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This is the song that never ends. Yes, it goes on and on, my friends... in your head.
Ear Worms (from the German phrase Ohrwurm) are those songs that weasel their way into your head like uninvited guests and then proceed to stink up the inside of your cranium by playing themselves there over. And over. And over. And over. They're those songs that just get stuck in your head, and no amount of screaming, pounding, protesting, and banging your head into your desk will get them out. Someone infected with an Ear Worm may find themselves prone to bursting out into the song in inappropriate places, tugging at their ears in fury, and can end up distracted in the middle of conversation (or other important activities) by the continuous snatches of song wavering between their ears. And it's only a matter of time before, like Darryl Revok, they drill a hole in their forehead to let the voices out.
You may find relief by hunting down the lyrics and learning the words, but this is more effort than most people are willing to expend on a briefly-heard ditty. Worse, if the song is in a language you don't speak, this becomes pretty much impossible. And when the song is an instrumental... You could also distract yourself with another Ear Worm, but you might find it just as annoying as the first.
The Internet is a particularly notorious supplier of ear worms; lots of music memes tend to be irrationally catchy. (This is probably how they got to be memetic in the first place.) Other prime offenders include commercial jingles, Broadway musicals, whatever Top 40 hit is being overplayed right now, and video game music (including licensed music). Let's not go into show theme music, especially when they repeat and shout the name of the series over and over and over again.
Just because a song is listed here as a particularly bad Ear Worm doesn't mean it's not awesome. In fact, an awesome song can be just as catchy as a... uuhm... not as awesome one.
In fiction, Ear Worms are frequently the tool used to produce Psychic Static. Especially powerful ones can also serve as a Brown Note.
Not to be confused with the mind-warping parasites from Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan.
Compare The Tetris Effect, the video game equivalent.
TV Tropes would like to apologize to any readers susceptible to these things who, getting reminded of a song on this page, feel compelled to hear it again. For your convenience and further suffering, links will be provided whenever possible. (And sometimes this isn't possible, for various reasons; if you find a broken link, please remove it or fix it. Thanks!)
Some of these link to You Tube, so if you wish to listen to them in stereo, add "&fmt=18" to the link without the quotation marks. This may negate some of the awesome, but in some cases it may also elevate the song to godlike status. Your Mileage May Vary, so consider this fair warning.
Note: When posting links to You Tube here, make sure to strip their URLs of all unnecessary fragments — the " ?v=RSsJ19sy3JI or whatever" parameter is the only one needed, really.
Also, unless it seems to have been posted with the copyright holder's blessing (look for one of those little marks like "director video" or "contains content from") or songs released under free license (e.g. Creative Commons), it probably shouldn't be linked here — it's very likely to be taken down. And also, for US users, the rest of the world may not see what you do. Links to video game soundtracks and demoscene productions are OK most of the time, though.
Examples
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References to, and stories involving, Ear Worms
Comics
- Adam "Empowered" Warren did a short arc for Gen 13 which featured Caitlin as the Only Sane Woman in the face of an unnaturally infectious and inane pop song.
- Rat does this to mess with Pig in a Pearls Before Swine strip by singing John Denver's "Country Roads, Take Me Home" near him. Rat even admits that he's doing it to plant an ear worm in his friend's head.
- In Sandman: At Death's Door by Jill Thompson, Delirium deals with the demons that crash Death's party by infecting them with ear worms.
- In a Justice League story, the League encounters a created being that sucks up memories. Once they manage to reverse the effects, the Atom leaves it one memory: the Ear Worm that's been stuck in his head the whole issue. Ziggy Stardust. The kicker: he couldn't remember the whole song.
- Tom Tommorrow's This Modern World once introduced a superhero named Anagram Man, but for the purposes of this entry we must take note of his sidekick, Song-In-Your-Head Boy.
- GUUUUUUTA LAAAAALAAAAA SUUUUUDA LALAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!
Fan Works
- In the "Strangers" plot of JLA Watchtower, several Titans and Titan allies were "swapped out" with Evil Counterpart members of the Rogues Gallery, while the Titans themselves were "stuck in the heads" of their evil counterparts. One of the most effective ways the captive Titans fought back was by singing annoying songs to the supervillains, driving them to distraction.
Films — Live Action
- In the movie Thoughtcrimes, Brendan doesn't believe in Freya's telepathic abilities until she mentions that he'd had the Scooby Doo theme song stuck in his head all day.
- In Wayne's World, Wayne has the song "Hey Mickey" stuck in his head. He and his girlfriend sing it to expell it.
Close Films — Live Action
Literature
- In 1876, Mark Twain wrote "A Literary Nightmare" (also published as "Punch, Brothers, Punch") about a jingle on punching train tickets getting stuck in his head, making this Older Than Radio.
