Tunes and Melodies

We have all experienced the irritating feeling of not being able to dislodge a tune from our mind. James Kellaris, a researcher on the subject at the University of Cincinnati, calls such tunes "earworms" to refer to the parasitic nature of persistent tunes. Kellaris is a marketing professor who researches the effect of music on consumers.

In a study of 1,000 respondents he found that nearly 98 percent of listeners will at one time or another be bothered by a tune that will not leave their heads. The top ten list of earworm songs include the Kit-Kat candybar jingle, the Baha Men song “Who Let the Dogs Out,” and the theme to Mission Impossible.

Kellaris says songs that are simple, repetitive, or incongruous in some way are most likely to get stuck. Other factors that seem to play a role are frequency of music listening, stress level, tiredness and gender -- women are more likely to have earworms than men. A typical earworm episode may last a few hours to more than a week.

Resources:

Learn more information about Professor Kellaris and his research.

What are the most common earworms? These are the ten most catchy songs among college students studied by Kellaris.

Where did the term "earworm" come from? What do other cultures call a catchy song? Learn more information about the word and its etymology.

September 27, 2003