Researchers are studying why songs get stuck in our heads – and why many of those songs are holiday songs.
Surveys show one of the most popular holiday earworms is Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You."
According to psychologists at Durham University in the UK, songs with danceable tempos and predictable melodic shapes can become earworms. In some cases, producers or artificial intelligence may workshop songs with the goal of creating an earworm.
Rhythm helps our brains encode information, Kimi Sugaya, head of neuroscience at the University of Central Florida, told NPR in 2021. He is known for his work in stem cell therapies for neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, but also studies the science of music (he is married to Ayako Yonetan, an accomplished violinist with bachelor, masters and doctoral degrees from the Juilliard School).
In western music, and holiday tunes, there tends to be repetition of a sequence of notes. Lyrics, melody and emotional response stimulate other parts of the brain.
And the better something is encoded, Sugaya said, the better it is recalled later.
Think of the mnemonic devices and jungles you learned as children. The ABC song set to "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" is one example.
Hannah Maier, a local musician and the music director of the Route at WXXI, said that as long as artists are bringing passion and art to their craft, it’s not a negative thing to want a song to be an earworm.
"If you are an artist, you’re writing the lyrics; you’re sitting down with your guitar, your piano; you’re writing them at home; you’re excited about it,” she said. “Even if you’re Taylor Swift ... you’re still creating the art yourself, I think that is really important.”>
Maier was a guest on WXXI’s “Connections with Evan Dawson.”
