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Songs
Why Do Songs Get Stuck in Your Head?
Here’s the science behind why you can’t stop humming “Stuck In The Middle With You” - and some potential cures!
Let me first apologize for getting that song stuck in your head. You should know that I was impaled upon that sword as well, now it’s ringin’ away inside my head. It’s always the intro that gets me. I’m going to grab a piece of gum and later on, I will tell you why.
First, let’s discuss the science.
There isn’t a whole lot known about this phenomenon, but I was inspired to figure it out after a particularly catchy bit of song literally kept me from sleeping one night recently. I found a few studies that shed a bit of light on how the music we love sometimes tortures us with repetition.
A fragment of a song stuck in your head is called Involuntary Musical Imagery, or INMI. Scientists also refer to this as an “earworm.” One study shows that things like singing along, tapping, or humming (called overt motorinvolvement) can induce INMI far more frequently than passive listening (listening to music you aren’t really paying much attention to) or imagining the rest of the song when it ceases to play.
