Neither Orkin Pest Control, nor your audiologist can treat or cure an ear-worm. It is not fatal. It is not harmful. Frustrating? Yes. Annoying? Thoroughly. But once it gets in your head, there is little you can do to remove it. You may try to block it. Once it is there, it is there ad interim To be clear, an ear-worm is not a worm; it is that tune fragment from a catchy song you heard—a sound-loop playing over and over in your head. According to Harvard Medical School, “Ear-worms” are unwanted catchy tunes that repeat in your head. These relentless tunes play in a loop in up to 98% of people in the western world.
The reason it is difficult to get rid of an ear-worm is because you attempt to block it. Austrian Psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl calls it Paradoxical Intention. Psychiatrists now employ Paradoxical Intention with some patients to help them face and deal with fear. Another example of Paradoxical intention; while riding a bicycle, you see a pothole in the path. You keep telling yourself, “miss that pothole!” Result; you hit the pothole—because pothole was your focus. In some reports an ear-worm is also called an “Ironic Process.”
While agreeing with with real scientists, I also advise you not to try using will power to get rid of an ear-worm. The harder you try, the more ingrained it becomes. Ironic Process? Paradoxical Intention? They are good descriptions. I have known for years that Psychiatrists of note advise that instead of trying to block out the ear-worm …relax, accommodate it—let it play out. A few weeks ago, a catchy tune caught my ear. I tried to ignore it. It stuck for days! My trying hard to ignore it, dug it deeper into a brain groove. I finally said, “Oh heck! Let it play.” In time it faded among thousands of other tunes in my head.
In Psychology Today, Kelly Jakubowski Ph.D wrote an article on “Memory;” she said there could be benefits from ear-worms; 1) The majority of ear-worms do not seem particularly bothersome, 2) New research shows that ear- worms can improve memory for music and related events, and 3) ear-worms may also boost our moods in a similar way as listening to music externally. The advertising industry learned their value long ago; The first catchy tune used this way was in 1926, featuring the line “Have You Tried Wheaties?”.by a Barber Shop quartet.
When I was a kid, our pastor and his wife taught us to sing “Choruses—short songs with catchy tunes—unlike the long, laborious, songs in the hymnal. Decades later, I sometimes still hum those tunes. Charles Wesley knew the value of catchy tunes with songs that teach basics of the faith. He wrote more than 6,500 hymns, many still widely used.
This morning’s news reported that Brian Wilson, founder of The Beach Boys, died—this link refreshes an ear-worm for you.
©Copyright Willis H. Moore 2025