying to tell us something (witness the atheist who was plagued by hymn tunes!). But when the message is 'doo-wah doo-wah doo-wah ditty,' one must question the significance."
On the radio
Great. Now the Ad-Libs' "The Boy From New York City" is stuck in my head.
Earworms can strike just about anyone, but if you work at a radio station, "it's a huge job hazard," says Alex Valentine, music director of Top 40 station KRBV-FM. "Because the songs that are highest in earworms are the songs that are probably most disliked by the rest of the staff. So I'll be walking around whistling or singing some new song that's just got everybody around here crazy. Because when you're this close to it, you listen to the station for such a long time that these songs get embedded."
As a Top 40 guy, Valentine has to seek out songs that have this effect — hook-laden songs with immediate listener appeal. And he knows that what we hear first thing in the morning can have the biggest effect.
"That's the worst part, when you wake up to some wacky pop song and you can't get it out of your head all day," Valentine says. "Sometimes it's good, when it's a good song."
When it's not a good song, it can be especially irritating. Yet, Kellaris says, we are somehow programmed to let that kind of stuff in.
"Negatively valenced information is generally more salient and accessible in memory," Kellaris says, in his best science-speak. "Additionally, earworms are often songs that we liked initially. They go sour when we are overexposed with excessive airplay."
Musicians struggle with the earworm, too. Gary McGrath, a Fort Worth-based musician and songwriter, says it happens to him constantly.
"It's usually the last song I hear on the radio ... that I sing along with, which can be anything from a real song to a jingle to the logo for whatever radio station it might be. From a songwriter's point of view, you try to get stuff that'll stick in people's heads so that they'll always want to hear it and they'll remember it."
Simply irresistible
In the '80s, the eternal search for sticky hooks led to sampling — electronically borrowing snippets of other songs and applying them to your own. At first, it was pretty much a rap practice (although rock musicians have been borrowing chords pretty much since the beginning of rock), but it has spread into other parts of pop music. It's hard to ignore Beyoncé's R&B hit "Crazy in Love," for instance, when it comes roaring at you with a horn sample from the Chi-Lites' "Are You My Woman?" It's also hard to remove that sample from your brain.
Advertisers have taken advantage of the earworm as well, applying pop songs to their products — sometimes in a straightforward manner (the Who's "Happy Jack" being used to hype Hummers), sometimes in more of a parody (Devo's "Whip It" re-written to sell Swiffers).
Not that advertising jingle-writers can't come up with earworms of their own. Kellaris lists Kit-Kat's "Gimme a break, gimme a break, break me off a piece of that Kit-Kat bar" among his all-time earworms. McGrath cites the Meow Mix jingle.
"People tend to get simple, not complex, material stuck in their heads," Kellaris says. "Familiarity has the effect of making complex material seem simpler. Hence, opera buffs will get entire arias stuck, while the rest of us are stuck with 'aweemo-way, aweemo-way.' " (That's a reference to the Tokens' "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," No. 1 on Kellaris' earworm hit parade.)
What's the cure for this? Kellaris suggests listening to or singing the song in question, but as any of us who have been humming "Mamma Mia, here I go again, my-my, how can I forget you" for the past couple of weeks know, there isn't an easy solution. Sometimes, the song just has to fade away. Sometimes it never does.
Some people, like Bass Hall's Fultz, kind of enjoy the earworm effect.
"When Huey Lewis was coming, myself and another co-worker knew we were going to see the show, so songs were just stuck in our heads," Fultz says, citing Lewis' "Heart of Rock 'n' Roll" and "This Is It" as examples. "We had Huey Lewis stuck in our heads for probably four days after the concert, and then it was like, 'Oh, I can't get this out of my head!' "
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