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“woke” is the new caravan.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

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

T R E 4 5 O N

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Infrastructure week. at last.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

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Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

No one could have predicted…

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This fight is for everything.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

American History and Black History Cannot Be Separated

Optimism opens the door to great things.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

You are here: Home / Music / Ear Worm Diary

Ear Worm Diary

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I’m very seriously considering starting an ear worm diary for all the various earworms I have throughout the day. It’s kind of amazing how many songs I catch myself singing. Here’s a sample from today. I woke to this:

A couple hours later, caught myself singing this:

Then there was this:

And this:

Then this happened:

Also, too:

And that was by noon. Does this mean anything? WHY ARE ALL THESE SONGS IN MY HEAD?

And no, I did not have the radio or tv on at all today while this was happening. They just popped into my membrane.

Reader Interactions

75Comments

  2. 2.

    General Stuck

    And no, I did not have the radio or tv on at all today while this was happening. They just popped into my membrane.

    Gotta be them government wifi beams tormenting you with 80’s (cough cough), music.

    No no, don’t look up silly. That’s what they want.

  4. 4.

    wonkie

    Now that pot is leagal in Washington I can leave this comment: pot smoking gives me ear worms. Loud ones. It isn’t pleasant.

  5. 5.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    WHY ARE ALL THESE SONGS IN MY HEAD?

    Vast spaces for entertaining?

    My earworm today was Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 after I heard that Van Cliburn had died. My copy is so worn out, but what a great performance.

  6. 6.

    R-Jud

    @wonkie: I wouldn’t know from pot, as an asthmatic, but I had this problem when I was on super-duper codeine pills last year. Also had freaky auditory hallucinations, e.g. hearing my father’s voice when my father is 3,500 miles away, etc.

  7. 7.

    Suffern ACE

    Well, I’ve got Burl Ives going through my head this afternoon. At least you’ve got cool stuff to share. Even my ear worms are too dated for the youth of today.

  8. 8.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    @R-Jud:

    Also had freaky auditory hallucinations, e.g. hearing my father’s voice when my father is 3,500 miles away, etc.

    I get auditory hallucinations when I’m falling asleep. Also phantom flashes of light. Both often prominent enough to render me wide awake. Frustrating.

    I get earworms when I’m under stress. My mind is charged up and working faster. During lull periods I think it just dredges up a tune to have something to do with itself.

  10. 10.

    PsiFighter37

    Not sure if anyone plays Starcraft here, but holy crap does this cinematic make me want March 12th to come sooner rather than later. And it’s got epic dubstep in the background, for good measure.

  12. 12.

    Meady

    The earworm I like that is currently haunting me is Bonnie Raitt “Love in the Nick of Time”. The earworm I hate that I can’t get out of my head is the theme song to Downton Abbey. I saw season 3 over the weekend. Get out of my head!!!

  16. 16.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    After decades, I have discovered a method for making an unwanted earworm depart: math story problems. I just start doing a math problem in my head and the earworm is gone by the time I’m done. And they don’t come back. I’m getting pretty good at taking the square roots of small fractions.

  18. 18.

    quannlace

    After listening to Prairie Home Companion this past Saturday, “Old Man Tucker’ kept going thru my head.

  20. 20.

    Culture of Truth

    I have auditory hallucinations of a cat meowing to be fed at 5:00 a.m.

    Since that can’t be actually happening it must be in my head.

  21. 21.

    Jennifa-oh-Jenny

    Been to the grocery store lately? The music playing in every supermarket is an endless loop of 80’s and 90’s soft rock… I have identified this as a frequent source of random Wham! earworm occurances…

  24. 24.

    Ken J.

    Bach’s 3rd Brandenburg Concerto.

    I blame excessive consumption of Wendy Carlos as a small child.

  25. 25.

    Mr Stagger Lee

    @Todd: (In a Charlton Heston impersonation)DAMN YOU DAMN YOU, DAMN YOU TO HELLLLLLL!!!!
    Anyway the other day, mine was Justin Timberlake’s Rock Your Body, you know the one where he sings

    I will get you naked before the end of this song

    Then Janet Jackson had that wardrobe malfunction.

  26. 26.

    JPL

    The songs that clutter my brain tend to depend on my political mood.. for example.. this one is for Scalia.. link

    Now in honor of the President, link
    Thank you Katy Perry

  31. 31.

    JCT

    I was in the locker room at the gym today (big state university) surrounded by, well, a bunch of sorority girls and one of them said “OMG” with just the right inflection to trigger a pretty wicked earworm – Frank Zappa’s “Valley Girl”.

    I couldn’t help myself and started to crack up, no doubt they were wondering what was wrong with the (PREMATURELY, thank you) white-haired woman in the corner. Sigh.

  33. 33.

    jl

    ” WHY ARE ALL THESE SONGS IN MY HEAD? ”

    Cole shouldn’t get worried until he hears mysterious voices in his head all day.

