What's Stuck in Your Head?

Sun_Fortune

There's this commercial for some kind of cleaning product: Its better with Sprayaay! Cant get it out of my head. Just that part. ive probably sung it like 50 times today. Totally compulsive. Before that it was We can dance if we want to/We can leave our fears behind.You'd think that with all the good music I liseten to, Id get something better stuck in my head. Does that mean something? How come one usually only gets one or two bars stuck in one's head, that kind of loop over and over again. Why, for no apparent reason, does something get unstuck. Whats the science behind it? I really hope that all the singing of Its better with the Sprayay! hasnt just super-reinforced that neural connection into my long term memory. I have the feeling that one day when Im seventy, Ill bust into We can Dance i we want to... Whats stuck in your head????

Big_Chan

Whats stuck in your head????

The breakdown from L.T.D.s "Love To The World"

Hotsauce84

Swayze

Whats stuck in your head????

The breakdown from L.T.D.s "Love To The World"

UnDos3

GO! GO ! GO ! GO !

Nineteen ninety
Chubb Rock jumps up on the scene
With a lean
And a pocket full of green...

can anyone hit me up with the full track of this?

Big_Stacks

"Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley. I can't escape it!!!! Agggggghhhh!!!!!

Peace,

Big Stacks from Kakalak

TheBeatGoes

Four Top's "she's an understanding woman"

"she's right on time....YEAAAH"

bthav

when ever i take a test, for some reason summer of '69 pops in my head.

BeatChemist

I saw a musical stage adaptation of Reefer Madness last week and I keep finding myself humming songs from it. I don't usually have the same thing stuck in my head for this long... it's kinda creeping me out.

pjl2000xl

that 2 wont do by jay dee has been in my head for the last few days. all day long. Im starting to hate it now.

heres a lil insight on this phenomenon.

UC associate professor of marketing James J. Kellaris

Having songs "stuck in your head" happens to nearly all of us. Ninety-nine percent of study respondents said they have experienced the phenomenon. Almost 50 percent say that it occurs frequently.

Kellaris, an expert on the influences of music on consumers, reported preliminary results on his work last month at the Society for Consumer Psychology's winter conference. He has a sample of 1,000 respondents to work with in analyzing his theory that certain songs create a sort of "cognitive itch" - the mental equivalent of an itchy back.

"It is like the familiar pattern of itching and scratching," Kellaris says. "The only way to 'scratch' a cognitive itch is to rehearse the responsible tune mentally. The process may start involuntarily, as the brain detects an incongruity or something 'exceptional' in the musical stimulus. The ensuing mental repetition may exacerbate the 'itch,' such that the mental rehearsal becomes largely involuntary, and the individual feels trapped in a cycle or feedback loop."

Kellaris' research seeks to identify characteristics of music that make them memorable. His preliminary work points in three directions he believes play a role:

# Repetition: One theme song that respondents reported as getting stuck in their heads often was "Mission: Impossible." Kellaris was not surprised. "A repeated phrase, motif or sequence might be suggestive of the very act of repetition itself, such that the brain echoes the pattern automatically as the musical information is processed," he says.

# Musical simplicity: Simpler songs appear more likely to make your brain itch. Anyone who has ever had the misfortune of getting Barney's "I Love You, You Love Me" song stuck can attest to that. Generally, children's songs are more prone to getting stuck than classical music, Kellaris says.

# Incongruity: When a song does something unexpected, it can also spark a cognitive itch. Examples include the irregular time signatures of Dave Brubeck's "Take Five" or the song "America" from West Side Story. Unpredictable melodic patterns or an unexpectedly articulated individual note can have the same impact.

Kellaris is now taking an in-depth look at the survey data he has collected. Of the 1,000 respondents, the kind of music respondents said they got stuck on most recently were songs with lyrics for 73.7 percent, jingles or ads for 18.6 percent and an instrumental tune for 7.7 percent.

But, there's hope. Respondents also reported on the strategies they use to try and rid themselves of stuck tunes. Individual responses ranged from direct approaches like "trying to get busy doing something else" or "reading out loud" to acts of humorous desperation, such as "trying to give the 'tune kooties' to someone else, like (playing) tag, you're it!"

parsec

heard the Lemon Pipers - green tambourine in a store earlier today and its been stuck ever since..

fishmongerfunk

"just my imagination" and its kind of cloying. in canada a&w (good burgers-but salty) has this bullshit sentimental commercial where there are two older people out on a first date and they are walking back to the car complaining about the skimpy and odd haute cuisne they have just consumed and its supposed to be really awkward and then she says goodnight and he politely realizes she's not into him and just as he turns she says "wait". "want to get some dinner?" to which he responds "we already ate dinner" and she retorts, "no, we didn't". then we see them in an a&w eating burgers and they are all comfoprtable and shit and the manager comes up to them and asks them if they want dessert to which they both smugly reply, "this is dessert". firstly, why did they have to ruin that song and secondly when has anyone ever been offered dessert at a&w by a manager as they sit in a booth?

OneSoul

I've had the theme song from 'weeds' stuck in my head for a few days now:

"little boxes, on the hillside, little houses, made of ticky tacky...."

although I did do a search on it and found out that it's by an old bay area folk singer Malvina Reynolds and the song was written about Daly City which I thought was pretty interesting...

hcrink

Malvina is awesome.

TheeeCasualMale

War "Sing a Happy Song"

Garcia_Vega

The Beatles "Dear Prudence" after hearing it on the radio yesterday, I never want to hear that song again.

hcrink

The Beatles "Dear Prudence" after hearing it on the radio yesterday, I never want to hear that song again.

trippin dude.

don_gigante

'Its Amazing' by Little Milton...ripped it to mp3 last nite and its been stedadily replaying itself....

Jonny_Paycheck

LONDYLONDYLONDY

G_Balliando

Whats stuck in your head????

that damn song on the new ludacris where he repeats over and over:

"I know it's strange but my brain's gone really insane, and I'm off the chain, sippin' on a fifth of the golden grain, I feel like slappin a n***a today (slappin a n***a today slap slap)"

very catchy, but I can't sing it out loud. bummer. I woke up this morning hearing this shit in my head. I'm going to hate it soon.

CousinLarry

For a whole summer I had Dire Straights - Money is for nothing stuck in my head.
It was fucking torture.

Junior

Normally at work I have something on the MOR tip (Atlantic Starr have been making unwelcomed appearances in my head recently).

However the thread the other week about Nice & Smooth encouraged me to dig out my old albums. Now thanks to Sometimes I Rhyme Slow I have the first two bars of Fast Car going round and round and round my brain.