Earworms: Annoying or revolutionary?

In his brilliant satire, “The Supremacy of Uruguay,” E.B. White tells the story of Martin Casablanca, a Uruguayan patriot in New York for a convention who finds himself infected by a snippet of a song that he hears while out walking one night. Struck by the song’s gooey tenacity, Casablanca returns to Montevideo to design what becomes a world-changing invention: a radio-controlled plane with an endlessly looping recording of the snippet he’d heard in Times Square, broadcast at 150,000 times its original volume.

During a period of growing nationalism and authoritarianism (both in the story and in 1933, when White wrote it), the ultimate weapon turns out to be a worldwide earworm.

I came across this gem of a story as I was researching earworms, or what scientists refer to as involuntary musical imagery (INMI). And why have I been pursuing that rather arcane topic? Because for days now, the same song has been seeping into my consciousness through any and every crack in my concentration it can find. “Ventura Highway,” the 1972 hit by America, is the worst earworm I’ve ever experienced. It’s especially surprising given that I haven’t listed to it in years, never owned the record “Homecoming” (America’s second studio album) and ironically, would have described the song as “pleasant but forgettable.”

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Not now. Now I’d describe it as sneaky and relentless — maybe even cocky — invading my mind when I’m walking the dog, dicing garlic, folding laundry — when I’m doing damn near anything besides conversing, reading or watching the grim Scandinavian police procedurals that are my uplifting alternative to the news.

Ventura Highway, in the sunshine

Where the days are longer

The nights are stronger than moonshine

Why have I become possessed by a song about a freeway with its own weather system? How does an aging but still sturdy mind get hijacked by a song?

Despite a surprising amount of (frequently banal) research into this phenomenon, scientists have yet to answer this question. A few studies speculate that “… imagined music might … serve as a mood regulatory mechanism in the absence of an external music source.”

But I don’t buy it — not unless the mood is profound irascibility

Two neuroscientists observe a correlation between earworms and “some of the obsessive-compulsive traits, such as intrusive thoughts.” Brilliant, Sherlock. What is an earworm except an intrusive melody? They found that music majors tend to experience them more often than other mortals. Also shocking. Who would have imagined that people who make and listen to music all day have songs running through their heads?

As you may have gathered, this episode of INMI has made me a tad irritable.

According to a 2016 study by scientists at the University of St. Andrews:

…an earworm must possess five key elements: rhythmic repetition, predictability, surprise, melodic potency, and receptiveness (how the listener feels about the song). The formula is expressed as receptiveness + (predictability-surprise) + (melodic potency) + (rhythmic repetition x1.5) = earworm

I’m no mathematician, but really? Still, based on that goofy equation, these researchers identified the 20 most addictive earworm songs of all time. They include (and skip the rest of this sentence if you are susceptible): Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody," Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing,” Culture Club’s “Karma Chameleon” and Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.” There are many more, depending on which top-20-most-annoying-musical-experiences list you look at, but suffice it to say, Queen (the band, not the late monarch) rules, with three songs in the top 20.

I’m honestly not sure what to do with this information, except perhaps to use one of those tunes to ram “Ventura Highway” out of its spot at the top of my mental chart. Indeed, thinking of other songs is the most frequently recommended cure for an earworm. But would waking up to the silent strains of “Girl from Ipanema” really be any better?

It might be. It could well be an improvement over the torrent of terrible news with which I typically start my day.

But I won’t get the chance to find out, because today, “Ventura Highway” has been replaced by “A Horse with No Name,” yet another classic by America. Despite its grammatically tortured lyrics and its endless La, La, La La, La, this new tune has persisted with the same ruthlessness as its predecessor.

In E.B. White’s story, the weaponized earworm is stunningly effective:

In forty-eight hours the peoples were hopelessly mad, ravaged by an ineradicable noise, ears shattered, minds unseated. … No one could hear anything except the noise in his own head.

And now it strikes me: The fact that “Ventura Highway” and “Horse with No Name” were both sung by the band America may be coincidence, but I choose to consider it a metaphor.

These tunes in my head are my attempt to reconfigure the noise in my head — the perpetual breaking news and viral videos and threats and conspiracies and outrages darting through every social media channel — the frenzied refrains that are now the sound of America. They don’t help me avoid the chaos and suffering outside my head, but they do bring new mental and emotional muscles to bear on the task of coping, of persevering. Those essential earworm ingredients like rhythm, repetition and — best of all — surprise, are proof that my brain can break out of the doomscrolling loop, even if just to enter another kind of loop for a while. 

Maybe that study I dismissed was right. Maybe these songs are a “mood regulatory mechanism” for me, a desperately needed reminder that songs can drown out lies, that music will outfox those who seek to infiltrate our minds with false dangers.

Now I just need my subconscious to pick better tunes. To coax it along, I think I’ll go listen to “A Change is Gonna Come.”