Has there ever been any research into why we wake up with certain songs in our heads? I wake up with a different song every morning. Here was today’s:
Dunno why. Haven’t played it in years.
by John Cole| 65 Comments
This post is in: Music
Has there ever been any research into why we wake up with certain songs in our heads? I wake up with a different song every morning. Here was today’s:
Dunno why. Haven’t played it in years.
Comments are closed.
Corner Stone
Not “Trojans in my head” by Atlas Genius?
Xecky Gilchrist
I wouldn’t have figured you for a Howard Jones fan, JC.
I have been since ’84. Salt Lake City is full of fans, and he comes here fairly often.
Alison
I don’t usually wake up with songs in my head, but what I want to know is how we get songs stuck in our heads that we haven’t even heard in forever. I swear, the other day, out of nowhere I found myself humming a song I probably have not heard a note of in like, ten years. Nothing reminded me of it, it just started bouncing around in my head.
Brains are weird things.
ranchandsyrup
I have no idea. But for the past couple of days it has been the Cars for me. Touch and Go on Sunday and Moving in Stereo today.
BonerBonus was that I woke up today thinking about Phoebe Cates in a red bikini.Raven
Earworms: Why That Song Gets Stuck In Your Head
“It’s an interesting everyday phenomenon. It happens to at least 90 percent of people once a week, [they] get a tune stuck in their head. And it’s a very effortless form of memory, so we’re not even trying, and this music comes into our head and repeats. And it’s very often very veridical, meaning it’s a very good representation of the original tune that we’re remembering.”
BGinCHI
What’s worse is when the song in your head is so loud it wakes you up.
That’s what the Old 97s song “504” has been doing to me for a week.
Thanks assholes.
gnomedad
Do you have a clock radio?
Peter
No one is to blame for Earworms.
Fluke bucket
Damn good song. I awaken to a different song every day. Lots of times I hear songs in my head I have never heard before and sometimes I can hear music others cannot hear. I have learned to live with it.
Dream On
That’s weird. I have the Fall’s “A Lot of Wind” going through my head. I wonder why that is…
General Stuck
There are certain songs I like that if I listen just once it will be playing in head for days. Here is one of those, I am linking to, but will not listen even though it’s a cool song.
JenJen
That song always made me kind of sad, right before I flipped the cassette tape over to hear “Careless Whisper” by Wham.
Lojasmo
Jesus, I don’t know. I usually get up at about 4 AM to release the processed ale, and I ALWAYS have some stupid fucking song stuck in my head that refuses to leave as I try to fall asleep. It drives me NUTS.
nastybrutishntall
Synchronicity: heard Howard Jones “What is love” played twice in stores this past week, after having not heard it in years. Though it’s always somewhere in the iBrain, ready to play at a moment’s notice.
Bob In Portland
The worst was the time when The Cowsills “The Rain, The Park, And Other Things” battled with Donovan’s “Hurdy Gurdy Man” for control of my mind.
ulee
I believe this was the song that was playing over the closing credits of Secret Window.
CatHairEverywhere
AUGHHH!! Earworm!!
Karmus
I have no answers, but I love this song.
Fluke bucket
@Bob In Portland: LOL!
PeakVT
Water entering the tunnel formerly known as Brooklyn-Battery.
Keith
I usually wake up to whatever was playing in my car when I turned it off. It can be 12 hours later, but that song will still be in my head where I left off.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Something to make you smile in these tense times.
A message from the greatest generation.
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
When all else fails, concentrate on the song that drives all others out of your head:
It’s a small world after all
It’s a small world after all…
Corner Stone
@Lojasmo: You should get checked for diabetes.
Corner Stone
@Lojasmo: You should get checked for diabetes.
Corner Stone
Randy Moss just ate the lunch of all the Cardinals’ secondary.
Corner Stone
Randy Moss just ate the lunch of all the Cardinals’ secondary.
Yutsano
@Tara the Antisocial Social Worker: I flip that into Japanese. Works like a charm to wash it out.
Corner Stone
God damn you WP. Stop making me look like an incompetent Omnes.
The prophet Nostradumbass
For some mysterious reason I’ve had the Pogues’ “The Sick Bed of Cuchulainn” stuck in my head for a couple of days.
ulee
@Corner Stone: Tomorrow morning I’ll wake up singing,”You should, you should, you should get checked-for diabetes.”
cckids
@Tara the Antisocial Social Worker:
No! Anything but that!
h/t Scar from the Lion King
Corner Stone
@ulee: Lojizzy probably doesn’t want to hear it but waking up at 4 or 4:30am is a classic sign of blood sugar crashing.
