Can Negative Self-Talk and Rehearsing Increase Earworms? (revised)

And what do Beck, Ren and Stimpy, Nathan Fielder and Band-Aids have to do with it?

(This is a revised update on a post from January 2023.)

Last night, in a familiar state of wee hours insomnia, I began to wonder: Are people who tend to replay incidents from their lives over and over more prone to earworms?

For example, Does realizing you just drove two exits past the one you were supposed to get off at lead to the chorus from Beck’s 1993 classic song “Loser” repeating loudly and proudly in your head?

Soy un perdedor
I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?
(Get crazy with the cheeze whiz)
Soy un perdedor
I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?

I never knew Beck was singing “Soy un perdedor” (Spanish for “I’m a loser”) in his song “Loser.” Was this 23-year-old L.A. native slacker-hipster simply showing off his bilingualism?

I’m 99.9% certain that back in 1993 or whenever you, like me, found yourself singing along to this song, you were mumbling the wrong lyrics. You probably spoke/sang something like, “Oy, I’m a chemical,” or “Boy, you’ve been here before.”

The only words that ever stuck in our craws were the chorus’ 2nd line: “I’m a loser baby, so why don’t you kill me?” The rest of the words we pretended to sing along with.

The point is that we often automatically and unconsciously sing along with songs even when we don’t know the words. It’s like brushing our teeth or wiping our ass: it becomes our body-memory so that our mind-memory can wander off. Then, drive two exits past the one that leads to the physical therapist’s office.

My most common self-berating word of choice is not loser, though.

It’s idiot.

And when this inner (and often outer) voice speaks, it sounds a lot like Ren from the Ren and Stimpy cartoon.

Driving past an exit is one thing. But when it’s paired with leaving your phone at home, spilling coffee on your shirt, and forgetting to stop at the pharmacy on the way home from work, well, that Ren “You idiot!” voice can become a persistent berating mantra.

With years of therapy and meditation, I’ve been able to reduce the volume and insistence of the inner critic. It’s never fully gone, though. And sometimes, it likes to reappear out of nowhere, for no obvious reason, just to remind me that it can wrestle me to the ground anytime it wants.

When that happens, it will usually dissipate much faster if I don’t resist or kick and scream. If I submit, the referee will soon pound the ground three times, and the asshole berater will realize he won. Then he will hopefully go off to a bar somewhere to celebrate, get shit-faced, and leave me alone for a while.

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

Based on my 50-plus years of self-research, I could easily make the correlation that earworms occur more frequently for people who tend to repeat events and conversations in their heads.

I won’t try to summarize the results of more than 500 psychotherapy sessions here (though I could, oh so easily). As a kid who felt he had to do everything himself, who became an adult who felt he had to do everything himself but with the added bonus of overwhelming imposter syndrome, I tended to rehearse impending events and conversations in my head so that I would be prepared for any potential dangers and outcomes. It’s like my brain had installed a red flags app that allowed me to see flashing warning signs everywhere I looked.

It was (and sometimes still is) like a less-comedic version of the 2022 HBO Nathan Fielder series, The Rehearsal. The trailer below sums up the concept of the show pretty well, but in short, Fielder helps people who are struggling with a tough decision (how to tell a close friend that you lied about your educational degrees; whether or not to have a child) be completely prepared for all possible outcomes to their situation. His team painstakingly builds exact replicas of their apartments and the pub they frequent most nights. He hires actors to play the roles of every person in the subject’s life. It’s ingenious, insane, inspired, and more than a little unnerving. Adjectives I’d love people to use to describe me and this newsletter!

Even though The Rehearsal takes what I do in my head to a ridiculous extreme, the essential message of the show and what I’ve learned via therapy and mindfulness practice is the same:

It’s good to be prepared but you cannot control the outcome of most situations.

So what does this have to do with earworms?

My thesis, the correlation I decided was true based on my 57-year self-study, is that people like me, who tend to overthink things, experience a greater percentage of earworms than the average non-busybrained human.

But I’m all about the science. I’m all about digging deep to find the truth.

If this takes more than a day, then I go with what I’ve got so far, as a true believer of the famous axiom, “Perfection is the enemy of good enough.”

What I got so far is this:

According to BBC Science Focus Magazine:

….the more important a person considers music, the more likely they are to experience earworms (catchy songs that play repeatedly through your mind). Psychologists consider earworms to be a specific kind of ‘involuntary memory’, so these associations make sense – the more you think about, practise, or listen to music, the more chance that memories of those experiences will spring to mind of their own accord.

That wasn’t really what I was looking for, but it is a factor that should be added to my self-study. I am a person who considers music important, so if this is true, it’s a major earworm risk factor. It’s one I should have considered, but one I won’t beat myself up about or let negative self-talk derail the momentum of my argument.

Perhaps people like me who overthink and overplan but don’t consider music important have fewer earworms because they are ignorant about music. They don’t have the musical vocabulary for fully developed earworms.

What else does BBC Science Focus Magazine have to say?

Personality is another relevant factor, with people high in the trait of open-mindedness being more prone to earworms (this is understandable given that this trait correlates with time spent listening to music). Another study found that people with less mental control were no more likely to experience earworms, although they did find them more disruptive and harder to stop.

Ah, so people who are open-minded (I will include people who are mindful in this category) tend to prioritize music, which in turn leads to persistent, consistent earworms. However, the first study says the opposite: that people with less mental control (feeble-minded) do not get more earworms.

In other words: Smart, open-minded and humble people (like me, for example), tend to have a higher occurrence of earworms due to their superior intelligence.

It’s all starting to make sense. So when I get that insistent TV commercial jingle stuck in my head, you know, the one from the 1990s for Band-Aids….

🎵“I am stuck on Band-Aids, cause Band-Aids are stuck on me!”🎵

….then it’s a sign that my brain is doing what it’s supposed to do: Access its selective memory receptors, imprint a catchy jingle, then recall and repeat. Ad nauseum. Ad infinitum.

What’s that?

I forgot about the last line in the BBC Science Focus quote? The part about people with less mental control finding earworms more disruptive and harder to stop?

Well, if having subpar mental control is what it takes to keep this newsletter humming along into year #3, then I’m happy to be a sloppy-brained mensch.

To summarize this far-traveling ramble:

1. People who are deep or shallow thinkers tend to get earworms at a higher rate than medium or non-thinkers.

2. Rehearsing is not the same as practicing.

3. Because the earth is round, if you wander off your path, you will eventually make it back home.

4. Beck’s “Loser” still holds up 30 years later, but we will never sing the proper lyrics.

5. Inner critic voices should be cartoon characters.

6. If you slice your finger and need a band-aid, it will heal faster if you sing the TV commercial jingle 20 times in a row.

   Discuss! And thanks for reading.

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