In a lighter vein, I started thinking about earworms earlier tonite when that incredastupid new commercial for Celebrex that lasts FOREVER was on.
You know the one I mean.
This youtube is my own personal earworm that bubbles up to torment me every few months since right around 1973. I know, amazing I can still tie my shoelaces.
WARNING: VIDEO BELOW IS AN EARWORM
Earworm, a loan translation of the German Ohrwurm, is a term for a song stuck in one's head. Use of the English translation was popularised by James Kellaris, a professor of marketing at the University of Cincinnati. His studies appeared to demonstrate that different people have varying susceptibilities to earworms, but that almost everybody has been afflicted with one at some time or another.
Earworms may be songs or tunes that become stuck in the phonological loop, the part of the brain that rehearses verbal information in Baddeley's model of working memory. This usually happens when a person sings the song or hums the tune once and then repeats it in his or her mind.
Synonyms for earworms include "Last Song Syndrome", "repetuneitis", or in extreme degree "melodymania". A "repetune" is a song or other musical piece stuck in one's head.
Medications that are used to treat Obsessive-compulsive disorder or anxiety can alleviate the symptoms of earworms.
So what songs stick with you..... forever?
posted by Paddy @ 9:02 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Hmmm, sometimes that "Billy Don't Be A Hero" torments me too....
Remember Ellen DeGeneres' routine about lying awake in the middle of the night? Hers was "Buyyyyy Mennen!"
And then, in a separate stand-up, it was the commercial to stop "urgency": "Gotta go, gotta go, gotta go right now,
Gotta go, gotta go, gotta go."
Those were pretty contagious.
Why is it, after all this time, the one song that pops in my head, without fail, in a middle of a meeting is Andy Kim's " Rock Me Gently".
That, and the insipid " Seasons In The Sun"- I hate both with a passion usually saved for G-Dub, but they never seem that far from my lips when the music starts...
I feel unclean.
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