Wag
@Tara the Antisocial Social Worker:
Go fuck yourself. Now I have to live with that song for a week. I might need to break out the antidote, Ray of Gob. I’ll link in a few minutes.
Ruthless
@JC: Excellent choice. Was listening to that at work today.
Tom Q
@Tara the Antisocial Social Worker: When that song was first featured, at the Pepsi Cola pavillion at the 1964-5 NY Worlds Fair, you took a fake boat ride through as it played (maybe it’s the same at the theme parks; I’ve never gone on the ride there). Anyway, when my cousins took the ride, the boats somehow got jammed, and they were stuck listening to the song for close to an hour. People have been turned into serial killers by less.
Warren Terra
BBC Radio 4 aired a half-hour documentary on this very subject a week ago, which they’ve made available for streaming audio for the indefinite future (usually they only leave things up for a week; I was surprised this one was still available legally).
ulee
@Corner Stone: Getting up and peeing at 4am is a classic sign of having a full bladder.
Corner Stone
@ulee: Most adults can sleep through a night.
But, hey, not making a diagnoses. I just play Dr in dark closets.
Lavocat
Yes, it means you have stage 4 inoperable brain cancer. Howard Jones is abundant confirmation of the obvious.
psycholinguist
I study memory for a living, so I feel obligated to blather something. I peeked at some of the articles referenced above, so I’ll fill in with more general characteristics of memory that may be in play here. First, long term memory is essentially permanent, so a song heard frequently for a time, particularly a meaningful one, is basically there for the duration, until you start literately loosing your mind. Secondly, songs are meaningful – that’s why they end up in LTM in the first place, and I would guess that also means that you have a lot of other memories associated with that song – people who you enjoyed the song with, contexts in which you heard the song, etc. Those associated, linked experiences will then serve as cues. Thinking of or re-experiencing one of those contexts primes the song, and bam, that song is now active and available to you. I’m really fascinated by the reports on here that it tends to be a morning thing. Here’s my hypothesis on that – Attention/working memory isn’t yet fully awake, it is groggy along with you in the morning, and we do know that under lower attentional control memory perseveration is more likely to happen. Add to that the particular characteristics of music (each note primes the next, you get in this loop thing) and there’s your Duuum, dum – dum wonder as we wander, no one is to blame. That actually sounds like a pretty cool study – thanks BJers!
ulee
@Corner Stone: Lojasmo said he/she was “releasing the processed ale.” Maybe Lo is peeing, or “releasing” the ale from a bottle of of ale from the fridge, or perhaps Lo has diabetes.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Tara the Antisocial Social Worker: You’re a horrible, horrible person for that.
I heard an apocryphal story of some dude who dropped acid at Disneyland and got stuck on that ride. The story goes that they had to take him out in an ambulance.
master c
That song says college to me. Hojo not a fave, but that song was on a mixtape that also had New Order, PIL, TinTin, Book of Love, the Rave Ups, The Call, and Big Audio Dynamite to name a few. Ended up hearing “No One is to Blame” it so many times cuz of that tape
Wag
As promised. Here’s the Small World antidote
Origuy
@ulee: If you regularly have to pee in the middle of the night, an enlarged prostate is another possibility. Assuming that you have a prostate, that is.
Corner Stone
@ulee: Give. I fucking give.
I couldn’t give two fucks less than a shit why anyone here pees at 4:00am.
Fuck all of you.
ulee
@efgoldman: Lojasmo did not say he was getting up multiple times to pee. Just 4am. He drinks, he goes to bed, then gets up to pee. I don’t diagnose a swollen prostate or diabetes. I diagnose someone who is getting up to pee because they’ve been drinking. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a cat to dissect.
ulee
@Corner Stone: Corner Stone. I’m drinking Heineken right now. If I get up to pee at 4am I’m going to think of you. This ain’t over.
suzanne
This week, it’s been “No Scrubs” by TLC. Damn.
Corner Stone
@ulee:
The fuck it isn’t. You wake up at 4 and start urinating you better be thinking of someone else.
Now, if you wake at 4am and hear organ music and can’t go back to sleep because you’re organizing work assignments for different projects and just generally feel like shit then you can think of me.
But not if it’s piss related! Fuck you!
