About A Week: Earworms
A victim of earworms? Peter Hinchliffe reveals that they are probably "haunting'' you even though you have never heard of them.
Yes indeed, I have experienced earworms. Snatches of songs or pieces of music which, at unexpected moments, start to repeat themselves over and over inside my head.
Never heard of earworms?
The term earworm is a literal English translation of the German word ohrwurm. An earworm is also sometimes called a sticky tune, or a cognitive itch.
You know the kind of thing. A catchy tune in a TV advert. A mushy pop song.
For reasons I can’t explain, I find myself humming a tune used in the early days of commercial television in Britain to advertise Pepsodent tooth paste. I even remember the words.
Excuse me mo while I have a little sing-along to myself.
“You’ll wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent.’’
Why oh why should I remember that? The ad never persuaded me to rush out and buy a tube of Pepsodent. To the best of my recollection I have never used the stuff in my life.
But the tune lingers on…
Along with others.
There’s “Big girls don’t cry’’ for instance. Another inane and pointless melody (if that’s the right word) and ditty.
In 1962 I emigrated to America. At the end of a working day as a reporter on the Wichita Falls Times in Texas, I would return to a sparsely-furnished oven-hot flat, switch on KWFT radio, and hear Franki Valli and the Four Seasons belt out that song.
Ready for a burst?
“Big girls don’t cry, they don’t cry
Big Girls don’t cry, who said they don’t cry
My girl said goodbya-yi-yi, my, oh, my
My girl didn’t cry, I wonder why?
Silly boy, told my girl we had to break up
Silly boy, thought that she would call my bluff
Silly boy, then she said to my surprise
Big girls don’t cry….’’
Yellow teeth and Pepsodent, big girls that don’t cry…and there is a third earworm that from time to time wriggles through my brain.
Be-bop-a-lula.
Remember it? Gene Vincent and the Bluecaps? I do, all too clearly.
“Well be-bop-a-lula, she’s my baby,
Be-bop-a-lula I don’t mean maybe.
Be-bop-a-lula she’s my baby
Be-bop-a-lula she’s my baby love,
My baby love, my baby love.’’
Another splendid outpouring of Shakespearean lyrics, eh?
I mean, this is embarrassing! Here am I, a chap with a passionate enthusiasm for the music of Mozart and Beethoven, Schubert and Haydn, walking around with primitive rock ‘n roll lyrics slopping around inside my head.
All to do with memory, I suppose. Those early days of UK television, A tiny black-and-white screen, not much bigger in area than a book. Those early unsophisticated adverts which looked as though they had been filmed in draughty church halls by crews using camera and lighting for the very first time…
And a Pepsodent jingle comes dashing through my thoughts.
The simmering heat of summer on the high Texas plains, the excitement of discovering a whole new country, the stark bare flat that was my hidey-hole from a sometimes overwhelmingly alien world…
And non-crying big girls stamp their rhythmic feet through my subconscious thoughts.
A dressing room in a theatre in Bradford, Yorkshire. There I am as a young rock ‘n roll reporter, interviewing Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran (and not many days after that interview Eddie Cochran was killed in a road accident)…
And I find myself silently singing Be-bop-a-lula.
Earworms can be so annoying.
On the other hand they can unlock the vaults which contain treasure troves of memories.