- This was the plot of a short story by Arthur C. Clarke. A scientist noted the effect of Ear Worms in popular music, and determined to find the underlying rhythm that made them all so addictive through process of comparison and elimination. He apparently succeeded in touching on that "universal melody" for a moment, as the end of the story finds him completely vegetative, the song having matched so neatly with his brainwaves that it effectively locked them in stasis forever.
- As a note (no pun intended) of irony to the whole story, the machine that has been compiling and analysing these songs was turned off, still playing the ultimate melody, by a man who was completely unaffected by it. Why? He was completely, utterly tone-deaf.
- Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man features a man who wants to commit a murder in a world populated by telepaths. So he deliberately "infects" himself with an old jingle (called a "Pepsi" in a joke that's lost nothing over the years) so that any telepaths won't be able to hear anything else that he's thinking.
- In one of her latter SERRATed Edge novels, one of Mercedes Lackey's protagonists manages to take down an entire group of psychics with the sheer Ear Worm potential of They Might Be Giants''. Apparently, the fact that the band's songs are both A) incredibly catchy, and B) so nonsensical that you actually have to focus on the lyrics to keep up makes them a perfect block for any Mind Rapage.
- It definitely didn't help that Unseleighe psychics have absolutely no sense of humor, little comprehension of allegory, and the imaginations of lead bricks. They went positively insane trying to figure out what the hell the hero was thinking about.
- The non-Discworld Terry Pratchett book Nation has an earworm in the form of the Beer Song, described as a cheery little tune that bounces along and can't be removed from the brain with a chisel. It's important that the inhabitants remember it, though, as skipping a verse or two could result in fatal poisoning.
- The story "Pie and Punch and You-Know-Whats" in More Homer Price involves a record delivered by a mysterious stranger, which contains a song so catchy that the entire town ends up singing it. The only remedy is to get a different song stuck in their heads: "Punch, Brothers, Punch" from Twain's "A Literary Nightmare", mentioned above.
- The short story "Rump-Titty-Titty-Tum-TAH-Tee" by Fritz Leiber concerns a rhythm and pattern of dots that form an earworm so powerful that it essentially takes over the world, leaving almost everyone unable to do anything but obsess over it. Eventually, the spirit of a long-dead witch doctor gives the main characters an antidote (another earworm which cancels it out), because, as the ghost explains, "it was starting to catch on down here, too."
- In the Star Trek The Next Generation novel Dark Mirror by Diane Duane, Deanna advises Picard to cultivate an earworm in order to block her Mirror Universe counterpart's telepathy. He chooses George Strong's parody of "The Song of Hiawatha":
He killed the noble Mudjokivis.
Of the skin he made him mittens,
Made them with the fur side inside,
Made them with the skin side outside.
He, to get the warm side inside,
Put the inside skin side outside;
He to get the cold side outside
Put the warm side fur side inside.
That's why he put the fur side inside,
Why he put the skin side outside,
Why he turned them inside outside.
- There's also an episode in Season Three in which Deanna Troi is driven slightly mad (get the reference?) by a tune she does not recognize playing over and over again in her head.
- In the Dungeons & Dragons Forgotten Realms novel Finder's Bane, by Jeff Grubb and Kate Novak, the party is captured by the mind flayer god Ilsensine. To buy their release, they have to give it a song that it has never heard before. The minor deity Finder, in the party, gives it a recursive song — the last verse feeds into the first. The resulting Ear Worm gives Ilsensine big problems — so the mind flayer god ends up begging Finder to take the song away in return for three answers to questions.
Live Action TV
Music
- The Arrogant Worms, appropriately enough, have "Song Inside My Head" which is both an ear worm and about an ear worm. They even include the basic melody recorded in several different musical styles.
- Similarly, the song "Ohrwurm" by the German a capella band Wise Guys is an Ear Worm sung by an Ear Worm.
Puppet Shows
Tabletop Games
- An end to a rather strangely named ARG has this happen to a former shadow government official/cultist turned power-hungry God. Thanks to the players, another, more powerful and more moral God throws him into a dark cellar, and blasts "Time After Time" by Cyndi Lauper and the covered versions over and over. He really, really hates it.
- In GURPS, sufficiently powerful message-carrying psi-bombs can lodge a short sentence or rhyme in a person's mind for several minutes. For obvious reasons, this can be a more terrifying prospect than similar tech that can rip out someone's soul and store it in a jar.
Video Games
- In Curse of Monkey Island, a character tells the story of how almost all of his pirate crew killed themselves, when stricken with the game's theme song.
- Later, in Tales of Monkey Island Chapter II: Siege of Spinner Cay, Guybrush wonders why a certain tune is stuck in his head. The tune is Largo LaGrande's theme from Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge.
- In The World Ends With You, one of the thought fragments that can be read, features someone trying to get a 'Dempa'(?) tune out of their head.
- Lampshaded in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. When Peach takes a shower, she hums both the overworld and underwater themes from the original Super Mario Bros.
