You’re reading a report and trying to concentrate. The room is silent. But despite your best efforts to focus, a little snatch of melody – an “earworm” – keeps circling inside your head.

Research suggests most people get earworms regularly – and they’re more common among people who listen to a lot of music. One Finnish study found more than 90% of people report experiencing earworms at least weekly. About 60% of people experienced them daily.

Why does your brain insist on inflicting snippets of tunes like Jingle Bells, Bohemian Rhapsody or Golden when you try to clear your mind or at random times during the day?

And how are people with conditions such as obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) affected?

A song is more likely to become an earworm when you’ve heard it often or recently.

In a 2015 study, we played an unfamiliar song to participants either two or six times, and then contacted them at random times during the three days afterwards to ask if the songs were stuck in their heads.

About one-third of participants reported experiencing an earworm at the time of contact. We also found that earworms of the songs in the experiment were more common if participants heard the song six times, and were most common in the day afterwards.

Read more: Earworms: why........

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