Three in the morning is the darkest hour of the night and the human soul. As an insomniac, I’ve always found it difficult. At 3am past mistakes come back to haunt you with complete clarity and the horrors of childhood seem eminently possible. Nightmares happen at that time of the day. I can prove it. At 3.36am the other week, my son climbed into bed with me and started singing that he was the queen in a kingdom of isolation. He’s five.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Queen Elsa sings Let it Go in Frozen

Let it Go isn’t a song in our house – it’s a way of life. Harry brought home Let it Go from childcare like he brings home nits and slapped cheek syndrome. We couldn’t avoid it; I had tried. The Disney Channel is locked with a pin, and I’ve had him weaned on The Whole Story by Kate Bush and 12-inch 1980s classics from an early age.

I’ve set standards in this house – standards that I thought would leave him impervious to the passing fads of pop culture. It was like putting up an umbrella in a cyclone. Let it Go inched its way in, and we were lost.

It is played at least 10 times a day and sung countless times more. Sometimes you just hear a high-pitched “Goooo!” – I try to block it out. It’s Oscar-winning tinnitus – aural ice for young children. And that isn’t a sweet Frozen analogy. I do mean the drug. They can’t give it up.

I estimate that 98% of parents with children under eight are being driven slowly insane by a song about a young woman who has decided to let rip with her frosting skills. Don’t get me wrong: Queen Elsa does end up making a lovely winter palace. But Sir Christopher Wren managed to knock out some pretty amazing buildings too without driving people to distraction. There’s no need for it.

I appreciate that Frozen’s director, Jennifer Lee, is now apologising for introducing the most powerful earworm of our age but it’s not really her fault. Let it Go has joined an elite band of tunes that we play to destruction – songs that we fall madly in love with and want to hear every minute of the day. We gorge on them, learn every lyric, dissect them, pull them apart and then cruelly abandon them. They are often damn fine pop songs that catch the national mood. Rhianna’s Umbrella (“ella, ella …) is a great example. It was the song of the rained-off sog-fest that was summer 2007. It was played and played. And now you can’t listen to it without wanting to shove a cagoule in your ears.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive

Sometimes a song becomes a victim of its own success because it so perfectly sums up the pain of the human condition. I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor is the anthem of the dumped everywhere. The problem is, at any one time there are a lot of dumped people about. And most of them are at a pub karaoke machine singing the song while shouting: “Shaun, this one’s for you, you bastard!”

Likewise, Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol expressed perfectly the fact that we all essentially just want a cuddle and a lie down. Consequently, it had what radio programmers term a “high rotation” and eventual “burn factor” (people want to hear it lots – and then never again).

It’s hard to know why Let it Go has such appeal,, kids and why it’s currently going the way of all songs that are played to death. It’s a tune about a moody adolescent yet it appeals strongly to very young children. Perhaps it’s proof that kids are getting genetically stroppier earlier. As far as I can remember it’s the first time pre-schoolers have adopted their own anthem with such passion. Either way it’s a fantastic introduction to the world of pop where you can be in love with someone on Monday, spend too much time listening to them on Tuesday, and loathe them by Wednesday.

Welcome to the world of music, kids, where you can be the creator and destroyer of careers and songs.

• Which songs have you loved and listened to so much that eventually you wished they’d never been written?