Mark H
I wake up with a song in my head every morning. Sometimes it’s a song I like, sometimes it’s one I hate. It might be one I heard recently, or one I haven’t heard in a long time.
Best thing is that a few years ago I found a specific song that can clear my mind of a song that I don’t want playing in an endless loop in my mind, Dire Straits “Tunnel of Love.” I just play that in my mind for a little while and I’m good to go.
Mr Furious
The Phil Collins drum track on the HoJo song makes it a worthwhile earworm.
Radio One
I think the answer is pretty simple: what song latches on depends entirely on your mood. My own particular earworm for the past couple of weeks has been Dusty Springfield, so obviously I’ve been in a good and hopeful mood.
the Conster
Walking on a Dream was in the movie Hall Pass which I slept through on TV until this song came on, then had to back up to Shazam to figure out what it was, and now it’s been in my head for over a month. I don’t mind.
FlipYrWhig
If you suddenly think of something visual, would that be an “eyeworm”? Or if you suddenly think of a flavor, is that a “tongueworm”?
Tony the Wonderhorse
You are a lucky bastard.
Music is a universal language, dreams come from the collective unconscious, this is the universe trying to talk to you
I have never been more serious, however, skepticism is certainly reasonable. Disbelief, however, since you are not omniscient, is not. Science is about performing experiments, so I suggest this one:
Keep a diary. Write the song down. At the end of the day, see if there was ever an opportunity to apply its message.
If 90% of the time the answer is “yes,” count yourself lucky to be in communication with wherever-the-hell-we-come-from :-)
Kathleen
@JenJen: I love this song and all things Wham.
Schlemizel
@Tara the Antisocial Social Worker:
I have the antidote for ‘small world’, same tune better lyrics:
It’s a world of acne, a world of germs.
It’s your brand new dog coming down with worms.
It’s the notes being played
By a cockroach parade,
It’s the real world after all.
It’s a world of ulcers, a world of cysts.
It’s the hole in the road that you never miss.
It’s the cheap underwear
Creeping up to your hair,
It’s the real world after all.
It’s the real world after all,
It’s the real world after all,
It’s the real world after all,
It’s the real world after all.
It’s a world of hunger, a world of sin.
It’s a million products to keep you thin.
It’s machinery exhaust
Causing air to be lost.
It’s the real world after all.
It’s a world of stark mediocrity,
It’s a world of mindless activity.
It’s the little white lie
Inside Mom’s apple pie,
It’s the real world after all.
It’s the real world after all,
Cold hard steel world after all,
Slimy eel world after all,
Well, it’s the real world after all.
It’s a world that’s black and a world that’s blue,
And you must duck logic to get you through.
It’s the sudden attack
Of a knife in your back,
It’s the real world after all.
It’s the real world after all,
Spinning wheel world after all,
Cold hard steel world after all,
Well, it’s the real world after all.
Murphoney
Musak is to blame.
You hear it in the store without listening and it comes back to slap you upside the head while your defenses are down.
I’ve actually heard that song in a store within the past 2 weeks.
HydroCabron
Has there ever been any research into why blog owners believe that I give a shit about their goddamned music videos?
Shit, Cole: I like this place and all, but it’s getting goddamned Atrios-like in my RSS feed.
To borrow your tone from your anger at some readers during the saturation coverage of the NFL replacement-ref issue, I’d just like to say one thing: Why don’t you put these music videos up your ass?
Matt McIrvin
They played I Am The Walrus on the radio just now and it finally knocked that damn Gangnam Style out of my brain.
Bill E Pilgrim
@FlipYrWhig: If the song you think of is one you only have on a old cassette, is that called a tapeworm?
Bonus thing that this thread made me think of.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Radio One: Mine are actually often word plays, or even just straight associations. For example dealing with some particularly arrogant, self-centered person and afterwards I find myself humming some melody, hmm, hmm hmmm, doo doo doo da doo doo doo, da dum dum.. and thinking what the hell is this song? Then getting it, and thinking why am I humming some old 70s Carly Simon song?? And only last realizing ah, “you’re so vain”.
Chris
You know, this usually never happens to me. I get songs stuck in my head, but usually it’s because I’ve heard them on the radio or been playing them a lot lately, or someone’s referenced them or something. The whole “waking up with a song in your head with no reason for being there,” I can’t remember the last time that’s happened to me.
Until this morning, when I woke up with the theme song of “Tales From The Crypt” stuck in my head. No idea how it got there. I never even watched the show. But it’s been stuck there ever since.
I blame this thread, somehow.