- Do you listen to more of it? Less?
- Do you focus on a different song?
- Do you stop listening to music until it’s gone?
I try not to sing along in public as it plays in my head, because it’s usually some obscene or violent death metal, or deliberately edgy rude cover of a popular song.
It’s a sign that you’re not sleeping enough. Catch some Z’s.
I find that this is often the case
I just let it play out in my head and don’t take any action.
Sometimes if it’s really bad and I’m on day 3 of a song and it has gotten annoying I’ll have to intentionally corrupt the hook that keeps retriggering in my head. It’s usually one or two notes that keep springing in and then the rest of the song triggers and starts flowing. When I catch the trigger in my head I grab it and intentionally start imagining that little hooky snip, not the whole song but just two or three annoying notes of it, and loop them until there’s another association leading me out of the trigger other than simply leaping back into the song again.
I say to music brain this is you this is what you sound like, and music brain gets grumpy so I finally get some peace.
It’s my brain trying to complete the song. I just listen to it until I’ve memorized it from beginning to to end
Nothing really. Sometimes I then listen to it when I have time. Recently however I actually started practicing guitar because I thought “can’t be that hard to play” and a roommate had a guitar I could use. So far I’m still at it and eypanded into some more songs.
Punch myself in the testicles. You’d be surprised how much this can distract you from an earworm.
Do you do it to the beat of the song?
I will sing it and will try to spread it to other people
I hum “America” from West Side Story.
I read somewhere years ago that it kicks out earworms without becoming one, and I found that it works for me.
This so weird, I do exactly the same thing except instead of ‘America’ I sing ‘Jet Song’.
“When you’re a jet, you’re a jet all the way…” and all of a sudden the ear worm is gone
I mostly do nothing about it, it eventually goes away. Sometimes however, I feel curious about the song and I listen to the whole song, find out whose song is, if there are more version, look up the lyrics.
It used to bother me but at some point I guess I learned to not care if I get a song stuck. Sometimes it is even fun, I can use it as a conversation starter or stuck it in someone else’s head.
I have a Megadeath song on standby which I bring to mind and it eliminates the ear worm. 😃
Find a different song to get stuck in my head.
Wow, you responded really quickly!
I try to do something similar, though the temptation to listen to more of the stuck song is strong too.
I believe it was Colbert who was talking about this situation and said you need something really distinctive but not long enough to become a new ear worm. He suggested the “by mennen” jingle, which if you’re too young or not American enough to know it is literally just 2 seconds of singing the company’s name
luck of the draw when browsing by new.
I listen for a bit, then I listen to some tunes with a similar BPM, style, or key. I think, though I’m not certain, that it’s my brain telling me that I need to stimulate it by going new places, hearing new things, doing new stuff, etc. It usually stops when I find something else cool enough to hold my interest.
May I ask, what song you have stuck? I had “Golden” from Kpop Demonhunters such in my head for a few weeks recently but my earworms come from an genres.
Accept that it’s there and go about my day. It will fade just as all the others before it.
