Stuck on Repeat?

Have you ever found yourself trapped in a relentless, internal concert where the performer refuses to leave the stage? One minute you are minding your own business, and the next, a three-second snippet of a pop song is playing on loop behind your eyes. This phenomenon is known scientifically as Involuntary Musical Imagery, but most of us know it by its much more descriptive name: the earworm. To understand why your brain decides to host these uninvited musical guests, it helps to think of your mind as an exclusive, slightly chaotic nightclub.

Every nightclub needs a bouncer at the door to decide who gets in and who stays out. In your brain, this bouncer is known as the central executive. This bouncer is incredibly focused. When you start a task, it opens the velvet rope and lets in the information you need, refusing to close the guest list until the job is done. This quirk is called the Zeigarnik Effect. In the world of music, this means that if you hear a catchy chorus on the radio but the DJ cuts to the news before the song finishes, your internal bouncer becomes agitated. Because the musical sequence was not completed, the brain perceives it as an open loop, a guest who has entered the club but has not reached the dance floor yet. In a desperate, misguided attempt to find closure and ‘finish’ the song so the night can finally end, your brain replays that snippet over and over. Ironically, because we often only remember the catchiest bit, the bouncer never sees the song exit the building, and the cycle continues.

You might notice that these musical loops do not usually strike when you are solving a complex maths problem or writing a delicate email. Instead, they pounce when your brain is bored or exhausted. When you are performing low-attention tasks, such as walking to the shops or washing up, your bouncer is effectively leaning against the wall, scrolling through their phone. Without strict supervision, the phonological loop, the part of your brain responsible for processing sound, sneaks a record onto the turntable and starts playing it on repeat. Similarly, when you are incredibly stressed or cramming for an exam, your mental bouncer is simply too tired to intervene, leaving the door wide open for that annoying jingle to seize the spotlight and take over the sound system.

If you are currently being held hostage by a particularly sticky tune, there is a surprisingly simple way to evict the uninvited DJ: reach for a pack of chewing gum. It sounds like an old wives' tale, but research published in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology suggests it actually works. The reason is tied to how we ‘hear’ music in our heads. When an earworm is playing, you are not just listening; you are ‘sub-vocally’ mimicking the music. Your brain is essentially using the same motor pathways and muscles you would use to actually sing or speak the words, just on a microscopic, silent level. By chewing gum, you are essentially occupying the dance floor with a physical task. The brain cannot try to ‘sing’ the song if the equipment is already busy grinding away on a piece of minty rubber. It is a mechanical interference that breaks the internal playback. 

So, the next time a song gets stuck in the gears of your mind, remember that your brain is simply a frustrated perfectionist trying to finish a melody. You can either listen to the full song to give that internal bouncer the closure they crave, or you can give your jaw a workout and force the club to close early. Either way, you do not have to hum ‘Mr. Brightside’ forever.

Illustration by Ramona Kirkham