Published: August 19, 2008 10:31 pm            

STEPHANIE SALTER: The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, the worms play Mungo Jerry on your snout

TERRE HAUTE — They strike when you least expect them, and you can’t predict how long you will be afflicted. Knowing they aren’t at all rare is of zero comfort — unless you’re the type of person who hears a mosquito in a darkened room and takes heart at how common the situation is.

Scientists call the condition “earworms” or “stuck song syndrome.” Slang terms abound, including “audio virus,” “melodymania,” “repetunitis” and (my favorite) “tune cooties.” They all describe songs that lodge in the brain and won’t leave.

For the past couple of weeks, I have been besieged by a particularly nasty earworm: Mungo Jerry’s 1970 ditty, “In the Summertime.” (Not enough to have the same song looping ’round and ’round, it has to have one of the most offensive lyrics written in the past 50 years: “If her daddy’s rich, take her out for a meal/ If her daddy’s poor then do what you feel.”)

When and why did Mungo Jerry’s song crawl in? I know not. Every time I think it’s finally gone, it starts wiggling around and making my head burn and throb.

At dawn in my bed. In the shower. At my office desk. Walking back from lunch. Waiting at a stoplight. Hanging up the phone. Brushing my teeth.

Dee dee dee-dee dee/ Dah dah dah-dah dah/ Yeah we’re hap-happy/ Dah dah-dah.

I feel like Bill Murray in “Ground Hog Day,” waking each day to “I’ve Got You, Babe.”

A few months ago a Gary Lewis and the Playboys’ song was my featured tune cootie. I can’t remember the title now and don’t want to. Replacing one annoying stuck song for another is not much of a remedy.

In fact, there are no remedies for earworms — except time and prolonged distraction. As inexplicably as a song comes and stays, it goes away, unless you have a really bad case and need cognitive therapy or medication.

A University of Cincinnati marketing professor, James J. Kellaris, probably knows as much about the phenomenon of stuck songs than anyone in the United States. He conducted a fairly celebrated study a few years ago that produced much food for earworm thought.

A music scholar as well as a business ethicist, Kellaris found that almost everybody suffers a stuck song now and then. Women are more prone to them than men are, but musicians and music lovers of either gender also are susceptible. Not unlike biological viruses and parasites, earworms attack more often when we’re tired or under stress.

Before the study, Kellaris assumed that for a song to get stuck it probably had to be a simple, repetitive thing like a commercial jingle or “Frere Jacques.” But he learned otherwise. While three-quarters of all earworms are indeed tunes with lyrics, Kellaris determined that just about any combination of musical notes can become lodged in “replay” mode.

(I have had Broadway show tunes, hymns and several Abba songs overstay their welcome in my head. Once, for nearly a month, it was “Musetta’s Waltz” from “La Boheme.”)



Mercifully, most earworms go away fairly quickly. A few hours, one day or two, and you’re over it. Accustomed to these short infestations many years ago, I dubbed them SIMHADs Songs — Stuck In My Head All Day — and once listed some of the worst I ever suffered. Among them: Tony Orlando and Dawn’s “Knock Three Times” and The Ohio Express’ “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy, I’ve Got Love in My Tummy.”

Back then, like about two-thirds of professor Kellaris’ study group, I tried vanquishing tune cooties with another, more pleasant musical offering. For many years, the 1924 Isham Jones-Gus Kahn song, “It Had to Be You,” was highly effective against any earworm that invaded.

But I guess its power has diminished, the way antibiotics do when overused. Ballad-style or bouncy, “It Had to Be You,” has been no match for Mungo Jerry.

Neither has an alleged earworm antidote — singing through the entire song to flush out its looping fragments. Four verses and three times through the chorus of “In the Summertime” did nothing but drive the little beast further into my brain.

As for the cause of earworms, all we have are theories. (Some of the better ones are at business.uc.edu/earworms/faqs). Brain imaging has shown the rostromedial prefrontal cortex to be especially intriguing because that area reacts to tones and melodies.

Sometimes, you can catch an earworm from another person. I had friends who used to do hit-and-run phone calls on each other, dropping terrible songs to be dealt with by the person on the receiving end. It was such a hateful game. (I hardly ever played.)

The only fool-proof way to prevent a secondhand tune cootie invasion is to stay out of the public sphere, which isn’t very practical. Whether it’s Muzak in a grocery store, a passing car radio or a person whistling on the sidewalk, potential earworms are everywhere.

And it’s worse now than ever. While I was researching and fact-checking this column, I came upon several Internet sites that flashed the same cell phone offer at the bottom of the lyrics to Mungo Jerry’s “In the Summertime.”

“Ringtone available! Download Now!”



Stephanie Salter can be reached at (812) 231-4229 or stephanie.salter@tribstar.com.

        

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