I am a big sufferer of getting songs stuck in my head. It can keep me up for hours only to return right after waking up in the morning. Recently it has been ethereal Bowie cover tunes, but that is another therapy session. Well it turns out that a marketing professor studied the songs and jingles that get stuck in people's heads, he calls it earworms. The study is from 2003, so I am sure we are missing many newbies, but this is an interesting idea of what is sticky and how people get involved with brands and tunes.
The top 10.
1. Other. Everyone has his or her own worst earworm.
2. Chili's "Baby Back Ribs" jingle.
3. "Who Let the Dogs Out"
4. "We Will Rock You"
5. Kit-Kat candy-bar jingle ("Gimme a Break ...")
6. "Mission Impossible" theme
7. "YMCA"
8. "Whoomp, There It Is"
9. "The Lion Sleeps Tonight"
10. "It's a Small World After All"
There is more info and a link to a BBC article on the phenom at the M.I.T. adver lab.
Comments