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Comment by joebob42 | Hacker News Reader

I'm terrified of this. I've no idea why, but if I hear a song too many times in a couple day period I have a night of fever dreaming where I wake up over and over again to the song in my head. It's like my brain has over conditioned the pathway for that song and as soon as it starts trying to dream it falls into it and the dream breaks and I wake up. It happens to me a couple times a year and when I hear any of the songs it's happened with before I feel a deep physical revulsion.

I kind of wonder if it's a symptom of something but am otherwise more or less 100% neurotypical so I think it's just a weird quirk.

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I hope you never have to work retail, they often have the same approved songs on repeat all day.

I worked at a gym, and to this day, there are songs I don't even like that pop up in my head. 3 years of hearing them every day just about drove me spare.

My dad still whines about Peter Frampton due to his time on a submarine in the late 70s. Could only take so much vinyl out to sea and I guess shanties were out of fashion haha.

I personally tend to listen to full albums repetitively. Lately it has been Billy Cobham’s Spectrum and some Khruangbin albums. I also play drums and tend to study the same handful of songs for a few months at a time. Ok maybe I’ve been meditating on Stevie Wonder’s Superstition for over a year haha.

Khruangbin is great work/focus music, they sink into a groove and stay there for a while so you don't get distracted too easily. Their early stuff with no lyrics was even less distracting but they don't go heavy on the lyrics anyway.

Collectively, the U.S. as a country, I think, have heard Hotel California enough. Thank you.

Working in retail or restaurants during Christmas season is absolute torture. There's not a single Christmas song I enjoy anymore.

Yup, it sucks. For me it isn't even so much the song as it is how it transports me back to that job. Like, I hear the song and can picture myself doing certain tasks in the retail store I worked at while listening to it.

I once had a song stuck in my head every day for over two years! It got to the point I would hear a note from the melody with every step. Walking up stairs was horrible. The worst part was I didn't know what the song was. I figured out the melody on the piano, and once I finally figured out the song, it eventually stopped.

The song? A stupid commercial jingle. "Meow meow meow meow..."

https://www.jwz.org/gruntle/fishheads.html

There was a period in my life when a mantra(?) of sorts was stuck in my head. Just a short phrase or word (I think actually for a long stretch the number "256" was stuck in my head). For reasons unknown to me I would repeat the phrase in my mind or under my breath — seemingly as a way to either keep focus on some current thought or to derail the current thought. I don't remember which.

I think I was under a lot of stress then — I have worked on a team or two where the project (and management) were stressful. So likely that is it.

(Also a tell: I began to notice my handwriting when I signed checks was deteriorating to something scrawly, uncontrolled — when I switched teams and made other changes in my life to reduce stress I found my signature return to the more graceful strokes I was used to.)

Musically, there is (still) often a song stuck in my head. But I put music on in the background nearly every day, seems to keep the song in my head moving along to something new....

I never really made a connection with music getting stuck in my head, but I often get short phrases or words stuck in my head on constant repeat for days at a time too.

The stress relationship may have something to do with it though. The times where it happened the most are pretty strongly correlated with high periods of stress in my life as well.

It often happens for words that I realized I was pronouncing wrong from only having read them and never having heard them. For example, sepulcher and dais come to mind as words that I repeated internally with no control for days on end and they're both words that I was mispronouncing until I heard them while reading and listening to an audiobook at the same time.

Interesting little quirk of the mind I suppose.

Exact same thing with me, to the point where I have to deliberately avoid listening to some tracks to avoid insomnia triggers. It wears off with most tracks, but I still can't hear "See-Line Woman".

Ironically, this happened to my daughter after listening to Duran Duran's "Last Night in the City" which starts with the prominent lyric "I'm not gonna sleep tonight"

Wow, surprised to hear this happens to other people! When I discover a new song I love, I'll nearly always have a night where I wake up with the song blaring in my head. Even if I don't know the song that well, my mind somehow reproduces intricate detail and fills in instrumental or lyrical gaps. In my teens and 20s I had really severe ear worms, some lasting for days or weeks. Fortunately that has lessened with age, but the nighttime concerts are still a regular occurrence.

> I've no idea why, but if I hear a song too many times in a couple day period I have a night of fever dreaming where I wake up over and over again to the song in my head.

Do you use stimulants of any kind? I have a pet theory that even high doses of caffeine can lead to earworms or IMI. I think there’s even OTC medicines that are well known to contribute to earworms.

I get it when I substitute methylphenidate with caffeine for a day or so (which is how I keep myself below 20mg MPH a day), and usually just at the crash point.

A song stuck in my head can make me restless all night as well.

One fix I’ve found that often works for me is listening to instrumental jazz every night before bed. It’s variable/random enough that it knocks the stuck song out of my mind without replacing it with another. Search for “jazz for sleep” playlists, there are a few decent ones out there.

As an adult I never experienced this, but I have vivid memories of staring up at the ceiling at 3 AM hearing "Paradise by the dashboard lights" play over and over and over again as a teen.

♪♪♪ Wake me up before you go go, don't leave me hangin on like a yo-yo! ♪♪♪

What about music without singing? Does it happen listening to that as well?

Yes.

I've had this happen with various Ace Attorney soundtracks[1]. The best bit of advice I found to beat the earworm was to play the song to the end in my head. Which didn't help a bit, because every song on those soundtracks has a loop point.

[1]: example here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-QiKy-iEkQ

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