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Tai Asks Why

Season 2 – How does a song get stuck in your head?

VOICE: This is a CBC podcast.

TAI: Mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm. Okay, guys, I have something I need to tell you. There's a song that's creeped into my head and it's been there for like two weeks now and it's really starting to bug me. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Now I don't want to burden you with this infectious disease, but it rhymes with guess ba tea bo. guess ba tea bo I'll just be doing my normal thing. I'll be walking to school, walking back from school, having a shower and it comes on.

[Despacito plays]

TAI: I don't know why, but just whatever I do, it'll just randomly appear, despite the fact I'm strongly against. I know I'm not the only one that gets songs stuck in my head because, well, I hit up the type o types online and I saw that 92 percent of people get songs stuck in their head at least once a week.

[Music continues]

TAI: Scientists are calling it involuntary musical imagery. But of course, other people just call them earworms, you know, cause they burrow in and they're just stuck there no matter how hard to try to get them out. And thanks to this song in my head, guess ba teto, I've got a whole lot of questions following like why are some songs catchy than others? Is this just a new thing that's faced in to society. How do you get earworms and especially how do you get them out?

[Tai Theme Song]

TAI: I'm Tai this is my podcast, Tai Asks Why. There are just so many good questions out there that you really just want to get answered like, why is space so dark? What are animals say to each other? What is déjà vu? What is the science of bullying? When the dinosaurs died, how did other animals survive? And most importantly, how does a song get stuck in your head?

ZOE: Sometimes I find myself like humming something unconsciously in the back of my head. And it's some weird song that I haven't heard in a million years and I have no clue where it comes from. It's really weird.

TAI: Oh, good. My friend Zoe knows exactly what I'm talking about she's always good about that. I figured I'd ask around see what everyone else thinks about these annoying brain borrowers. So everybody was the last song that got stuck in your heads.

PIPER: Like any Billy Eilish song, any.

KADEN: Recently I got this song by Billy Eilish called Bad Guy stuck in my head and I really don't like the song at all, but it's just like all over the radio and I found myself humming it. I'm like, no, no, stop.

[Bad Guy plays]

TAI: Zoey?

ZOE: Baby Shark.

TAI: No. Please don't.

[Baby Shark plays]

TAI: Let's get that back in everybody else's heads. You spent the past year and. You're addic - no. I wonder about musicians themselves. Do they get them worse? But also, you know, they're the ones making them in the first place so maybe they don't get them at all. I decided to crash the studio of CBC's q and ask the host with the most. Tom Power wooh.

TOM POWER: I was thinking about it and I as as a musician but also as like a really big fan of music. I feel like every day a different song gets stuck in my head. But one that keeps coming up is it's a weird one. It's, you know, Love Will Keep Us Together by the Captain and Tennille. Love. Love will keep us together.

TAI: Mhmm. That's kind of catchy and much better than the song that shall not be named despacito. And guess what guys? While I was in the cue studios, I also got the chance to ask platinum-selling musician Lisa Loeb what her earworm is. I'm pretty sure I crashed an interview.

LISA LOEB: Hey Tai. One song that always gets stuck in my head is I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor. The song I think it's stuck in my head because mainly the melody. Doo doo doo doo doo I would fall apart. That song's gonna be stuck in my head for the rest of the day. I will survive

[I Will Survive plays]

TAI: So it turns out there are scientists who study these earworms. I wonder if they get songs stuck in their head to.

TAI: Ioanna, what is your earworm?

IOANNA FILLIPPIDI: Oh, we have an earworm that my husband and I have been passing on to each other for about two years now. It's by British songwriter Kate Bush.

[Music].

IOANNA FILLIPPIDI: And it's called Withering Heights. And it's really annoying.

TAI: This is Dr. Ioanna Fillippidi. She's a music psychologist who's been studying earworms for seven years, but earworms themselves have been around for a lot longer than that.

IOANNA FILLIPPIDI: We have reports of music being stuck in people's head as early as Mark Twain in 1876, and Edgar Allan Poe has also mentioned it and supposedly Tsykovsky complained about a tune that he had in his head and he could not sleep when he was a toddler.

TAI: You guys remember how Lisa Lowe got the melody of stuck in her head? Well, apparently that happens a lot more often with people who are musically trained.

IOANNA FILLIPPIDI: People that have no musical training, they don't have the memory capacity to remember it. So musicians usually have instrumental music in their head, whereas non-musicians have music with lyrics because that's what they listen to.

TAI: So it happens to musicians. It happens to Mark Twain. It happens to music researchers. So why? Why do we get songs stuck in our head? Why is this so universal?

