I learned a new phrase today. On the way to school this morning, I was, as usual, listening to Morning Edition on my local NPR station. They had a segment on ‘earworms.’ All I could think of was some Star Trek or other sci-fi movie or TV show where the bad guys tortured a good guy by putting some kind of beetle or worm into his ear that would slowly and painfully drive the good guy to madness by eating his brain.
Well, it wasn’t anything so dramatic but I was on the right track.
An earworm is basically a tune that gets into your head and stays there.
The report this morning focused it as a nuisance that drives you crazy, because you simply cannot get it out of your head. An example they used was a lady who visited her niece who she adored and was the shining light in her life. The young lady listened incessantly to her favorite song Baby Shark Doo Doo Doo. It became an earworm to the aunt, and it drove her crazy as she couldn’t get rid of it.
The segment on NPR this morning focused on earworms as a negative. Heck, the very name, earworm, and the image it conjured in my head is testimony that it is negative. The report this morning even presented The Earworm Eraser that is a medley of cacophonous bits of melodies. Per the liner notes in YouTube, “The track features a series of audio patterns and rhythmic structures that are carefully designed to break the loop of the song in the listener's mind.” The science is based on the work of Dr. Kelly Jakubowski a music psychologist at Durham University in the UK.
I have had songs stuck in head all my life. Sure, sometimes they were commercial jingles or TV show themes. I have only referred to it “a song stuck in my head.” It was never a negative. I loved music. Each song stuck in my head would go away probably because it was replaced by another. They weren’t negatives. I loved them
As a kid, I had lots of earworms. One example is when I had the Batman TV show Theme in my head for a week or so. It was nowhere near being a favorite song of mine but like so many earworms, per the NPR segment, it was rhythmic and catchy. It stuck and didn’t really bother me at all. It stuck in my head until another song got stuck in my head.
I love music. I love it when songs I love get stuck in my head. I want to call them anything but earworms. I want to call them earbutterflies, ear dolphins, or eargazelles, basically something very positive, very graceful, and most welcome. These eargazelles are, in a way, a soundtrack to my life. They are welcome, not disdained. It is how I learn music. The tunes get stuck in my head from over listening and over practicing the pieces.
Here are a few examples.
· In May of 2017 as part of the Middle Eastern Music Ensemble of the University of Chicago we performed a song, Ahbabna Ya Ein, sung by Farid Al-Atrash. That entire summer, including a teaching appointment in China, I could not get this catchy tune out of my head.
· About ten years ago, this Armenian folk song, Al Aloukhus, was stuck in my head for months.
· Ever since I first heard these songs, they have been eargazelles that have been stuck in my head numerous times for varying periods of time.
o Offering by Ara Dinkjian
o Uşaklı Kız – my favorite version
o Hars em Gnum – Zulal version
o Konyali- Κόνιαλης – Dilek Koç
· And, lastly, to show that my eargazelles are not limited to Middle Eastern music, I present:
o Both Sides Now – Joni Mitchell
o Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright – Bob Dylan
o Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) – Green Day
o California Dreamin’ – The Mamas & The Papas
These are but a fraction of the eargazelles I have been blessed with over time… earworms indeed!
