My hmphs

Every time I hear Rita Coolidge’s “(Your Love Is Lifting Me) Higher and Higher,” I am immediately taken back to 1977, the first time I heard the song. I was all of 8 years old, and I was riding back from the Henn Theatre in Murphy, N.C. after seeing Star Wars for the first time. My sister had stopped and gotten the soundtrack for the movie as well.

As the opening chords begin, I can still remember sitting in the back seat of our 1975 Chevrolet Impala station wagon, peering over the front seat and seeing my sister holding the album. I can even smell the scent of the new album as my sister unwrapped it.

And I can’t remember where I put my wallet this morning.

Music - or perhaps, our ability to process music - is an amazing thing. We can recall lyrics to songs we haven’t heard in years, remember the exact placement of each grunt and ad-lib, and instantly recognize songs when given a five-second snippet.

And yet this link to emotion and past events is something even more profound and mysterious. I can understand associating music with major milestones in one’s life - for instance, your first kiss or a dance at your wedding - but the Rita Coolidge song was playing on the way back from a movie. (Granted, not just any movie - Star Wars!) Other songs evoke vivid memories of seemingly mundane events: Dancing in college to “Word Up!”, Riding to a hay ride with “Love Shack” playing in the cassette player, and even recycling aluminum cans while listening to the Sundays’ “Can’t Be Sure.”

But deep down, these incidents may hold some special place for me, and the music serves a soundtrack, a marker to those happy or memorable moments. Other times, though, the memory is probably sparked because of some overwhelming emotion caused by the song: Hearing U2’s “With or Without You” for the first time and knowing that the group had just moved to a new level, or the moment I finally got the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds.

So now all I need to do is play music every time I put down my keys, and I should be set.

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We’ve all had it happen: One song finds its way into your brain, and try as you might, you can’t make it go away. Oliver Sacks calls the tunes “earworms,” and they have been known to stick in people’s minds continuously for weeks at a time before finally dying out.

They can be maddening. I can still remember several earworms dating back to my childhood:

• At the age of 11, Cheap Trick’s “The Dream Police” kept me up for several nights with the same ironic line repeating over and over: “The dream police, they live inside of my head…” I have avoided it ever since for fear that the worm would work its way back in to my brain. Sacks says this is normal; after an episode, there is a heightened sensitivity to that song, so that even years later, a reference to the song or a snippet played on the radio can retrigger the earworm.
• Even more ironic, ELO’s “Can’t Get It Out of My Head” could not get out of my head one day, the first line of the chorus replaying itself until I thought I would scream.
• About 10 years ago, The Push Stars’ “Wild Irish Rose” played over and over in my head after I listened to it on a plane trip to Portland, Ore. I still can’t listen to it.
• Just this morning, I woke up with the chorus to Whodini’s “The Freaks Come Out At Night” (Yes! A rap song!) in my head. Why? I have no clue. I can honestly say I haven’t heard that song in 25 years.

Even Neil Diamond is susceptible, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. “If I wasn’t in the business of songwriting, I’d probably be seeing a doctor,” he said. “I’ve tried everything from cold showers to listening to other people’s music, but nothing helps.”

Many times, just a snippet of a song will get stuck in my head, and it closes itself into a loop, trying to find a way out. Frustrated, I sometimes have to play the whole song in my head to show the earworm how to get out of the loop. (It reminds me of a M*A*S*H* episode in which Father Mulcahy is playing a song on the piano. When someone asks him what it is, he says, “I’m not sure, but whatever it is I can’t seem to find the end. I’ve been playing the same thing for 20 minutes.”)

Sacks attributes this phenomena, which counts even Mark Twain as a victim, to two causes:

1. Western music’s emphasis on patterns - verse, verse, chorus, phrases repeated over and over - are meant to be consumed and to stick with you. This “stickiness” can separate a hit from the thousands of songs that are released each year. Unfortunately, it can stick too much.
2. Music is ubiquitous nowadays, making the problem worse. With the iPod, we can take our music anywhere, and with hundreds of songs pounding our heads daily, the brain can only take so much. Maybe it saves some to work out later.

Dr. James Kellaris of the University of Cincinnati has an even more intriguing theory: Certain properties of music may be like histamines, which cause in itch on the skin. Exposure to such music may cause a sort of “cognitive itch” in one’s mind. “The only way to scratch a cognitive itch is to repeat the offending music mentally,” according to his web site. “But this only exacerbates the itch, trapping the hapless victim in an involuntary cycle of repeated itching and scratching.”

I think there’s also a heightened tendency among music lovers to have this happen. We tend to listen to more music and probably process it more than most, noting patterns, phrases and chord progressions, and it sticks with us. I think I have tunes going through my head most of the day, but most of the time they are too unobtrusive for me to even notice. If I stop and try to figure out what it is, it will go away, only to be replaced a few minutes later.

What helps? One respondent to Kellaris’ survey argued against trying to fight it - “It only makes it angrier!” But Kellaris found that nearly two-thirds of sufferers try to use another tune to dislodge the one that’s stuck. Others try to distract themselves, and some try to share the earworm with others in the hopes that it will pass from their head to another’s.

Somehow, though, I don’t think it’s a good idea to go up to someone and start singing “The Freaks Come Out At Night.” I’d even get strange looks from my wife.

Dr. James Kellaris’ Earworm Research Site - complete with FAQs, earworm myths, top 10 earworms and even a “virtual clinic” for ridding oneself of the pests

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Over the next few weeks, I’ll be writing a series on Music and the Mind, based in part on Oliver Sacks’ Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. Sacks, the author of the book-turned-movie Awakenings, has explored the effects of music on the brain and recounts some remarkable stories - man struck by lightning who suddenly becomes a concert pianist; a child who has been plagued by music playing continuously in the head ever since the age of 7; and a sufferer of Tourette’s Syndrome who can find relief only while playing music.

We need music. And, as I’m hoping this blog can convey, we need good music. Over the last 500 years, Mozart’s symphonies have astounded us; some researchers even think they make us smarter. We have seen jazz, country and rock ‘n’ roll spring from the heartland of America and spread worldwide, igniting passions and nurturing future performers who continue to shape the genres through innovation and sometimes, imitation.

But what effect does this have on us? My hypothesis, of course, is that music helps us both intellectually and emotionally. How does it do that? I don’t know. I hope this book - and the subsequent series of postings - will help shed some light on it while giving you something to think about.

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