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I Said Concerning The Earworm, NOT The Sandworm!

Greetings from The Music Bowl! I'm the Wonderfish.

On this fine #throwbackthursday, let us take a moment to reminisce about that classic cult film from the eighties, Beetlejuice. There are seriously so many things we love about this Tim Burton work; the actors, the costumes, the sets, the spin-off cartoon on Nickelodeon, which my sister and I watched everyday when we got home from school (and would still watch today, unashamedly, if it was on any of the channels!), Michael Keaton's delivery of those oh so quotable one liners, and how about that soundtrack? Can we give a nice round of applause for Harry Belafonte and Danny Elfman, please?

To be honest, the Sandworms freaked me right out:



See what I mean? I could barely watch those scenes. But I loved Michael Keaton because he was Batman, I loved Catherine O'Hara because she was funny, I loved Lydia's character because she was an artsy introvert, and I loved the music! In fact, it keeps getting better every time I see it! Sorry, movie quote, I couldn't help myself.

Anyway, I bring this lovely little cinematic gem up because whenever I am reminded of it, I am visited not by a Sandworm but by an earworm. Before you can say Beetlejuice three times, I have the fiddle melody from Harry Belafonte's Jump In The Line in my head, and it repeats over and over and over...



Oh, you darn earworms!!!

As promised, I kept an earworm journal for 6 days and I will share my findings with you next time, but, first, I wanted you to see some scholarly tidbits on this neurological phenomenon. Okay, I don't really know if it's technically a phenomenon, but these earworms are magical creatures as far as I'm concerned.

Here goes:
  1. We are naturally musical beings; activity that is musical impacts every region of our brain that we are aware of.
  2. When you hear a song, it triggers your auditory cortex in your brain. If you hear a familiar melody, your auditory cortex causes your mind to keep "singing" the melody even if you aren't physically listening to that song anymore.
  3. Apparently, women are more susceptible to earworms than men.
  4. Earworms are personal! It is rare for two people to have the same songs stuck in their heads.
  5. Music is encoded in your brain (it impacts every region, remember?), so it is common to receive an earworm visit from music that you just heard, music that you have repeatedly heard, and music that you have an emotional or personal connection to.
Check out the sources below if you'd like to read more about this phenomenon. I'll show you my list in my next post! Shark's in the water! See you in a week!

This week's sources:
The Beetlejuice clip is courtesy of YouTube and Hararah.

A lovely article by Stephanie Watson on why songs get stuck in our heads can be found here.

A really interesting starting point on all things earworms from Rhitu Chatterjee at BBC Magazine can be found here.

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