Ask Lemmy

Tell my wife about it, she gets annoyed that I put a song in her head. I go about my day and eventually i get into something else with my ADHD brain.

In lots of cases, I attempt to learn it on piano. Just a simple version.

My theory is that songs get stuck in your head when you listen to a small part of it so then your brain tries to fill in the rest. So I guess you'd have to listen to the whole thing to make it go away. Haven't really tested this thoroughly enough so if you do, let me know.

If it’s an earworm, I will consciously play Thunderstruck in my head until it goes away.

I hum it off and on for literally years. Pretty sure I have hummed a bar of "my milkshake brings the boys to the yard" in public dozens if not hundreds of times.

I don't know any lyrics beyond that hook and I couldn't even tell you the artist/group. If I stopped to think why that song, it might bother me. So I don't think about it.

It’s my brain trying to complete the song. I just listen to it until I’ve memorized it from beginning to to end

Luckily most of the songs that get stuck in my head are ones I like, so I just let them play until it ends. After that, some other thought(s) occupy my mind, or another song plays.

If it's an annoying one though? Relax and let it pass like a fart in the wind.

Unless it's some crappy song, just listen to it on repeat until you grow sick of it.

listen to the end of the song or verse, you probably have the middle bit stuck and you just gotta bring it to a conclusion.

If I remember the song's name, I will listen to it. If I don't remember, I will sing it until I remember the name 🫐

Find a different song to get stuck in my head.

I sing it. Repeatedly.

sing it, usually

I just let it play out in my head and don’t take any action.

Accept that it's there and go about my day. It will fade just as all the others before it.

I listen to it more. Not because it'll get it unstuck or anything. Just cause I like the song

And then if im extra bored and the song has a music video I'll learn the dance choreography and dance in my room in the middle of the night =w=

I get earworms chronically. They're so bad sometimes that I have a song stuck in my head even persisting through a full night's sleep. I started seeing a psychiatrist and got on a Sertraline prescription and it's helped a lot. For me the earworms are likely a symptom of a mild OCD condition. They also correlate with headaches, so if they're pretty bad I'll take some acetaminophen or ibuprofen to help a little more.

I have a Megadeath song on standby which I bring to mind and it eliminates the ear worm. 😃

ill never get tired of Easy Street so it's fine!

Usually one active listening to it clears the son out. Listen to it while reading the lyrics if you need a stronger ending signal.

It's a sign that you're not sleeping enough. Catch some Z's.

I hum "America" from West Side Story.

I read somewhere years ago that it kicks out earworms without becoming one, and I found that it works for me.

I will sing it and will try to spread it to other people

[off topic]

'The Demolished Man' by Alfred Bester.

In a future with psychic police officers, a billionaire is planning a murder.

To protect himself from 'peepers' he goes to one of his advertising agencies and tricks a writer into playing him the worst earworm known to science.

When he's around the telepath he just remembers the jingle, over and over.

I mostly do nothing about it, it eventually goes away. Sometimes however, I feel curious about the song and I listen to the whole song, find out whose song is, if there are more version, look up the lyrics.

It used to bother me but at some point I guess I learned to not care if I get a song stuck. Sometimes it is even fun, I can use it as a conversation starter or stuck it in someone else's head.

I listen for a bit, then I listen to some tunes with a similar BPM, style, or key. I think, though I'm not certain, that it's my brain telling me that I need to stimulate it by going new places, hearing new things, doing new stuff, etc. It usually stops when I find something else cool enough to hold my interest.

May I ask, what song you have stuck? I had "Golden" from Kpop Demonhunters such in my head for a few weeks recently but my earworms come from an genres.

i find other songs from that album/artist and see if they're good

If conclude the song in my head. It ends the loop and stops. If I don't know the ending, I make up some grandiose ending so my brain thinks it's over.

I try not to sing along in public as it plays in my head, because it's usually some obscene or violent death metal, or deliberately edgy rude cover of a popular song.

I currently have the theme music from Bubsy in Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind stuck in my head but I'm kind of okay with it.

Sometimes if it's really bad and I'm on day 3 of a song and it has gotten annoying I'll have to intentionally corrupt the hook that keeps retriggering in my head. It's usually one or two notes that keep springing in and then the rest of the song triggers and starts flowing. When I catch the trigger in my head I grab it and intentionally start imagining that little hooky snip, not the whole song but just two or three annoying notes of it, and loop them until there's another association leading me out of the trigger other than simply leaping back into the song again.

I say to music brain this is you this is what you sound like, and music brain gets grumpy so I finally get some peace.

Nothing really. Sometimes I then listen to it when I have time. Recently however I actually started practicing guitar because I thought "can't be that hard to play" and a roommate had a guitar I could use. So far I'm still at it and eypanded into some more songs.

Punch myself in the testicles. You'd be surprised how much this can distract you from an earworm.

I like mapping for the rhythm shooter Pistol Whip. While working on a map, I have that song stuck in my head the whole time, but as soon as I publish it it's gone.

I've found that it works on songs that get stuck there by other means, so if I want to get rid of one, I make a map with it.

for the short term/ when I don't have a device that can play music: focus on a different song. Otherwise I would listen to more of it rarely mixed in with others E: or if I don't know the name, just keep on repeating it until it goes away.

It's my theme song for the day, and I whistle or hum or tap along or just enjoy it at random moments. Eventually it's replaced with a different song, and I repeat. I find that the song that's playing tends to match up to the theme of the day. Like recently it was "Walking on Sunshine" and it was a day where it finally stopped raining and everyone was just happy and relaxed