IOANNA FILLIPPIDI: Earworms are musical thoughts. So at their core, their thoughts like any other thought. But you also have the extra level of association and triggers that might elicit the music in your head. My hypothesis is that however you use music, you're going to have it in your head afterwards. So for example, if you're doing the dishes and you always listen to music when you're doing the dishes, then you might have music in your head when you were doing the dishes just because your mind has associated the two activities. But the problem is that the mind makes associations all the time. So you might be always listening to music when you're doing the dishes, but you might always listen to music when you're sad. So if you're doing the dishes and you're sad, then we don't know which one will overlap the other. So it's a conditioning hypothesis. If you ever heard of Pavlov with his dogs.

TAI: I have. But if you haven't. So Pavlov is this guy who rang a bell whenever he gave his dog treats or food or whatever. So soon he conditioned them that whatever he would ring a bell, they would start to salivate even if there were no treats around it was a real just kind of like this happens and this follows type thing. So earworms are just our brains associating something random, like doing the dishes with a song.

IOANNA FILLIPPIDI: If I go to a shop mid-November and they're playing a Christmas song, then I will pay attention to it and I would say, oh, it's mid-November and their playing this Christmas song. Or for example, if I hear a baby shark,.

[Baby Shark plays]

IOANNA FILLIPPIDI: I will notice it and I will say, oh, look, it's baby shark. And then the fact that I've noticed it, I think it's what brings it back later. And I think that what makes a difference, attention because it's a learning activity. The reason that we get earworms is an association. An association is learning, how much attention you're paying makes a massive difference. Even if you can remember listening to the song, your mind for some reason paid attention to it. Or I've found that sometimes the mind plays music just to entertain us.

[Music]

TAI: So when a song pops in our head, it's because our brain is associating that song with something else that's going on, even if it's something that we only notice in our subconscious parts of our brain. But both my friends Zoe and Ioanna mentioned Baby Shark. It's a song that's plaguing everybody. And it's just universally earworm-ish. It's a real guest to 'Tito. I feel like some songs are just more likely to earworm people than others. So why do certain songs get stuck in our heads more? And why is it that it's most of the time like the chorus or a very specific part?

IOANNA FILLIPPIDI: The way that music memory works is if I tell you a story, then you remember the summary of it. If you listen to a melody, then you remember chunks of it, and then you compile the chunks into the whole music piece for example.

TAI: Ohh. And if it's and if it's really repetitive, you're not really missing much.

IOANNA FILLIPPIDI: And that's the thing. I think that this is why we get one short melody being stuck and looping, because that's the chunk of music that we remember. It's not the beginning of the song and it's not any four notes together. It's the main melody. It's that song that then you remember and repeat in your mind.

TAI: So the million dollar question. How can we get earworms out?

IOANNA FILLIPPIDI: Right. So there is only one proven method. But disclaimer it, it has never worked for me no matter how hard I tried. But the researchers said that if you chew gum vigorously and try not to think of the music in your head, then that would lead to less involuntary musical thoughts.

TAI: Oh, ok so yeah that's a little destory that's a very red one. I thought I'd be like well, just make sure that you think about the involuntary breakdown of the achronome-spoob. But no.

IOANNA FILLIPPIDI: So.

TAI: Just just chew some gum and you'll be fine.

IOANNA FILLIPPIDI: Other people have different strategies and if one works for you, then stick to it. So listen to it is one strategy. Looking up the lyrics is another. Listening or humming something completely different is another but to me that only gives me the new earworm, so.

TAI: We counteracted fire with fire. Now we have two big piles of fire.

IOANNA FILLIPPIDI: Exactly.

TAI: OK so right now I'm trying out that chewing gum thing and trying to see if it'll come and get rid of the earworms, so bear with me while I, to quote Ioanna, chew vigorously.

[Music]

TAI: Oh, my God I got it out. Woah that actually worked. f II can be real I really did not expect that to work. Unfortunately, as I got my earworm out, my father contracted a new one.

MINH: So it's like african lion safari guys.

TAI: Oh my god

MINH: That earworm just burrowed into my brain and laid there and hatched eggs and hasn't never left.

TAI: Okay, Dad, that's that's nasty. But if you guys don't know, African Lion Safari is a local theme park and that jingle is just been on air for at least 30 years which is crazy. It's three words.

[Music]

TAI: And yet it just gets stuck in your brain somehow. So that takes some serious skill. It turns out the company who made it also made some other really iconic jingles over the years.

[Music].

TAI: Also Mandarin. Everyone knows Mandarin. Celebration of the days Mandarin.

MINH: Yeah. You know what? I do remember those and that must have been, you know, like close to 30 years ago. And those jingles are still in my head which is crazy.

