Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

A consequence of cucumbers

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

I really should read my own blog.

You cannot shame the shameless.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

The GOP is a fucking disgrace.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Eternal Sunshine

Eternal Sunshine

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For no reason that I can think of, the following song has been stuck in my head since I woke up this morning:

Still one of the best theme songs, I think.

I saw a show on the National Geographic channel a while back that said that a series of Air Force tests on human reactions to extreme G forces years ago offered evidence that when people experience the “light at the end of the tunnel” in near death experiences, that it was actually the brain shutting down non essential functions due to oxygen deprivation. I have read a couple of books on memory for various classes, but I simply don’t remember any theories as to why songs get “stuck in our head.” Anyone know?

*** Update ***

Via the comments, this, which is just all sorts of excellent:

Listen to it a couple times, and spend one just listening to the guy singing “big baboon.” Reminds me of the background riff (the musical name is escaping me atm) to “Hey Ladies.” I had never heard of Moxy Fruvous before.

Reader Interactions

89Comments

  1. 1.

    kid bitzer

    I simply don’t remember any theories as to why songs get “stuck in our head.”

    if you’re asking about that song you’ve already answered the question:

    oxygen deprivation.

  4. 4.

    TheFountainHead

    My personal theory (based on nothing) is that I get songs stuck in my head when I am trying to mentally avoid dealing with some unpleasant issue. Like if I have a Led Zeppelin song stuck in my head all day, that generally means I should apologize to the girlfriend for something I did.

    YMMV

  7. 7.

    raff

    They’re pretty obscure outside of Canada (& even in Canada), but if you can find it, check Moxy Fruvous’ a cappella version of the Spider-man theme.

    Come to think of it, if you can any Fruvous, check ’em out. Worth the effort.

    [edit]
    Duh, I don’t know why I didn’t think of youtube to begin with:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYh7x9UX0vI

    Enjoy!

  8. 8.

    kid bitzer

    also some credit to henry mancini for the peter gunn theme, which this resembles, speeded up.

  14. 14.

    Punchy

    I simply don’t remember any theories as to why songs get “stuck in our head.” Anyone know?

    The power of Ice Cube’s rhymes compells me to repeat them. Softly. Changing the n-word to something else, like a pause.

  16. 16.

    Axe Diesel Palin

    The series ran in the 70s I believe. A testament to the longevity of the song is that it was parodied in “The Simpsons Movie” and referenced repeatedly in the blockbuster Spiderman movies with Tobey Maguire.

  18. 18.

    Xenos

    Early 70s- I used to watch it at 11:00 am on weekdays, from the UHF Channel 38 from Springfield, MA. It was the highlight of being home sick from school, because otherwise it was seven hours of soap operas on every network channel.

    The key was to set the bent wire hanger stuck in the broken rabbit-ears just right… great god I am such an old fart.

  19. 19.

    TheFountainHead

    Yeah, nothing sends me into a mindlock of rhythm like Ice Cube’s lyrics. I got my locs on.

  21. 21.

    Riggsveda

    Here’s the best concise explanation I could find:

    The word "earworm" was popularized by James Kellaris, a marketing professor at the University of Cincinnati, who has done a great deal (for better or worse) to bring this phenomenon to the forefront of the study of advertising techniques.

    We don’t know much about what causes earworms, but it could be the repeating of the neural circuits that represent the melody in our brains. It might also have to do with some of the findings of researchers Alan Baddely and Graham Hitch, and the model of working memory, the part of the brain that practices and repeats verbal information [source: Models of Working Memory]. In 1974 Baddely and Hitch discovered what they called the phonological loop, which is composed of the phonological store (your "inner ear," which remembers sounds in chronological order) and the articulatory rehearsal system (your "inner voice," which repeats these sounds in order to remember them). This area of the brain is vital in early childhood for developing vocabulary and in adulthood for learning new languages.

    Source here cause I’m too lazy to use HTML:
    http://money.howstuffworks.com/commercial-jingle2.htm

  22. 22.

    raff

    Spidey trivia: That particular version of the Spider-Man series was directed by Ralph Bakshi (Fritz the Cat, Lord of the Rings, American Pop, etc.) & was produced by the same studio that did Rocket Robin Hood.

    God, those were some bad cartoon (which I watched everyday without fail…).

  23. 23.

    Bill H

    …offered evidence that when people experience the “light at the end of the tunnel” in near death experiences, that it was actually the brain shutting down non essential functions due to oxygen deprivation.