    Except of course, for the TunchVoice, is surely real, and which Cole damn well better mind, asap.

    Some pet pics would probably get those darned songs out of Cole’s head: pics of the new cat, and other animals totally ignoring it.

  34. 34.

    Melissa

    I had I‘ve been working on the railroad in my head on and off for a week. Started singing it to the dog on walks and now it’s gone as an earwig, but I still sing it to Lucky.

  35. 35.

    LGRooney

    Joe Walsh, “Life’s Been Good…” hit me about 11am and has been stuck in my head since. At least it wiped out Woody Guthrie’s “Worried Man Blues” which was stuck for a few days.

  39. 39.

    Maeve

    I tried to recall recent earworms – and I definitely have them a lot – but the thing is, a new one drive out the older and you can’t remember it.

    For various reasons, I have been trying to recall the lyrics of “podmoskovnia vechara”

    eslse vsnalie biue, kak mne dorogiue – etiu tixhiu bechera!

    it possibly makes more sense in the cyrilic alphabet

    No – I”m not Russian but I studies Russian in school – the previous earworm was Geoge Jones “It’s been a good year for the roses”

  40. 40.

    JGabriel

    John Cole @ Top:

    WHY ARE ALL THESE SONGS IN MY HEAD?

    Because you were a college radio DJ. It’s a professional hazard: LTEWI, Long-Term Ear-Wormitis.

    I occasionally suffer from it as well.

    .

  41. 41.

    MomSense

    @John Cole–I will trade you my earworm for any of yours any day!

    My 9 year old learned a song on the playground that is now tormenting the entire family.

    “My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard. They’re like it’s better than yours. Damn right it’s better than yours. I can teach you but I’d have to charge”

    All of us keep finding ourselves singing this now throughout the day –every day. AAARRRRGGGGHHHH. Not even the great earworm killer, Madonna’s Like a Virgin” can kill this infernal song.

    FML

  43. 43.

    MikeJ

    @LGRooney:

    Joe Walsh, “Life’s Been Good…” hit me about 11am

    He used to live two blocks over from me. Sometimes that song would hit me at 1am, and then I realised he was playing again.

  44. 44.

    steve

    “Look, this CPAC convention is increasingly the Star Wars bar scene of the conservative movement. I mean all that’s missing at that convention is a couple of Wookiees,”

    –steve schmidt

  45. 45.

    Steeplejack

    My (pleasant) earworm since the Oscars Sunday night has been Keegan DeWitt’s “Say La La.” Tracked it down immediately through the power of social media after hearing it used to great effect in a J.C. Penney ad.

    My criteria for an earworm are that it has to have some staying power and it has to displace other music. If Cole is going through so many songs before noon, how are those earworms and not just “songs that popped into my head”?

  46. 46.

    danielx

    WHY ARE ALL THESE SONGS IN MY HEAD?

    Still waiting for the inevitable response (not from me, you understand) from an insufferable music snob: because you have shitty taste.

    Also, too –

    @Eric U.:

    goddamnit!

  51. 51.

    Mike Dixon

    We should probably try to get “Joe McCarthy’s Ghost” played on tv, btw. It would be even better if Rachel or Fugelsang (most likely to play it) will interview Mike Watt for a half hour as well.

  54. 54.

    LGRooney

    @MikeJ: The dulcet tones of Joe’s guitar at 1am? I’d sleep like a baby… with a coke & alcohol addled guitarist playing with an amp turned up to 11! But, damned if he isn’t a talent.

  57. 57.

    gogol's wife

    You’re not going to believe this, but ever since I watched 7 minutes of the Oscars, I’ve had the controversial Seth McFarlane song going through my head. Simply cannot get it out. I sing it to my cats. They are unfazed.

  60. 60.

    Quaker in a Basement

    Due to a brief exchange yesterday with Thersites, I’ve had Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey running through my head for two days straight.

  62. 62.

    stoned stats

    Each morning between 3ish to 5ish, for the last eight months or so, I wake to pee and immediately have a different Bruce Springsteen earworm. Methinks I need to diversify my choices in music. But like you, Cole, I’ve thought about a journal for it.

  63. 63.

    Gus

    Total Eclipse of the Heart is a tough one. When I was a freshman that used to get played about every 2 hours. Couldn’t listen to the radio. Because I’m the father of a toddler the ear worm that’s killing me lately is the Thomas the Train theme song.

  67. 67.

    johnny aquitard

    Total eclipse of the heart. Ugh.

    That was a goddamn cheap shot. You bastard.

    That was cold, man. Really cold.

  71. 71.

    delosgatos

    Dang iPad. Sorry for the double post

    Oh, and… Total Eclipse of the Hearth??? Is that what a pot of water is for?

  72. 72.

    johnny aquitard

    @PsiFighter37: It’s been almost a decade since I played Starcraft, but sometimes I get the earworm of “For Adun!” and “Honor guide me!” and “Call the shot” and worst of all, (attempt at spelling) “Zapocazole!”

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