Wednesday, May 11, 2011

I've got worms... sorta.

Okay, I'm gonna be a little lazy with this post and take the easy way out with a reference link.

Today, I have a song stuck in my head. Yesterday, I had a song stuck in my head. Tomorrow, I'll probably have a song stuck in my head. Reason why? It's called ohrwurm, which translates from German to earworm. Yup, that's right boys and girls, I have a worm stuck in my ear. Apparently, it was placed there at my birth. Here is a section of the linked article:

"A more promising line of investigation in my opinion is to focus on the earworminess of particular songs. Una contacted the office of James Kellaris, a professor of marketing at the University of Cincinnati who’s styled himself “Dr. Earworm” after years studying the subject, to learn more about a theory of his known as “cognitive itch.” According to Kellaris, “certain pieces of music may have properties that excite an abnormal reaction in the brain” — in other words, your brain detects something extraordinary or unusual about the music that compels attention. Your brain tries to process the itch by repeating it, which only makes things worse — not unlike an epidermal itch. Kellaris finds the music most likely to cause an earworm has one or more of three key qualities: repetitiveness, simplicity, and what he calls incongruity, often an unexpected rhythmic variation." - Full article here

The last line of the above paragraph seems to best explain my current situation. For the last two weeks I've had this song playing over and over in my head, headphones, Youtube, and Google searches. It has even managed to infiltrate my dreams.

The song?

Frank Zappa's Saint Alphonzo's Pancake Breakfast.



This song, for me, pretty much has everything. It has a funky and catchy beat with a lot of difficult changes. The actual music is just too much to even try to explain. It's just Zappa. That should say a lot. It's a breath of fresh air from what most of us would consider the norm. It's also doing a fantastic job of sending my already somewhat obsessive Zappa habit to a new "redonkulous" level.

Honestly, I love that this song is stuck in my head and my secret/dirty/hidden at the bottom goal today was to get it stuck in yours too!

Enjoy!

No comments:

Post a Comment