    Okay, but how do they explain "out of body" near death experiences, which are just as common?

  24. 24.

    Ruth

    Obviously it’s the music of the spheres. Since for me it’s usually something like "Frosty the Snowman" I suspect it’s closely allied with Poe’s insistence that we are drawn to our own destruction, the Abyss.

  26. 26.

    sus

    Bill H., I had an out of body experience when I was about 4 or 5 years old. As a kid, I had a hard time trying to explain to my mother and grandmother how I was just flying around, but trying to tell them I was fine. I had fallen and hit my head.

    I could see and hear everything. It was cool.

  29. 29.

    Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse

    OMG, raff, you had to bring up Rocket Robin Hood, didn’t you?

    The concept: New Sherwood Forest Asteroid
     (this SO needs an Obama mashup!)

    Not only was this one of the most bizarre, cheap tv cartoons ever, it gave us earworms with no redeeming value. In fact, all the earworms used the same melody with different lyrics.

    The Villain Thinks

    There’s more on YouTube. Enter at your own risk.

  30. 30.

    Fwiffo

    …Ralph Bakshi (Fritz the Cat, Lord of the Rings, American Pop, etc.)…

    Also, the roto-scoped majesty of Wizards. All great things to rent if you don’t have any weed but you want to feel like you’re extremely high.

  33. 33.

    raff

    Also, the roto-scoped majesty of Wizards.

    Not to mention one of my all-time favourite films, "Heavy Traffic". ‘Heavy’ indeed…

  36. 36.

    The Moar You Know

    I have read a couple of books on memory for various classes, but I simply don’t remember any theories as to why songs get “stuck in our head.” Anyone know?

    I don’t know, but as a still-sometimes songwriter, I find the earworm a great sign as to whether the new tune in my head is worth keeping or not. As it turns out, you don’t have to actually hear the song to get it stuck in the ol’ brain.

  37. 37.

    Fwiffo

    Oh, and did I mention the splendid HoYay of Hercules?

    I can never get over the amount of homoeroticism in old childrens’ cartoons. "Softness in his eyes and iron in his thighs." Wow.

  38. 38.

    Jeff

    @11, The only thing I thought was really funny in "The Simpsons" movie was the lyrics to "Spider-Pig":

    Spider-Pig, Spider-Pig,
    Does whatever a Spider-Pig does
    Can he swing from a web?
    No he can’t, he’s a pig…

  39. 39.

    Glocksman

    Okay, but how do they explain "out of body" near death experiences, which are just as common?

    My experience wasn’t ‘out of body’, but a ‘blast from the past’.
    Back in 2006, my heart stopped twice while recovering from valve replacement surgery.

    Once was while I was sleeping, and I don’t remember a thing.
    The other time was while I was eating breakfast with my sister.

    I ‘relived’ events from when I was a little kid for a while, then I woke up and the Doc told me I’d need a pacemaker.
    Strange, but oxygen deprivation might explain it.

    My sister told me that I was talking and all of a sudden my eyes rolled back, my head tilted over, and then it seemed every instrument in the room started screeching and a platoon of nurses ran in and literally shoved her out the door.

  40. 40.

    Svensker

    …offered evidence that when people experience the “light at the end of the tunnel” in near death experiences, that it was actually the brain shutting down non essential functions due to oxygen deprivation.

    Maybe what happens when the brain shuts down is that you experience the tunnel. Doesn’t mean the tunnel isn’t real — you are dying, after all.

  43. 43.

    Original Lee

    OT, I know, but WRT to Sousa on yesterday’s threads:

    The alleged reason why Sousa’s marches are so distinctive and why nobody else has been able to write a "Sousa" march is because Sousa wrote them all of a piece. In other words, when he wrote a march, he wrote the melody, with harmonization shorthand, from beginning to end and then went back and wrote the harmonization out in full, from beginning to end. He rarely edited or changed notes once he had them written down. This may also explain why the French horn/saxophone/tenor instrument parts are so monotonous and boring – he was thinking about his ensemble when he wrote the pieces (and I’m pretty sure he didn’t have French horns or saxophones in his ensemble), so when he was asked to write out full orchestration later, he just wrote in oom-pah parts that fit with the harmonization already on paper instead of thinking up new melodic lines.

