Ear Worms and All That..

So I read back in 1976 that it was the madeleines that brought back the memories. As a young man I could understand that, even though I had fewer memories to draw on. The book after all was called À la recherche du temps perdu by Marcel Proust, and the personal romanticism was endearing. Yes the 1920s, and so it seemed all time, were defined by the depth and power of that novel. This was the place that structured and held our memories, through the pages of a book we could visit and imagine the lives of others and our relationship to them, even use them as ciphers for own lives and feelings. This was a romantic notion which has not fully stood the test of time and the vicissitudes of experience. I now regard novels as a form of emotional manipulation, I can see the scaffolding, the agenda to influence our behaviour, playing with our emotional involvement for the benefit of ‘the story”. However this was relatively anodyne compared with my music problem, as we shall see.

I was not prepared for the way that music has locked itself into my brain and made me behave like some automaton, like a Pavlov’s dog who salivates with the correct stimulation. This is more direct and visceral than a novel, it seems to lie at a deeper more primal level, hence I have even less control over it. All the major events of my life have their soundtrack, after all I grew up at a time when music became the predominant cultural, outlaw influence. For my parents there was a relief at just escaping the ravages of war, and for them cinema had been the revolution, the cultural signpost to a better life. But by the late 60s the cultural signifier was something my parents could not understand – Rock Music.

Incomprehensible to them, it has now become a cultural norm. This music that then seemed so outlandish, hidden in corners, has through acclimatisation and advertising, been made into the ultimate capitalist’s dream. You can sell the same stuff again and again, through vinyl records, cassettes, cd’s, the box set and now Spotify. Rock Music won that cultural war. Punk, the ultimate fuck off music, now sounds like tinny pop. (Fuck off, the ultimate insult, is now printed in the Guardian and repeated regularly on TV, so has also lost the power). Perhaps as a result I love free jazz, the final bastion of fuck off music, but don’t really want to listen to it at home, you need the atmosphere, the thrilling moment of improvisation.

But back to my problem, certain songs trigger emotions I can’t control, even though I despise them. As a kid I loved The Beatles, then for 20 years I could not bear them and never listened to them. In the 90s I had kids and suddenly The Beatles were catnip, they could not lose and they still can’t. Somehow every word, every strum, every bit of enthusiasm had become part of me, I even do a passable imitation of Ringo (talking not drumming). I feel forced to resist their jolly banality, yet somehow they always win, I am in too deep to betray them. All you need is love they sing, with just enough knowing, enough edge. Imagine… all the  sounds they made were unconsciously baked within me and now I am stuck with it – I just can’t get you out of my head, as the song so accurately says. And there is the point, life has become a series of hummed song titles, signifying nothing. Personally, I believe the rot set in with Queen, the first content free, yet highly competent rock band. They had nothing to say, but you could certainly hum along.

In fact this phenomenon was given a name in the 80s (when pop music transitioned from rebel to mainstream), the earworm. This has now become a medical condition related to OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), and can be severely distressing. For some these involuntary musical imagery attacks can last several days. There is no known cure, apart from chewing gum (a distraction activity). I do not suffer personally from this form of distress, but am certainly prey to earworms, often expressing themselves as a constant and unconscious humming. This is often more annoying for those around me, since I am hardly aware I am doing it. In general earworms are transitory, may well be pleasant, and experienced by most people at some time. It appears to be the case that the more music you listen to, the more likely you will be subject to earworms. In our current streaming media age we are all vulnerable, indeed that appears to be the intention.

So now that pop music is endemic in our culture, I can be caught out and manipulated by just hearing a few bars in a shop, on an advert or East Enders. Memories come flooding back, like some kind of mind control. They slowly devalue the original, often romantic, memory, leaving me bereft, as if my privacy has been invaded. In a sense it has been, since the songs now have a different, twisted agenda – to manipulate my emotions or simply to sell me something. Certain events in my life are so keyed into a song, that the song has become the physical representation of them, to the detriment of the actual event. In particularly some girlfriends in my past life stand before me as soon as I hear “their song”, that has somehow come to represent them. I am no longer in control of this process, I feel abused. Once upon a time these songs were outside the culture, personal and secret, now they are just part of the machine we have lost control of. Unbelievably there was once a thrill to hear pop music in a shop like Biba, since the only other place to regularly hear it was on pirate radio. Now we are just surrounded, the muzak is universal, turning rebellion into money.

 Earworm Songs, an abridged personal list

• Can’t Buy Me Love : The Beatles
• All you need is Love : The Beatles
• Instant Karma! : John Lennon
• Gimme Some Truth : John Lennon
• All Right Now : Free
• In The Year 2525 : Zager and Evans
• Suzanne : Leonard Cohen
• Sweet Jane : Velvet Undergound
  
• (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais : The Clash
• Into the Valley : The Skids
• Ever Fallen In Love : Buzzcocks
• We Will Rock You : Queen (A Top 20 Earworm)
• A Love Supreme : Will Downing
• Too Blind To See It : Kym Sims
• Can’t Get You Out of My Head : Kylie Minogue
• Swords of a Thousand Men : Ten Pole Tudor (Current TV Ad)

The Top 20 Earworms
Wikipedia on Earworms
Stuck Song Syndrome

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