Jude: Get That Song Out My Head!

Posted on: Wednesday, 26 May 2010, 10:25 CDT

University of Montreal study on those pesky earworms

Some 98 to 99 percent of the population has, at some point, been "infected" with a song they just can't seem to shake off. This common phenomenon has rarely been researched, until Andréane McNally-Gagnon, a PhD student at the University of Montreal Department of Psychology, decided to examine the issue in an ongoing investigation.

In most cases, earworms will disappear after a few minutes. In some cases, earworms can last hours or even days. McNally-Gagnon is also a musician, who is often infected, which is why she wanted to better understand how and why it occurs.

For starters, she asked French-speaking Internet users to rank 100 pop songs according to their ability to be compulsively repeated within one's mind. The top five were: Singing in the Rain (Gene Kelly), Live Is Life (Opus), Don't Worry, Be Happy (Bobby McFerrin), I Will Survive (Gloria Gaynor) and, in first place, Ça fait rire les oiseaux by Caribbean sensation La Compagnie Créole. (A complete list is published at www.brams.org).

See more at: http://www.redorbit.com/news/entertainment/1870885/hey_jude_get_that_song_out_my_head/index.html