Three Persistent Earworms

In “Lady Madonna” Paul McCartney sings:

Lady Madonna Lying on the bed Listen to the music playing in your head

I often wonder where the music “playing in my head” comes from, or why it is there. Some songs stick, don’t they? It’s understandable that songs you have heard recently would be playing in your head, but what about the ones that persist in your gray matter over time?

As I get older, I am shocked that some songs never seem to go away. They are always there. Why? Why them?

I read somewhere that “earworms,” or songs that cause you to have “mild obsessions,” are characterized by irregular beats or phrases that our brains replay in an attempt to integrate the new pattern into our internal list of acceptable rhythms. The idea is that there is something fucked up about “Tom’s Diner.” After listening to it your brain tries to fix the dissonance through repetition.

That’s an interesting explanation, but I’m not sure it explains having BTS’s Dynamite stuck in my brain, or how, after getting tricked into watching Puddles The Clown, I end up singing “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get Want I Want” or “Changes” for a fortnight. More importantly, it really doesn’t explain the weird collection of songs I’ve been returning to for decades.

These songs are always there. They are songs that I can find myself singing for no reason. Why does the needle skips back to them?

Let’s examine the three most persistent ones:

#3: Billy Joel’s Just the Way You Are

We’ll start with the most recent, which I can trace back to about 25 years ago. I had a friend who could play guitar, and as a joke he would sing Billy Joel’s “Just the Way You Are” with maximum lounge lizard phrasing. I thought it was funny. Had I known that the resulting infection would last the rest of my life, I would not have laughed or asked for him to play it again.

I can find myself singing, “Don’t go changing / to try to please me / I wouldn’t have wanted it from the start” almost any time. Why? I don’t know. I’m no Billy Joel fan, yet I live with him in my head. He owns some real estate in my brain.

#2: Andy Gibb’s “Shadow Dancing”

I know the etiology of this obsession also. I inherited it from a friend. When I was in 8th grade, Dana Madigan was “ironically” obsessed with both Andy Gibb” and “Shadow Dancing”. After being infected by him, I recorded it. The kids don’t know that in the old days if you were obsessed with a song and didn’t want to pay for it, you had to scan up and down the FM frequencies and catch it being played on the radio. Then you would push “play” and “record” on a tape player and, BINGO! You owned the song. I did that. What a terrible mistake.

#1 The Theme Song from ‘The Double Deckers’

I don’t understand the other obsessions, but at least I know when they started. The last, and most potent, is a mystery even to me. I barely remember the TV show. How this theme song got so permanently stuck in my head is probably a topic for my therapist. I did have a hunch-backed woman named Margie who looked after me and my brothers when my parents were away on business trips. She wore a nurse’s uniform, a blue cardigan sweater, and sweat socks. She smoked a pipe. She could eat an Oreo in one bite. Maybe she spanked me while this song was blaring out of the television. It’s possible. That’s as good an explanation as any. Really, I sing this song to myself all the time and have been for fifty years. It’s a mystery. If I could rid myself of it I would.

Now, in case you were wondering what the point of this post was, I hate to tell you that there isn’t one. I apologize. I thought at the outset that I might find something in here, but I came up short. It happens. Had I discovered anything close to a point, I promise I would have made sure to make it clear.

While I feel sorry for you, I don’t feel that bad. I just watched five (5) episodes of “Lupin” on Netflix and when I got to the end I was horrified to find out that the series had neither a conclusion nor a point. What’s that about? When did “finishing the story” become optional?

It’s clear that points are besides the point nowadays. You only need attention and entertainment. If you are still here, I’ve abused your attention and provided little entertainment.

I feel badly about that. I’ll try not to do it again.

Thanks for reading.