Can Negative Self-Talk and Rehearsing Increase Earworms?

How a half-century self-study correlates to a series of scientific studies on the topic of mental jibber-jabber and looping sound bites

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

For example: Does ruminating over a job interview where you were convinced you did poorly and would never be asked back for a 2nd interview, 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?

Not to get off track, but I never knew Beck was singing “Soy un perdedor.” Spanish for “I’m a loser,” if you don’t understand Spanish. Was he just wanting to show off his bilinguality? (That should be a word if it’s not.)

Clearly this song should have been referenced in the essay I wrote a few weeks ago about misheard lyrics. I mean, how many of you knew these were the words?

Oh you did know? Liars, every one of you.

I’m 99.9% certain that in 1993, and even to this day, whenever you were singing along, you were mumbling something like, “Oy, I’m a chemical,” or “Boy, you been here before.”

The truth is that the only words that stuck in our craws were from the song’s 2nd line: “I’m a loser baby, so why don’t you kill me?”

Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)

It’s kind of sad that I couldn’t even make it to the third paragraph before diverting over to the pretty colors of a new thought.

And there it pokes again, that pesky negative self-talk.

Though, to be fair, I’ve gotten better at not letting the self-talk stop me. I let it guide me down the side roads, let it think it’s in charge, all-the-while knowing deep in my soul that all roads eventually lead back to the same place.

Winchell’s Donuts.

Yum, donuts.

Where I live now, there are no Winchell’s Donuts. But where I grew up, in the San Fernando Valley area of Southern California just north west of Los Angeles, they were everywhere. Me and my high-school friends could be found there at lunch or after school, usually stoned out of our gourds, chomping on maple bars and chocolate frosted cake donuts with sprinkles. Donuts were amazing because you could get a baker’s dozen of them for like 3 bucks. You could send yourself into a sugar coma and emerge from it several hours later with a few cents left in your pocket. Those were the days.

But don’t feel sorry for me. Where I live now there are several excellent donut shops, all of which I’ve sampled prodigiously. Though I’m trying to cut back my sugar intake so no donuts until at least March.

Damnit. I did it again.

Okay. Focus, Steve. You can do this. Take a deep breath.

I could easily make the correlation that earworms occur more frequently for people who tend to repeat conversations in their heads, for people who replay traumatic and nerve-wracking experiences over and over, based on an extensive half-century self-study.

I won’t try and summarize the results of more than 500 psychotherapy sessions here (though I could, oh so easily). I will say though, that 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 and replay potential and impending events and conversations in my head as a way to punish myself for poor planning in the past, so that I would be better prepared for any outcome in the future.

It’s a lot like the recent HBO series The Rehearsal, with Nathan Fielder. 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. He rebuilds their apartments, the pub they frequent most nights, and hires actors to play the roles of every person in the subject’s life. It’s ingenious, insane, inspired and kind of unnerving. Adjectives I’ve always wanted people to use when describing me.

(Yes, I know that I’ve gone off on yet another tangent — I’m nothing if not a hyper-aware easily-distracted conundrum. But this will all tie together in a really big, really loose and unwieldy knot.)

So, even though The Rehearsal takes what I do in my head to an 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 55 year self-study, is that people like me who tend to over-think 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 finding the truth.

And if this takes more than a day, then I go with what I got so far and say “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 at, but it is a factor that should be added to my self-study. I am a person that considers music important, so if this is true, it’s a major earworm risk factor. 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.

Maybe people like me who over-think and over-plan, but don’t consider music important, have fewer earworms by dint of their ignorance about music. They don’t have the musical vocabulary for fully-developed earworms. Interesting.

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. But the first study kind of says the opposite: that people with less mental control (the feeble minded) do not get more earworms.

In other words: Smart, open-minded and humble people (like me, for example), tend to get 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 quote above? The part about people with less mental control finding earworms more disruptive and harder to stop? What are you trying to imply? That I don’t have strong mental control?

I can stop this jingle any time I want. I just have to stick my fingers in my ears and cry out “I am not stuck on bandaids” 20 times in a row while hula-hooping. Easy peasy.

I think that’s enough science for one dissertation. My brain is achy from so much smartness usage. Let’s summarize:

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

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

3. Beck’s music was better before he became a Scientologist.

4. Donuts are perfectly healthy in moderation.

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

6. The author of this dissertation still hasn’t watched the last two episodes of “The Rehearsal” but feels fine using it as a resource to defend his hypothesis. They don’t all die at the end, do they?

In a future post, I will return to my in-depth, scientific examinations on Earworms and Song Loops and their evolution from the early hominids to the modern-day humanoid.

My goal is to keep writing these earworm examinations weekly, with a second weekly shorter post that covers a variety of different topics, usually pop-culture related. I also want to start giving shout outs to my other writer friends here on the ol’ ‘Stack, as 2023 is the year of gratitude, latitude and raditude (in honor of my Weezer love).

As always, I appreciate feedback, suggestions, effusive praise and random complaints. I also adore when you share my writing with your friends, colleagues and neighbors.

Until the next time….

Steve