Play Christmas music. Get one of those stuck in your head.

I have had Oogie Boogies song from "Nightmare before Christmas" stuck in mine for days. And I am not even mad about it.

"Well well well.....what have we HERE????" 🎶

Some only allow that for a limited number of minutes per year, amy. For me, it's 30 minutes per year, Many years, I can't get that far.

There are many earworm cures that are less drastic.

Roy, too funny.

Our ice cream truck/man plays 'I had a little chicken and it couldn't lay an egg' over and over. He doesn't even come in to this neighborhood, but I can hear him if I'm working outside and it quickly becomes an ear worm.

I can't say I know the tunes to the drug commercials, although do admit to hating the ads. Really hating the ads.

The ear worm gets stuck because it doesn't end...that happens a lot with partial songs like jingles. One way to end it is to create a well flourished ending in your head. Another is to end it with the jingle if you know it: "By Mennen". It seems to put a period at the end of the tune.

A drug company spoken word jumps out at me every time I hear the commercial. It's for Kesimpta, and at the end of it the narrator pronounces the word dramatic as dermatic. I've heard another version of the commercial (slightly different text) in which she pronounces it correctly. But no matter what I'm doing when the first version comes on (cooking, cleaning, etc.) I hear that dermatic loud and clear. :-)

Of all the developed nations, only the US and New Zealand permit advertising of prescription drugs.

Not only is it permitted here, the astounding costs of advertising get folded into what you pay for the meds. I especially love the new, new, new meds that turn out to be less effective than earlier ones or only 'margin of testing error' superior.

Sorry for the OT rant. It's one of my hot buttons!

Maybe bringing an earworm to a conclusion works for some, not for me. Most typically, when a tune or rhythmic phrase is stuck in my head, it's a small part of a whole that repeats over and over. If a song, I know many songs well but the earworm phenomenon is hearing the catchphrase, the iconic part, over and over. An example would be the Clapton song Layla, in its electronic version. When that's stuck in my mind, I repeatedly hear the introductory guitar riff, which is the iconic and most unique part of the song. Immediately recognizable, there's no doubt what the song is. It's 8 measures - continuing through the song in my mind doesn't remove these 8 measures, my thought will return to the beginning. The tempo is perfect to coincide with a walking pace and that's when it sometimes comes to me. It can be annoying but I love it.

I still remember so many years ago...my Dad worked outside in the garden a lot, and when you're doing solitary work like that, it's easy to get ear worms. I'll never forget the time he said he was tortured by this one:

... by Mennen!

thanks Annie D, that's a brilliant solution!

Ever since someone mentioned the harvest moon, I cannot get that Shine On Harvest Moon song out of my head. For me and my gaaaal.

Snow time ain’t no time to sit around and spoon, so shine on, shine on harvest moon.

I was warbling it all day yesterday . Gah.

This reminds me of an old Radiolab show about earworms - it's fascinating, and it taught me one way to eliminate an earworm is to sing it aloud.

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/segments/91630-earworms

"It has happened to you. Some song wriggles its way into your brain and won't leave. Now imagine that the distant tune in the back of your head suddenly becomes very real. A real song. Real drums. Real guitar. Volume. These are called musical hallucinations and there are some people who actually suffer from them on a daily basis.

We hear first from Leo Rangell who awoke one day to the sound of a rabbi singing. Twelve years later, the music is still there. He talks with reporter Lulu Miller about what he thinks the music is trying to tell him. Then Michael Chorost-- a writer who abruptly went deaf one day--tells us about how a world without sound is filled with music.

We talk to scientists Oliver Sacks, Diana Deutsch, and Tim Griffiths to try to understand WHY our brains would produce such vivid music."

My very latest was "Let's Go Fly a Kite" from Mary Poppins. I had just watched the movie again the night prior and remembered nearly all the words.

ETA: Oh no, here I go again!

Oh please. I'd never seen chitty chitty bang bang as a child and I made the mistake of watching it as an adult. Talk about an ear worm with the stupidest song ever!! I'll just say, it wasn't pretty.

LOL. That's another good one. ha ha

This is a bad one. https://youtu.be/zUi5xKQXG6I

i wanna know where you guys live who still have ice cream trucks coming down the street and are there any houses for rent that allow giant dogs???

re ice cream trucks, I live in the country but for a short time an ice cream truck would go past my house occasionally. It played "Buttons and Bows". I loved that! One day I was working in the garden, which is behind a tall hedge along the road. Over the speaker on the truck the driver said, "Hello there". lol I don't know how he saw me but it was funny.

At least I THOUGHT it was a real ice cream truck, hopefully he wasn't prowling. ugh. : )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfW9-0EzYxA

Dedtired, when my friend mentioned the full moon, I kept thinking "Werewolves of London." Aaaaaooooo...RIP Warren Zevon.