Web Animation
- Jonti Picking (aka Weebl, creator of Weebl and Bob), big provider of Ear Worms, eventually lampshaded this with "annoying", which has an annoyingly catchy tune about an annoyingly catchy tune:
Oh my word, this tune is annoying,
Yes I know, it's really annoying
I can't get this song out of my head!
Make it stop, this tune is annoying
I gotta go to work in the morning
Now I'm gonna be humming it in my bed!
Web Comics
Web Original
- When the Angry Video Game Nerd reviewed the Atari Jaguar system, the green face from Tempest 2000 came out to haunt him with "Where did you learn to fly? Where did you learn to fly? Where did you learn to fly?..."
Western Animation
- One episode of Pinky, Elmyra and the Brain involves The Brain trying to use an Earworm to (what else?) Take Over The World. Specifically, he's going to modify the song in the "It's A Small World" ride at Disneyland to include lyrics telling people to make The Brain ruler of the world.
- The three-part Pinky and the Brain story "Brainwashed" deals with an Ear Worm that's spread to the whole world and is dumbing it down (it's strikingly similar to the "Macarena", which can't be coincidental). In a rare occasion of not trying to take over the world, Pinky and the Brain have to save the world.
- Obligatory The Simpsons reference: "Duff beer for me, Duff beer for you, I'll have a Duff, You'll have one too..." (repeat ad nauseam).
- For Massive Damage, it's set to a tune very similar to "It's a Small World".
- What's more, it's the "jackpot" music on multiple versions of the Simpsons-licenced Fruit Machines. This troper has never been so annoyed by winning £5 before...
- In an episode of The Mighty B, Bessie uses an Ear Worm product jingle in order to get people to stop saying her middle name... which is cursed, and the effects of which are putting the whole town at risk.
- Brad opens the "I Was a Preschool Dropout" episode of My Life as a Teenage Robot by singing an entire verse of a song called "MinkyMomo". Immediately upon finishing the song, he grimaces and announces, "I hate that song."
Brad: A-minky-minky-minky-minky-minky-minky-minky-minky-MOMO!
The Minky Momo is an attitude
The Minky Momo is a mellow mood
You're Momo when you're drinkin' lemonade
You're Momo soakin' in a marinade
I know you're Minky, 'cause I'm Momo, too
And so I know what you're goin' through
But there's no mo' Momo whenever I... get... close... to... you! (stops singing) Man, I hate that song!
- Carl of Aqua Teen Hunger Force talking about MC Pee Pants's song "I want Candy":
Carl: It keeps running inside my head and it won't leave unless I blow it out. With a bullet!
- In-show example from Kim Possible: the episode "Team Impossible" has said team show up with a theme song, which Ron groans afterward that he cannot get out of his head.
- Frankly, I didn't know where to put this. It's not exactly an Ear Worm, but once you read the following... well, just read it:
Professor Farnsworth: Good news everybody! I've created an invention that forces you to read everything in my voice!
- The episode "Head Band" of Dexter's Laboratory featured a "boyband virus" quite literally infecting the ears of Dexter and his family, and did not only make them hear a song but also sing and talk to the tune of it. Luckily the virus eventually cures itself, as members of the boyband leaves to pursue solo-careers...
- An episode of Duck Tales that does their spin on The Odyssey has Uncle Scrooge nearly be lured away by the Sirens. After he was rescued, he commented "Ever had a song that just wouldn't get out of your head?"
- Whenever Cartman from South Park hears the first line of "Come Sail Away", he has to sing it all the way through.
- In the Robotboy episode "Traffic Slam", Tommy and his friends sing a song to the tune of "Battle Hymn of the Republic" called "I Know a Song That Gets on Everybody's Nerves", over and over, while they're stuck in traffic. You get the impression that they're doing it just to annoy Tommy's dad (it works).
- The Phineas and Ferb Musical cliptastic countdown special, which shows the top 10 favorite songs, voted by the viewers. In it, the villain Doofenshmirtz tries to hypnotize the "Live Studio Audience" with one of these. ("My name is doof and you'll do what I say... Woop Woop!") They get un-hypotized when Agent P plays the number 1 requested song, which is "Gitchie Gitchie Goo" (and, as commented by doof, "the never-before seen extended version!"). It still hasn't left this troper, though.
- Two examples from Justice League and Unlimited:
- Batman has "Frère Jacques" on loop in his head to keep Dr. Destiny out.
- The Question has a generic boyband song on loop in his head, but not on purpose — after being on stakeout with the car radio on, it's been stuck in his brain.
- In a semi-Western Animation, semi-Anime, semi-Film example, the late 1970s animated versions of The Hobbit and The Return Of The King had some Notable Original Music that was quite Ear Wormy at times. Notably "In the Valley, Ha! Ha!", "Down, Down To Goblin Town", "Funny Little Things", "Where There's a Whip, There's a Way" and "Towers of the Teeth" (the latter example aided greatly by the instrumentation). Who knew orcs were such good singers?
Ha! Now we've got YOU singing it!
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