ear worm

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Does anyone know of a good home remedy for an ear worm (a catchy piece of music that continually repeats through a person's mind after it is no longer playing)?

I've had the same banal, outdated couplet running through my mind several times a day for the past week or two:
"It must have been love, but it's over now. It must have been good, but I lost it somehow."

Aaargh!

Various songs will work. Lollipop is one, but you'll end up with it stuck in your head after, so it's not much better. Various King Crimson songs work well for me. Unusual meters require a little concentration, so the songs tend to fade once I get distracted. Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique would probably also work.

The only way to get rid of one is to replace it with another.

Wikipedia says "engaging working memory in moderately difficult tasks (such as anagrams, Sudoku puzzles, or reading a novel" is the best cure. I tried that but still can't get the song out of my head.

One of these should help.

http://etcanada.com/photos/163907/the-t ... age-163942

https://www.buzzfeed.com/mlew15/21-song ... fhaQaoWAeR

"Ear worm" lol. Never heard that before but know what you mean. I try to listen to classical or jazz instrumentals to erase the offending tune and lyrics.

Watching tv or YouTube usually helps me.

Earworms are fun.

Unless they're excessively played radio tunes.

Play a different song or play white noise.

Spongebob covers this

Or Let it Go. I work in a group home, and I heard that song so many times a few years back that it still occasionally weasles its way into my skull.

Gotta agree. I always had a disliking for that song before I even watched Frozen.

Listen to some music that you personally like. It'll eventually go round your head.

The worst type of "ear worm" is when a line of a song pops up in your head that isn't the key identifying line. It takes me forever to figure out what song the line comes from, then it hits me all of a sudden. Thankfully, I can then clear it from my mind.

Oh, you poor thing! Roxette is a cruel punishment. I once had Barbie Girl stuck in my head for way too long, I did not enjoy that.

The only thing that ever worked for me was replacing it with another earworm, which might be bad too, but at least it's something different. Haydn's trumpet concerto is not half as bad as Roxette, but it's a classic earworm.

Reading back over recent replies, I'm getting on board with replacement as the only real option. In fact, it's so hard to just make one stop, I can only imagine making the effort into some kind of useful exercise in self-control. "I'll do 10 sit-ups any time that song plays in my head," or something. Most of the time, I bet the brain has some kind of process going on and the song is a byproduct of that. An unconscious process generating some mechanical noise, to stretch the metaphor a little.

In that sense, the words could matter, and I'll think about replacing the song with something more positive, or perhaps see if I can find an instrumental which fits. I heard a nifty medley by a guitarist around a campfire, one time, where he played the same three chords in the same order, but moved the 1 in order to get three different classic rock and roll songs. One was La Bamba, but I forget the others.

La Bamba is a great one, come to think of it. Very catchy, and works whether or know you know Spanish.