What’s The Song In Your Head? About Earworms

It’s Thursday morning and I’ve just asked my Twitter followers and Facebook friends what their earworms are at this moment. Here’s the list so far:

Harry Styles, “Watermelon Sugar”
Old Dominion’s recently released Country hit, “I Was on a Boat That Day” (from two people)
Marshmello & Jonas Brothers, “Leave Before You Love Me”
Maroon 5, “Beautiful Mistakes”
AJR, “Way Less Sad”
Jay & the Americans, “Come a Little Bit Closer” (“I have no idea why”)
Apocalypta & Corey Taylor, “I’m Not Jesus” (“I have no idea why”)
Corina, “Temptation” (“I haven’t heard it for months”)
Andrew Gold, “Thank You For Being a Friend” (it’s lodged in the reader’s head as “The Golden Girls” theme song; somebody else responded “joke’s on you, it was already there and has been there since 1992”)
Kenny Loggins, “I Believe In Love” (‘70s soft rock that’s there without any help from TV, unless this person watched “A Star Is Born” recently)
Nilsson, “Me and My Arrow” (“which is odd as I haven’t heard that song in years,” but I’ve heard it on “American Top 40” reruns in recent months)
Muppets, “Mah-Na, Mah-Na”
Backyardigans, “Into the Thick of It” (“TikTok’s fault”)
Little Simz, “Venom” (“also thanks to TikTok”)
A TikTok video based on “S**t” from “Inside Bo Burnham”
Walker Hayes, “Fancy Like” (another viral phenomenon still lingering with Country Insider’s Brian Mansfield, who wrote a column on it a few days ago)
Bella Poarch, “Build A B*tch”
DaBaby/Roddy Ricch, “Rockstar”
Ting Tings, “That’s Not My Name” (“weird, but it popped up on my Apple Music this morning)
Joe Jackson, “Steppin’ Out”
Foo Fighters, “Walk”
Rolling Stones, “It’s Only Rock and Roll” (“yes, I’m old”)
Bad Company, “Can’t Get Enough”
Bob Dylan, “A Hard Rain is Gonna Fall” (“I was listening to Dylan a lot yesterday”)
Elton John, “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” (“a lot of Elton John talk lately”)
Billy Joel, “Big Shot” (actually the respondent’s last week earworm, prompted by “Halston” on Netflix)
Hayley Williams, “Pure Love”
Bananarama, “I Heard a Rumour”
Shakatak, “Night Birds” (early ‘80s jazz/disco)
World Party, “Is It Like Today”
Simply Red, “Money’s Too Tight To Mention”
Japanese Breakfast, “Be Sweet”
Barns Courtney, “You and I” (“it lives in my head rent free”)
Milo Manheim & Meg Donnelly, “Someday” (from Disney’s “Zombies”)
Annita, “Girl From Rio”
Regard f/Troye Sivan & Tate McRae, “You”
Dua Lipa, “Love Again”
Dua Lipa, “Levitating” (“it has been there for months now”)
“The Skyrizi jingle.”

I also got one “nope, too embarrassed to admit it.” Also, “I like you too much to mention it because nobody needs this POS song in their head.”

Of the earworms that people were willing to share, only a few fit the common perception of a song that’s somehow goofy or risible. There are some very Triple-A earworms in that list above, and it’s interesting that those generally come from friends with that sort of music supervisor/musicologist good taste. Maybe people just aren’t admitting that they’re really thinking of “U Can’t Touch This.” But morning radio legend Gene “Bean” Baxter, whose tastes are as broad as mine, is thinking of ‘70s disco nugget “Foxy Lady” by Crown Heights Affair this morning, which is a different kind of equally good taste.

My earworms usually need about 18 hours to take hold. If I listen to the ‘70s rerun of “American Top 40” on Saturday afternoon, maybe a song will be lingering with me that evening. But this morning, it’s been Doja Cat & SZA, “Kiss Me More,” which happened to be on the last radio station I was monitoring. With 16,000 songs in my phone and countless others in the ether, it’s weird for me to default to a recent hit, although many readers did. We’re all pretty much decided at this point that “Kiss Me More” is a consensus hit, but it does bode well for that song in its home stretch on the Top 40 chart.

As somebody who’s been involved in the testing of musical hooks for nearly 20 years, you come to realize that radio is in the business of trying to create earworms. It’s that much more surprising that Dua Lipa’s “Levitating,” having taken up permanent residence in America’s head at the moment, had any problem gaining traction. Maybe there were too many hooks. I’m told most people tested the beginning of the chorus, but I’m defaulting to the “yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah” at the end.

Besides the recent hits and Classic Rock mainstays, there is the usual presence of recent or vintage advertising jingles, TV themes, and other ephemera. Not surprisingly, TikTok figured in a lot of recent examples. As some labels start to emphasize streaming over airplay, and as they begin to seed and water TikTok, it’s actually a pretty good example of how the earworm has become standalone currency in the music business. A rights owner can make money with just 30 seconds of a song; if it happens to be 30 seconds that take hold for a radio listener, so much the better. But it’s not a requirement.

If, like most Ross On Radio readers, you have mental access to a lot of songs, you might flit from one to the other. Charlie Mitchell writes that “at this very second, it’s Blink-182’s ‘What’s My Age Again,’ having heard about Mark Hoppus’ cancer diagnosis and posting about it.” But five minutes before, he was thinking about Tracy Lawrence’s debut “Sticks and Stones” and discussions with other Country programmers who incredibly thought it was “too pop” at the time.

Earworms are not really a problem. They are the happiest, friendliest version of obsessive thought that anybody can experience. After 16 months of world crises, it’s safe to say that most readers are familiar with the other sorts. Talking about earworms are a positive way for people to delve into the workings of their own thought process, and an acceptable vehicle for sharing it with others. Like any other internal dialogue, the best strategy for an earworm is to have a song at the ready that you’d rather think about. It’s not always that easy. I’ve been writing for 90 minutes and “Kiss Me More” hasn’t really gone everywhere. But I’ll leave you with this one.