Today's songs make me wonder what exactly counts as an earworm. I woke up with "You Are What You Love" in my head. Waking up with a song in your head automatically qualifies as an earworm in my opinion, since there is no conscious reason for it to be bouncing on your eardrum. Even if the song doesn't stay in your head for very long, if you wake up hearing it, it is an earworm. Of course this particular song has been in my head for several days and I kept hearing it throughout the day, so it is clear that it is officially a cognitive itch.
But what if a song is only stuck in your head for a few minutes? Is that an earworm? "All This Time" was only in my head for about 15 minutes as I walked to work. I really enjoy my walk to work, down a street with shy cats, across a bridge with christmas lights, and through a park. Having such a bouncy, dense, almost ecstatic song in my head during my walk was lovely. So I included it in today's list of earworms, purely to mark the memory. But, does a short 15 minute skitter through one's brain constitute an earworming? What is the cut-off point?
"Is Love Enough?" raises the question of what constitutes an obsession as opposed to an earworm. Is there a distinction between the two? Most of the songs that get stuck in my head are not songs that I love. They are catchy, or I heard them recently, or they are my subconscious' way of processing something. But I love "Is Love Enough?" I was extremely obsessed with it about two years. Over the course of about three weeks, I probably listened to it more than 50 times. It is actually a very spiritual song for me. It reminds me of how I want to be in the world. I have such a strong emotional connection with the song, that it seems to surpass mere earworminess. While many repetunes are ear fluff, perhaps there is small subset that carry more weight.
I also think that a song that was a previous earworm or obsession is much more likely to be an earworm in the future. Neural encoding, you know.
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