by Wayne Wood

Last summer, a community board in Brooklyn, N.Y., called for a limit on the playing of an ice cream truck jingle used by an ice cream brand, Mr. Softee. Apparently the jingle is so catchy and repetitive that citizens have called for government intervention to keep the tune from getting stuck in their heads.
This surely represents one of the most forward-thinking uses of govenmental power since the Marshall Plan, or maybe even the invention of the Do-Not-Call list. Because we all know what it’s like when some song gets stuck in your head.
The thing is, and you know this, but I’ve got to pad this column somehow, is that almost NEVER does a song you like get stuck in your head. The world would be a better place if everybody bopped around with “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” or “Ticket to Ride” going in their noggins. But it’s always some commercial jingle or some terrible song like “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)” by Rupert Holmes, who, incidentally, is the antichrist.
According to an article in the Science section of the New York Times a few weeks ago, serious scientists at the University of Cincinnati have studied the phenomenon of the Song that Will Not Stop, which lead researcher James Kellaris calls an “earworm.”
Kellaris says that 98 percent of the population says they experience earworms from time to time, and his study turned up some of the most common offenders.
Voice of good angel on shoulder: Those of you who do not want annoying little tunes lodged in your head for the rest of the week, if not month, must stop reading now! Turn back now while you have a chance!
Those offenders included the Kit Kat candy bar jingle (“Gimme a break”), the Chili’s baby back ribs commercial, “Who Let the Dogs Out,” “We Will Rock You,” the theme to “Mission: Impossible,”
“Y.M.C.A.,” “It’s a Small World After All,” and “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”
Voice of demon on other shoulder: Yes, that’s right puny human—with my evil plan of mind control by music, I have taken over your brain for the rest of the day. BWAHAHAHAHAHA!
Sorry. For what it’s worth, there is NO WAY that “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” belongs on this list. That is a truly great song, the tune to which was written by a Zulu tribesman named Solomon Linda in 1939, and which has become one of the most recognizable songs in the world.
The rest of these are pretty bad, but no worse than a thousand other bad songs or jingles that you could name, but won’t out of fear that one of them might get stuck, too.
Which, Kellaris says, is part of the results of his research. These are some of the commonly named offending earworms, but most of us have our own.
Another scientist who has examined this problem—and I think we can all agree that federal funding for this important research should be tripled at least—is Petr Janata, a research assistant professor at Dartmouth, which holds the distinction of being the only major American university whose name sounds like the tragic result of a drunken sporting event at a bar.
According to Janata—again, I’m relying on the always-impeccable reporting of the New York Times here—songs are especially likely to get stuck in your head if some muscle movement is also involved. So with potential earworms such as “The Hustle” or, heaven help us, the “Macarena,” the whole body is remembering the tune, not just the brain.
Voice of demon on shoulder, in evil glee: In other words, you are doomed, dooooooooomed, I tell you.
So, are these guys doing that typical oh-so-helpful scientist thing of bringing a problem to everybody’s attention, thereby making the situation worse, without offering a solution?
Absolutely not. The ethics committees at their respective institutions would never allow human subjects to be exposed to the Kit Kat jingle without a ready antidote.
Researcher Kellaris says that one possible way to erase a bad song is to sing it aloud. Sometimes that works sort of like a scratch overcoming an itch, he says.
And I was thinking that maybe he was an OK guy and not some heartless villan out to torment the human race, until he added this final piece of advice: “Don’t worry, be happy.”
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
(“Watching the Wheels” not just a lousy column—it’s also a lousy book! Watching the Wheels: Cheap Irony, Righteous Indignation and Semi-Enlightened Opinion by Wayne Wood is available at, among other places, the Rand Hall and Medical Bookstores, from its publisher at iUniverse.com, and at the Medical Center Hair Salon.)