    Handel, OTH, wrote his choral works thinking about particular singers, which is why even the harmonic parts are generally fun to sing but the solo parts for alto tend to suck.

  45. 45.

    Brick Oven Bill

    This is a very good question. There is no doubt that by adding rhythm and tones to a message, that the message can become more powerful. Music has to be based in evolution, and I suspect that it is associated with mobilizing groups of humans to act as a body.

    Why a particular song? Probably the human mind associating that song with a pleasant experience, and our natural inclination to avoid conflict.

  46. 46.

    Billy K (D-TX)

    Someone want to provide the title of the song, for those of us with YouTube blocked?

    I thought we’d talked about this…

  47. 47.

    chris mohr

    My candidate for "worst song that’s likely to get stuck in your head from mere mention of it" is:

    "It’s a Small World After All"

    There. I’ve likely ruined your whole day trying to get rid of it from your head, and likely random snatches of your whole next week as well.

  48. 48.

    chris mohr

    My candidate for "worst song that’s likely to get stuck in your head from mere mention of it" is:

    "It’s a Small World After All"

    There. I’ve likely ruined your whole day trying to get rid of it from your head, and likely random snatches of your whole next week as well.

  49. 49.

    chris mohr

    My candidate for "worst song that’s likely to get stuck in your head from mere mention of it" is:

    "It’s a Small World After All"

    There. I’ve likely ruined your whole day trying to get rid of it from your head, and likely random snatches of your whole next week as well.

  50. 50.

    sus

    I always have some sort of soundtrack going on in my head. Always some music happening in there. Sometimes it gets stuck on a song, but there’s always some kind of music happening in there.

  51. 51.

    Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse

    Nice try, dude. I’ve already been inoculated by Rocket Robin Hood. Nothing can get past it. I pee on your "Small World".

  52. 52.

    rawshark

    @Xenos:

    I watched it on 38 in Boston but it was on after school. This was late 70’s for me so maybe they moved it later.

  53. 53.

    gnomedad

    Every time I hear the phrase earworm, I think of babelfish and Douglas Adams.

    Really? I think of Khan. Have a nice day.

  54. 54.

    Cain

    Speaking of songs stuck in your head, I really need to thank John ever so much for mentioning "The Facts of Life" because I had that damn theme song running around in my head for hours before I could exorcise it. Arrgh!

    Xenos,

    I did the same thing and I’m not 40 yet in regards to the wire hanger and rabbit ears. Although I would tune the UHF channels to get some show. The other thing was to tune teh HBO channels such that I could at least hear them! That was in the early 80s.

    Spiderman was one of my fav cartoons back in that era.
    Didn’t the Ramones have a version of that same theme song?

    cain

  55. 55.

    Kirk Spencer

    Actually, I can kill those spiderman, rocket robin hood and small world earworms easily – and I happen to like hearing (for a while) what I use.

    Lolly lolly lolly get your adverbs here…

  58. 58.

    Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse

    I LOVE the adverb song! Not suffering here, nope!

    Oh, and then there’s Frankenpop.

    Her fingers and palm slipped gracefully over the panel. A tune of utter monotony filled the room with agonizing, unforgettable banality. It was the quintessence of every melodic cliché Reich had ever heard. No matter what melody you tried to remember, it invariably led down the path of familiarity to "Tenser, Said The Tensor." Then Duffy began to sing:

    Eight, sir; seven, sir;
    Six, sir; five, sir;
    Four, sir; three, sir;
    Two, sir; one!
    Tenser, said the Tensor.
    Tenser, said the Tensor.
    Tension, apprehension,
    And dissension have begun.

    "Oh my God!" Reich exclaimed.

    "I have some real gone tricks in that tune," Duffy said, still playing. "Notice the beat after ‘one’? That’s a semicadence. Then you get another beat after ‘begun.’ That turns the end of the song into a semi-cadence, too, so you can’t ever end it. The beat keeps you running in circles, like: Tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun. RIFF. Tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun. RIFF. Tension, appre—"

    "You little devil!" Reich started to his feet, pounding his palms on his ears. "I’m accursed. How long is this affliction going to last?"

    "Not more than a month."

  60. 60.

    Buck

    @sus:

    Glad somebody else said it. I am awakened almost every morning by a song. This morning it was "Some Devil" by Dave Matthews. Sometimes it might be a song I have not heard in 40 years.

