Hits by Lady Gaga were the most common to get stuck in our heads (Picture: Reuters)

Solving tricky anagrams is the best way to get rid of earworms – those irritating tunes that lodge themselves inside our heads and repeat on an endless loop like a broken record.

Taxing our brains with puzzles or a good book can force the ‘internal jukebox’ out of the working memory and allow it to be filled with less annoying thoughts instead, say researchers.

But try anything too difficult and the melodies can return – the most persistent of which were found to be hits by Lady Gaga. Psychologists now think similar techniques could be used to prevent intrusive thoughts caused by anxiety or obsessiveness.



‘The key is to find something that will give the right level of challenge,’ said Dr Ira Hyman, a music psychologist at Western Washington University. ‘Something we can do automatically like driving or walking means you are not using all of your cognitive resource, so there is plenty of space left for that internal jukebox to start playing.


‘Likewise, if you are trying something too hard, then your brain will not be engaged successfully, so that music can come back. You need to find that bit in the middle where there is not much space left in the brain.

‘It is like a Goldilocks effect – it can’t be too easy and it can’t be too hard, it has got to be just right.’

Songs by the Beatles, Lady Gaga and Beyoncé were played to volunteers while they completed puzzles. Simple mazes had no effect on banishing the music, while solving five-letter anagrams produced the best results.

Sudoku puzzles were effective as long as they were not too difficult, researchers found.

Rihanna’s music was likely to become an earworm, researchers found (Picture: AP)

Dr Hyman added: ‘Music is relatively harmless but easy to start. Choruses tend to get stuck in your head because they are the bit we know best and because we don’t know the second or third verse, the song remains unfinished. Unfinished thoughts are more likely to return.’

Three quarters of people say the songs they hear in their heads are unique to them. The most common tend to be chart songs, with Lady Gaga the most likely artist to get stuck in people’s heads.

Four of her hits were the most likely to become earworms – Alejandro, Bad Romance, Just Dance and Paparazzi.

Others included Katy Perry’s California Girls and the 2009 hit Hey, Soul Sister by US rock band Train as well as tunes by Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Abba and The Beatles.

Dr Vicky Williamson, a music psychologist at Goldsmiths, University of London, said factors including reading lyrics, stress and allowing the mind to wander can help songs to plant themselves in the mind.

‘Even reading a line in a newspaper can trigger the domino effect that starts a song running,’ she said. ‘During the trial of Michael Jackson’s doctor, we got a lot of people reporting Michael Jackson songs getting stuck in their head.’