TAI: Well, if you can stick through an old person's brain for 30 years. Sorry dad.

MINH: I guess they're doing something right. Right?

TAI: Yeah.

[Music]

TAI: Now, I want to have this skill I want to have this ability. So I'm going to meet the man behind it all, the jingle man. His name is Mike McCurlie and he wrote The African Lions Safari jingle. So I figure he's just the guy to talk about how to make songs as Dickinson once said. So you've made very many very successful jingles so I want to try to refine the art of the really catchy little tidbit. So can you give me some tips for me to make one myself?

MIKE MCCURLIE: Yeah. Catchiness is partly simplicity. It's partly in what we call motifs or a certain sequence of notes. And then it's also repetition. You hear peacha peacha You know, I don't know, five times a day. It's on the radio and you might hear it, you know, a few times a week and pretty soon you can't get it out of your head. But then again, if you have very complex melodies or complex rhythms, people can't remember them because we're all fairly you know, most people aren't that musical. So we keep it simple, like nine six seven, eleven eleven. Come pizza pizza who ran away. Or african lions safari, go wild. And that's all there is, just a little snippet, because the thing is, long term, we want people to remember that little snippet. It's proven through research that people remember lyrics that have been set to music far better and far longer than speech. Songs go into a different part of the brain and they stick there a lot more. They're in the emotional side of the brain, not the logical side of the brain. And as long as you make them, I believe simple and they have a hook to them, they're very easily remembered in the long term.

TAI: This kind of reminds me what Yoanna said about memory, because our senses act as triggers in our brains like smell, touch, taste, and music does that too. So having information set to a melody means that it has more than one trigger. It has a memory trigger and an auditory trigger or association as she calls it, so it's easier to recall later. There are more triggers. The interview I had before that said that music is really closely related to memory. Kind of like them repetition is kind of like, you know Pavlov's dogs with the bell and the food and then having like you ring the bell on the dog be like, where's the food?

MIKE MCCURLIE: Yeah.

TAI: Do like do you agree with that? That music is really closely tied to memory?

MIKE MCCURLIE: Very much so. As human beings we love to recognize patterns. So if we hear like Beethoven's Fifth, pom pom pom pom pom pom pom, you kind of recognize the three notes and then it drops and then three notes and it drops and throws that whole symphony you keep hearing that motif for that little theme over and over again. Although it's in different keys and different places and different instruments. And by the end of the symphony, you do remember bom bom bom bom, you know, that rhythm. And it's the same in pop songs. It's all very dependent on the hook that the composer comes up with and it might be a lyrical hook, it might be an instrumental hook. It's a little pattern that keeps repeating throughout the song.

TAI: Are there like certain musical patterns that work like bridges and notes or as you said before, just repetition?

MIKE MCCURLIE: There are certain ones that definitely work better and typically they're simpler. They're not very widespread notes. Like if I go ba la la la, it it's harder to remember than if I do rae mi. You know, da da da, cause they're closer notes, so most of the melodies that songwriters and jingle writers use have a close melody where, you know, you don't have to have a huge range and huge musical vocal experience to be able to sing along. The idea is to get the listener, whether it's a song or a jingle, you want the listener to learn it and kind of sing along even in their head. Even if they don't sing, you want them to be able to sing in their head.

TAI: Yeah, cause I guess it it's kind of good to be able to sing along too cause when you sing it you go like doo doo doo doo doo. You won't forget it because you just said it.

MIKE MCCURLIE: That's right. We call out internalization. We want the person to bring it right into their own head and own it themselves.

TAI: And then spread it. It's an infection.

MIKE MCCURLIE: Share it, that's right. Spread it. When you think about it, how could we ever have remembered the alphabet if it wasn't for the song? Like you take 26 random letters, put them in an order like that, and now as a little kid, you know, when you're 6 years old, Grade 1, you've got to memorize that order. But as soon as you put all letters to a melody a b c d e f g h i j k. You know, we remember it, right? Everybody can remember that.

TAI: And like in grade one, I also realized that it's like the same as Baba Black Sheep and Twinkle. Right.

MIKE MCCURLIE: I never realized that.

TAI: Twinkle. Boom! We just confirmed it. This it's a jingle because then it goes twinkle, twinkle little star, h i j k l m n o p. Um one for the person.

TAI AND MIKE: Ba ba black sheep have you any wool?

TAI: Yeah. See, I was always I was always like, why are they the same melody, and then like I eventually settled on the fact, you know, everyone knows the melody melody.