    Many times I hear music when nobody else hears it and it is as clear as a bell to me. Sometimes it is songs that I have never heard before and never hear again. Just tunes. If I had any fillings in my teeth I would figure I was picking up radio signals.

    I know it is fucked up. I have just learned to live with it and in fact find it kind of enjoyable.

  61. 61.

    Molly McRae

    "why songs get “stuck in our head"

    Repetition. Rhyme. Rhythm. Mostly repetition, for me anyway. I can still recite the ADA testimonial from the early 1960’s Crest commercials:

    Crest has been shown to be an effective decay preventive dentifrice that can be of significant value when used in a conscientiously applied program of oral hygiene and regular professional care.

    I didn’t google it so maybe my memory is not exactly right but it is damn close after almost fifty years. It’s kind of ironic since I haven’t used Crest for decades.

  62. 62.

    raff

    I read an article a while back that sort of addressed the ‘earworm’ phenomenon. The scientist (or prof, or whatever) wrote that it was a type of auditory hallucination, something about the brain’s need to fill a silence. I’m not sure I buy the auditory hallucination angle, but the rest of the article was pretty interesting, talking about the complexity involved in listening to music (the way your brain separates the various instruments in a song & the song itself from other background noises).

    For me, the last song I hear will stick in my head — replaying endlessly — until I hear another song. It’s very annoying, especially if I was just in a store that was playing Madonna or some-such. The cure is simple enough though: just play a different song. It’s those times when I thank god for my iPod.

  63. 63.

    Jennifer

    That Spiderman theme is so insistent that it flashed on me and stuck in my head the first time I met this woman named Snyderman. At the time, I hadn’t seen the cartoon or heard the song in over 15 years. But thanks to that initial connection, every time from then on out that I saw or thought of Ms. Snyderman, I’d get the song running in my head.

  65. 65.

    Jennifer

    I know of a deadly earworm – the Diesel Driving Academy theme song. May have only been on local tv, but if not, you all know what I’m talking about.

  69. 69.

    Laura W

    When I really want to impress someone, I pull out the big guns and sing The Preposition Song to the tune of "Yankee Doodle", of course.

    I’ve watched a dozen renditions of this on youtube, each one with a different list. Is there not a universally agreed upon list of prepositions? This troubles me deeply.

    (My iPod died last week. Now I have to wait for a SanDisk something or other to arrive from amazon. Sucks to have to reload it all. But a good excuse to get fresh stuff on it, I suppose.)

  71. 71.

    R-Jud

    One of my uncles helped build some of the components– hydraulic pumps maybe?– for "It’s A Small World" before it went to the World’s Fair. Then he did two tours in Vietnam and had the song stuck in his head the ENTIRE TIME he was over there. The horror, the horror.

    I studied piano until I was 16 and I still get Hanon exercises or bits of The Art of Fugue stuck in my head– usually just a few measures, repeated endlessly. Thank God for the iPod.

  72. 72.

    Lunatic Fringe

    It would probably be for the best if no one ever discovers precisely what it is that makes a song stick in your head. I read a story in Analog quite a number of years ago about just that, it ended up becoming a huge disaster because the researchers developed songs and jingles that were simply so distracting that no one could function, civilization basically ground to a halt, planes crashed because the pilots could not concentrate on flying, etc, etc..

    A bit far-fetched perhaps but not entirely beyond the realm of the possible.

  74. 74.

    CJ

    George… George… George of the Jungle…….

    Sorry… that’s the one that gets me. damn… just got myself.

  75. 75.

    rawshark

    The most evil jingle in the world.

    ‘They say a man should always dress for the job he wants
    so why’m I dressed up like a pirate in this restaurant……’

  77. 77.

    passerby

    It’s funny you should post this John. Since yesterday, I’ve got a few bars of Copeland’s music stuck in my head after hearing the John Williams Inaugural composition. It played all afternoon and into the evening. It played even as I was falling asleep and it was still playing when I woke this morning.

    I heard a piece on NPR about this phenom a couple of years ago and it was suggested that, to dislodge stuck music, supplant it with the "America" tune from West-side Story: "I want to be in A-me-ree-ka, O-kay by me in A-me-ree-ka…"

    I haven’t gotten it to work yet. I guess it could be worse, at least I’m not stuck on the Spidey tune which actually does happen on occasion. The Copeland bars morph into a small tune "Tis a Gift to Be Simple, Tis a Gift to be Free". S’not bad.

