You know that catchy tune that you can’t get out of your head? Scientists are currently trying to get to the bottom of why it is so addictive. We spoke to an expert in the field about the future of earworm design and their evolutionary role. Share on Pinterest Researchers uncover the anatomy of an earworm. Dr. Kelly Jakubowski has been playing violin since she was 5 years old and has been fascinated by music and musical performance for as long as she can remember. As an undergraduate student, she began asking questions about what the brain does when it listens to music. Today, Dr. Jakubowski spends her professional life studying music psychology, including the fascinating concept of earworms. Earworms, or, to give them their scientific name, involuntary musical imagery, are those melodies that get stuck in our heads and, often, cannot be shifted. For the first time, this odd phenomenon has received a thorough scientific inspection. What exactly makes a tune into an earworm? A commonly held belief is that songs that are regularly played on the radio and other media are more likely to become earworms. For the first time, research has confirmed that, although this is true, there is much more to musical stickiness than hearing a song multiple times. The results of the study, carried out at Goldsmiths, University of London in the United Kingdom, are published this week in the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. To get to the bottom of this odd but intriguing phenomenon, the team analyzed data from 3,000 individuals who completed a questionnaire called “The Earwormery” between 2010-2013.

What makes an earworm? Once the most common earworms had been collated, their structure could be analyzed. They took the top 100 songs described as earworms and matched them with 100 songs of a similar level of popularity, age, and style. Once the songs were paired, the researchers compared and scrutinized the ditties using “83 statistical summary and corpus-based melodic features and automated classification techniques.” There were some clear patterns that the earworm melodies had in common. “These musically sticky songs seem to have quite a fast tempo along with a common melodic shape and unusual intervals or repetitions like we can hear in the opening riff of Smoke On The Water by Deep Purple or in the chorus of Bad Romance by Lady Gaga.” Dr. Kelly Jakubowski Another shared trait is that the first phrase of an earworm rises in pitch and the second phrase falls in pitch, for instance – the first notes of “Moves Like Jagger” by Maroon 5, which ranked highly in the earworm stakes. The songs most commonly reported as earworms were: Bad Romance – Lady Gaga Can’t Get You Out Of My Head – Kylie Minogue Don’t Stop Believing – Journey Somebody That I Used To Know – Gotye Moves Like Jagger – Maroon 5 California Gurls – Katy Perry Bohemian Rhapsody – Queen Alejandro – Lady Gaga Poker Face – Lady Gaga. So, if you have ever been stuck repeating any of those tunes in your brain ad nauseum, you are not alone. The results make fascinating reading and open the door to other interesting questions. Medical News Today recently caught up with Dr. Jakubowski to find out more.