earworms
Latest
Psychologists figure out the science behind earworms
There's a scientific reason why you can't get that one song out of your head, and a team from the American Psychological Association conducted a large scale study to get to the bottom of it. They compared earworms to other songs that became popular at the same time even though they weren't exactly considered catchy and found out what makes them so sticky. The study's lead author, Kelly Jakubowski, said those songs share a few common characteristics: they typically have "fast tempo along with a common melodic shape and unusual intervals or repetitions."
