When Songs Become Earworms

I often wake up with songs playing in my head. Sometimes it’s the latest single from Maroon Five, sometimes it’s a favorite holiday song, and often times it’s a song I learned while I was an elementary student in Cavalier. As the minutes and hours move throughout the day, the song may fall out of my head – or it will stick around burrowing even deeper into my brain.

They call this occurrence an “earworm,” which Wikipedia defines as a “portion of a song or other music that repeats compulsively within one’s mind.” Studies have shown that people have “varying susceptibilities to earworms, but almost everyone has been afflicted with one at some time or another.”

I believe that students who attended Cavalier Elementary in the mid-to late-80s are most susceptible to the earworm phenomenon. The songs we learned were so catchy, so moving, that they stay with many of us today.

As proof, I have conducted my own scientific study…via Facebook. A few months ago I posted the first five words of a song we learned in music class. Bit by bit, people posted the entire song. Some people thought it was fun, others were not happy because then they had the song in their head for the rest of the day. I got comments like “Thanks a lot.”

This is part of the song that I remember the most, called “It’s All Right to Cry.”

It’s all right to cry
Crying gets the sad out of you
It’s all right to cry
It might make you feel better

To me, it’s an elementary school song from our music books. But this song was penned in the early 1970s by Carol Hall and recorded by a variety of artists over the years, most famously by Rosey Grier. This week I continued my social experiment on Facebook and posted about earworms from elementary school, which, as you can imagine, freaked some people out at first. One comment that stood out to me is from a Cavalier alum, who is now a parent. She said she would sing “It’s All Right to Cry” to her boys when they spilled tears.

For those of you who don’t know the song, versions are available all over the Internet. For those of you who can’t get enough of this song, you can easily send a ringtone to your cell phone.

Another song that I get stuck in my head was written by one of our music teachers:

Shh! Be quiet, Shh! Be quiet
Running in the halls, don’t you even try it
Mr. Golz with see you there and
Scold you if you do!

I remember performing this song at a school assembly and it got quite a few laughs from the audience. The person mentioned by name in the song, was the principal at the time.

What songs get stuck in your head? Do you remember songs from elementary school?