consist of singing Lady Gaga’s ‘Poker Face’
unprompted, at regular repeated intervals.
So evidently, to turn ‘Call Me Maybe’ into
‘Calls to this brain are barred’, I needed
to stimulate my grey matter. Meanwhile,
another suggested solution is to sing a dif-
ferent song repeatedly, in the hope that your
earworm will be nudged aside by a different,
more benign melody. There’s even an app
for that, unhearit, not to mention several
websites such as earwurm.com, which offer
daily infectious tunes designed to unseat your
earworm with another.
I decided on a two-pronged attack, combin-
ing these two approaches by playing another
catchy tune and making anagrams from it.
Having read in yet another survey (do people
really get paid to research this?) that Bon
Jovi’s Livin On A Prayer was voted among
history’s catchiest tunes, I began humming it
while rearranging the letters of the title. The
best I came up with were ‘Navy
Loin Rapier’ and ‘Arrive Only Pain’. Strange-
ly apt, I felt. However, as I scrolled through
my iPod for the next tune to play, Ms Jepsen
was back, like a singing stalker. “I just met
you… this is crayzee….” Leave me alone,
woman!
This kind of resistance was clearly futile. In-
stead, I decided a different, seemingly coun-
ter-intuitive approach. One thing that has
been found about earworms is that it’s most
likely to be a song where you only remember
the chorus. That means that for the brain, it
represents unfinished business, and it will
keep replaying the song as if other parts of
the song will magically reveal themselves at
some point.
For that reason, the theory goes that by
actively seeking out the song and listening to
it in full, verse and all, may provide sufficient
closure for the brain to leave to consider that
fragment of song to now be in its rightful
place, and fit to be left alone. So I faced up to
my nemesis, who I have since learnt, once
came third on the Canadian equivalent of the
X Factor. And I played ‘Call Me Maybe’ in
full.
And now I’ve got the verse running round
my head instead of the chorus. Groan. Still,
there is one silver lining on this particular
cloud. Scientists believe that if you are infect-
ed by the dreaded earworm it is a sign of an
active brain, and one which will be less prone
to dementia. Already music has been used to
help cognitive decline, as the act of recalling
a tune is a mental exercise that keeps the
brain fit and firing. So worry not – you’re
being driven mad, but at least you’ve still got
your mental health…