MIKE MCCURLIE: Yeah, well I think you're right and that's something that you've taught me Tai because I never realized like you heard your mom sing you those nursery rhymes before you had to learn the alphabet. So it's kind of pre-training so you'd know the melody.

TAI: Yeah so you cause because you kind of memorize the songs, you memorize the melody and if you know the melody, you'd know the letters.

MIKE MCCURLIE: You're a genius. That's very smart.

TAI: I taught I taught Jingle Man something.

MIKE MCCURLIE: Of course, I'd never be able to make anything close to the alphabet so, but to quote from some really famous person who I don't remember. Shoot for the stars so I'm gonna go do that.

TAI: Johnny Spence is the person who helps make the songs that go at the end of each episode. Usually he's more of a silent contributor, but today I want to share with him what I've learned make the catchiest or second catchiest song on the planet. So I'm here with Johnny Spence at his house. Say hello, Johnny.

JOHNNY SPENCE: Hello

TAI: I've been curious about how to make a very catchy song, you know, the next Despacito, and I've learned a couple tricks.

JOHNNY SPENCE: I'm all ears. So what did you learn?

TAI: Well, I learned some of the important things is that you want to make sure that you can keep it repetitive so it really gets drilled in and it's not like super everywhere all over the place. So it's hard to remember. You want to make it easier remember being simple, repetitive, and one of the more specific ones. You want to make sure you don't jump really high in octaves or just in pitch. You want to make sure you can keep it around the same time.

JOHNNY SPENCE: Mhmm. What are we making an earworm about?

TAI: Well, I've been thinking hard I've been thinking long and I wanna make it about chips.

JOHNNY SPENCE: Chips.

TAI: Chips.

JOHNNY SPENCE: Why?

TAI: Well I'm hungry and I'm a pretty big bag of chips.

JOHNNY SPENCE: We call upon the wisdom of the chips themselves.

TAI: Okay let's eat the chip

JOHNNY SPENCE: You ready? Well, they're good. What're we are trying to get people to do. Just eat more chips?

TAI: Eat more chips.

JOHNNY SPENCE: You want people to eat more chips?

TAI: Of course, Johnny. Johnny has a really cool idea of where to start. Something called the pentatonic scale.

JOHNNY SPENCE: You know what pent, penta means.

TAI: 5.

JOHNNY SPENCE: Exactly. So it just means that it's a five note scale, which would be like.

[Music Plays]

JOHNNY SPENCE: Even though some cultures don't have a major scale. Some cultures don't have a minor scale they have quarter tones and tones that are in between the two notes we have. But every culture has a pentatonic scale. Or like. That's just a pentatonic scale, right? Every columns's like that right. So I think if we're really trying to make a chip earworm that will resonate and encourage everyone in the world to eat a chip, feel like there's no better scale than a pentatonic scale.

TAI: Great idea, Johnny. I don't really want to give away our whole songwriting process as that's highly confidential, but there's a lot to look forward to. We got that rapi pi pi pi petition, the groovy pentatonic scale. The notes are close to each other. And it's simple, so pleasing to the ear. And as for association, which you and Ioanna talked about, you know who doesn't love chips? I'm sure that by now you've probably contracted at least one earworm from this episode. Sorry about that, guys. But as Ioanna said, sometimes you have to fight fire with more fire. So here's the earworm to end all other earworms. Introducing the soon to be, break the charts, smash single. Nothing like a champ. Woo waa.

[Chip crunches]

VOICE: Crunch them. Munch them. Love them for their taste. Meal time, snack time. Any time could be chip time. Just a chip?

TAI: Just a chip

VOICE: Just a chip?

TAI: Just a chip. Nothing like a chip. Nothing like a chip. Chip. Thank you guys so much for listening. I'm Tai Poole. This show is produced by Veronica Simmonds and Amanda Buckiewicz, our digital producers Judy Gu and other thanks to Sonya Buyting for the editorial assistance. Today, my guests were Dr. Ioanna Fillippidie and Mike McCurlie. Special thanks to Lisa Loen, Tom Power, my dad and my friends Zoe, Piper, Fin and Caidin for talking to me about their earworms. The theme music is by Johnny Spence and another big shout out to Johnny for helping me write and record the new smash single, breaking the charts song Nothing Like a Chip. Woah, we love you Johnny. Well, this is actually the last episode of the season so, sorry to kill the mood. I know it makes you sad, brings me just as much sorrow, but I'm going to deal with this grief and remorse and struggling by drowning my sorrows in chips. Till next time I am Tai keep asking why. Chip!

VOICE: For more CBC podcasts, go to CBC.ca/podcasts

TRANSCRIPT: Tai Asks Why - Season 2: How does a song get stuck in your head?

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