Well, maybe it’s an Ohrwurm!
Thanks to Jen, from Espresso Science, I discovered the wonders of Ohrwürmer. The literal translation of this German word is ear worms (Ohrwurm for one) and it is used to describe the phenomena of hearing a catchy song or jungle, which goes over, and over, and over, and over in your head until you go crazy.
Gotta love those Germans for coming up with such a visually descriptive name. I can’t help but picture a tiny worm singing inside it’s unsuspecting victim. Not surprisingly, scientists are fascinated by this insect and have undertaken various studies to get to the heart of the ear worm phenomena. The three key elements are: the type of music, the person and situation. But rather than go into it in great detail here, check out Jen’s comprehensive research into this little bug to reveal the true nature of this singing beast.
When I read Jen’s article, the German aspect reminded me of Nina and her 1980’s song ‘Ninety nine red balloons’, which proceeded to get stuck in my head for the next 20 minutes. So, what ear worms have you experienced? Love them or hate them?
LOVE the cartoon Marti and you realise you’ve got Nina’s song stuck in my head. AGAIN!! Thanks for the shout-out, much appreciated 🙂
Worth a shout out. I love learning about quirky new things.
Great cartoon! “Baby Beluga” was a song my girls used to listen to – be in my head for days! Thank you for the “Spitewall” support!
Heya Spitewall – always a pleasure to support such talent…”Baby Beluga. Oh baby Beluga. Is the water warm, is your mother home, dum, dee, dum, dee dum….”
Oddly enough… I happened to see the “Too Many Cooks” short last night on Adult Swim (Cartoon Network’s late-night block of programming). It’s not a new thing… it’s from last year, but they’ve been airing it at 4am every night I think this week.
It’s about 11 minutes… and is mostly a sendup of 1980/1990 TV show opening themes and montages… but it goes wrong at some point. If you haven’t seen it, look it up and watch it.
Then you’ll be like me… and I had that tune stuck in my head all night… including every time in the middle of the night I woke up, there it was again!
“And you’ve got, too many cooks (ooh, oooh), too many cooks (ooh, ooh) too many cooks” – Argh! What have you done to me? That is bad – really bad.
Warning to other website readers, whatever you do, don’t Google “Too many cooks”. It comes on YouTube, along with typeset lyrics, so you can sing along.
To a lesser extent… it was still stuck in my head last night as well… I think I’m finally shaking it!
It’s so bad and repetitive that you can’t help but get it stuck in your head. I’m almost cured now, but at least I spread the contagion before I shook it off! 🙂
It only takes one person for me to get the worms in my head going. I play the song over and over again, post a blog and infect others until I get so sick listening to it. Recently I posted Royale sang by Pity Party at WP. The worm is still there until I found this cartoons in Tumblr: http://3psbyseeker.tumblr.com/post/113430533000/philipchircop-the-tune-in-your-head-cartoon. Got to check the link, Marti.
Now I am curious about 99 balloons. Dare I check it at the Tube?
Oh, I absolutely love the visual of that cartoon – really funny.
Yes, you must YouTube it (I’m guessing it’s there – but make sure it is the German version). I remember this song vividly when it was released in the early 80s. It was the first non english speaking hit that I can recall. Our school German teacher was rather hip and with the times and she even played it in class for us.
That was a very big hit, and yes, it is now stuck in my head. (That’s OK, no bad memories associated with it.) Here is a link to it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfPTC7-wCL8
Hey GD, thanks for the link, thanks for the memories. 🙂
When it hit here, back in the day, in the US I mostly heard the english-lyric version. After a while the radio stations eventually would randomly play the german-lyric version. Not speaking German, I could only pick out the familiar parts… but it was interesting to hear it that way sometimes. People in the US often take for granted that there are large parts of the world creating stuff that don’t speak English as their primary language.
It’s always interesting to me, when a group performs a song in different languages… how they keep the pace and make some of the rhymes work after each translation.
It’s a talent I don’t possess. There are some smart cookies out there. 🙂