Q: I have had a Kacey Musgraves song stuck in my head for two weeks and it’s making me crazy. Why is this happening?
First, some reassurance: You’re not alone. Research suggests that catchy songs that get lodged in your head — colloquially known as earworms — are common, and can happen to people weekly or even daily.
“Some people wander around with music in their head kind of constantly,” said Ira Hyman, a psychologist who studies the phenomenon at Western Washington University in Washington State.
Scientists don’t fully understand why earworms are so hard to shake. But certain songs are more likely than others to set up shop in our heads. And the propensity to catch them can depend on what you’ve recently listened to and what you’re doing.
Here’s what we know.
What causes an earworm?
It probably comes as no surprise that the songs that insert themselves into our brains are typically songs we’ve recently listened to.
But it’s also possible to get an earworm after hearing a word or sound — or even experiencing a situation — that reminds you of a particular song, said Callula Killingly, a postdoctoral research fellow who studies earworms at the Queensland University of Technology in Australia.