Why songs get stuck in your head
Ever wondered why certain songs get stuck in your head whether you like them or not? Well one smart cookie has an opinion on that ... Music psychologist Dr Tim Byron told ABC that even if you don't like a song, there's still something in it that, deep down, you do like.
"Every part of you [is not] rejecting it. Part of [its appeal] is the big hooks in it, there's things happening in the song that are interesting and your mind is drawn to," he said.
According to Dr Byron, the repetition of rhythms and beats is what makes a song so catchy. But that's probably not a startling revelation, really...
"My theory about why certain songs get stuck in your head is they do little tricks to make us not realise how repetitive they are. Something like Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen, what that is actually doing is setting up the song using musical techniques to [make you] want the repeats to start happening.
"In a Bob Dylan song when it's all about the lyrics ... we're not focusing as much on the music, but here because there's no content per se, we're paying more attention to the way that content is presented."
He went on to say that songs that get stuck in your head will contain at least something that subconsciously appeals to you.
"It's catchy, that's why it's getting stuck in people's heads," he said. "You can get a song stuck in your head if you've heard that song a lot and if you've heard it recently. If you like a song, you're more likely to get it stuck in your head.
We think that the songs that get stuck in our heads are the really annoying ones, but it's just they're the ones that stand out to us that we remember.
Read more at www.abc.net.au
A song being stuck in your head isn't bad, when it starts to echo is the time for concern.