Brain · 60 s
How to get a song out of your head
Song stuck in your head?
You’d think. You should play the whole song to the end. There’s little evidence that works, and it may make it stick harder.
Actually. Grab gum. In a 2015 Reading study of 98 volunteers, people chewing gum heard the tune about a third less often than people sitting still or tapping a finger.
The twist. In a Finnish survey, more than nine in ten people got an earworm every week.
How sure? Small and short: 98 people, two songs, three minutes. The inner-voice explanation is the researchers’ suggestion.
Sources
- Chewing gum and the stuck record (2015), University of Reading
- Why songs get stuck in our heads (2026), University of Wollongong
What the video says
Song stuck in your head? Grab a piece of gum. Seriously.
In 2015, psychologists at the University of Reading played ninety-eight volunteers two catchy pop songs, then asked them not to think about them for three minutes.
Every time the tune came back, they pressed a key. People chewing gum heard it about a third less often than people sitting still or tapping a finger.
The likely reason is that an earworm runs on your inner voice, the quiet humming in your head, and chewing keeps the muscles that voice borrows busy.
The tip you've probably heard is to play the whole song to the end. There's little evidence that works, and replaying it may make it stick harder.
And you're not alone. In a Finnish survey, more than nine in ten people got an earworm every week.
Anyway, sorry about whatever's playing in your head right now.