AUDIO: THE EARWORM ERASER
Do you ever get a song stuck in your head and it just keeps looping around and around? That’s known as an earworm. It’s usually a section of a song that’s particularly memorable – what’s known as a “hook” – a predictable series of notes and chord progressions that are designed to make you remember the song. Like the Baby Shark song, or a TV theme song, or pretty much anything by Taylor Swift. Kelly Jakubowski, a professor of music psychology at Durham University in the United Kingdom has come up with the Earworm Eraser – a 40-second audio track designed specifically to squash earworms. Every few seconds, it switches between fast and slow tempos, different time signatures and musical styles. The Earworm Eraser has been posted on YouTube for a while, it’s had more than 100,000 hits.
* Now I have the phrase “Earworm Eraser” repeating in my head.
* Usually I just listen to Imagine Dragons and that puts me off music entirely for the rest of the day. (or: Cardi B, Lil Pump, Bhad Bhabie, 6ix9ine)
* I’d be afraid that the Earworm Eraser would lay little music eggs in my brain, and then when they hatch my head would be crawling with all these little song snippets I can’t get rid of.
* Now I’m worried about the rest of the songs I’m gonna play this morning.
* Have everybody on your team, and your listeners, get a song in their head, then play the Earworm Eraser below, and see if it works.
CLIP: The Earworm Eraser.