    [shrugs]

  78. 78.

    dbt

    Second the recommendation of Fruvous. Their version of Green Eggs and Ham. Their original work is also pretty awesome. King of Spain and the Gulf War Song are some personal favorites.

  79. 79.

    bvac

    There’s a lot of scientific research about how the brain processes music, but this one stuck out in my mind: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4332771.stm. I used to have a link to a more in depth piece but thats the best I could find with a few seconds of googling.

    And for my money, italian spiderman(not quite the version I’m thinking of, but close) is the catchiest song ever. It was stuck in my head for an entire year once.

  80. 80.

    cmorenc

    The most evil jingle in the world.

    They say a man should always dress for the job he wants
    so why’m I dressed up like a pirate in this restaurant……

    I actually like this jingle and the advert it’s part of – it’s really well done, and gets the intended message across in an entertaining way. Admittedly, it does get annoyingly old by the 24th (or is it 42nd?) time you see it.

    It also perfectly illustrates how enormous a disconnect there can be between the quality of presentation in an advertisement and the actual quality of the underlying product or service it’s selling. From many accounts I’ve read, "FreeCreditReport.com" evokes some…shall we say questions of its own with regard to consumers. Awareness of that background may be what sours some people on the commercial.

    The inverse example of the same principle is the atrocious original "Head-On" commercial, which drove people away from what might actually be a fairly decent (if quite ordinary) pain-relieving product.

  82. 82.

    eglenn

    For those interested, emusic has three Moxy Fruvious albums, but not the one with ‘Spiderman’. And it looks like ‘Green Eggs and Ham’ is a concert-only song (I’d love to be wrong about that).

    If you aren’t an emusic member, I’ve heard that adding ‘/gm’ to the url gives the best free trial offer.

  83. 83.

    colleeniem

    I hereby third the moxy fruvos recommendation. The Gulf War song is some amazing writing, and the green eggs and ham song is great for (spoken) comedic timing.

  84. 84.

    R-Jud

    I fourth the Moxy Fruvous recommendation. I saw them live a few times while at college in Ithaca, NY. Loads of goofy fun, especially things like "King of Spain" and "Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors". Whatever happened to them?

  85. 85.

    R-Jud

    @R-Jud:

    Also, the "Greatest Man in America" song on the B Album is entirely devoted to mocking Rush Limbaugh.

    "He’s a dose of PT Barnum
    With a Mussolini twist
    There in the limousine
    Parked on the lawn
    He’s a goofy Genghis Khan…"

  86. 86.

    raff

    @John Cole,

    Dude, I know I’m only an occaisional poster here, but no "h/t" for the Fruvous/Spidey linkage? Boo! (Btw, sorry for the multiple posts… it looked like my first two posts were eated, only to re-appear a while later.)

    Regardless, I urge anyone who’s a fan of harmonies & strong melodies to give the Fruvous a listen. Check out "Stuck in the 90’s":

    Clem had a daydream, daydream from heaven
    Picked up the headline, his country was made up of singers
    And no more right-wingers

    He wakes up to "Homeless are stupid, welfare is stupid
    Private investment efficiency, cool fiscal plannin’"
    Sounds like more Pat Buchanan

    & The Gulf War Song

    What makes a person so poisonous righteous
    That they’d think less of anyone who just disagreed?
    She’s just a pacifist, he’s just a patriot
    If I said you were crazy, would you have to fight me?

    Both songs were written in the 90’s… plus ca change, I guess.

  87. 87.

    Krista

    I’ll add a voice to the Moxy Fruvous recommendations. I saw them in university during my freshman year (they opened for Jann Arden), and they were just so much fun! Full of energy, dynamic, fantastic harmonies. I had never heard any of their songs prior to seeing them live, but immediately became a fan.

    As far as what they’re doing now, Jian Ghomeshi has a show "Q" on CBC Radio 1. It’s a really good show, so I recommend checking it out. Murray Foster is playing bass for Great Big Sea (awesome Maritime drinking music, if nobody’s ever heard them…). The others aren’t doing a whole lot, but if they ever reunited, I’d be thrilled.

    "The Drinking Song" is my favourite of theirs.

  88. 88.

    andy

    Love the Fruvous. I think my favorite album of theirs is "Wood," less tongue-in-cheek than the others, not that tongue-in-cheek is bad.

    When I think back to the good things I got out of my relationship with a Canadian ex, Moxy Fruvous tops the list.

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