Why Songs Get Stuck In Your Head

July 30, 2010

Interview with Daniel Levitin, author of the book This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

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Mike Carruthers:
Ever have a song get stuck in your head? It happens to almost everyone.

Daniel J. Levitin:
It tends not to be the whole song - it tends to be about fifteen or twenty seconds of the song and the songs tend to be relatively simple melodically and rhythmically. Seldom do you have somebody running around with Mahler's Fifth in their head.
 

Dan Levitin, author of the book This Is Your Brain on Music... 

It's more likely some sort of pop throwaway song like "Who Let The Dogs Out" or "YMCA" by the Village People. And these songs have been described as kind of a cognitive itch and the way you scratch it is by playing them over and over in your head.

Everyone has their own favorite song or favorite music. And interestingly…

People tend to report that their favorite music comes from their early teen years and there's a neural basis for this. The primary mission of the brain until about the age of sixteen is to form as many new connections as possible, but after that the mission of the brain shifts to prune out unneeded connections. So, it's not that you can't learn anything new when you get older but things that you've learned as a child become embedded. So, we tend as adults to want to listen to that music or music that sounds like it.

And music can impact us in other interesting ways, says David.

We do know that it can help people to withstand pain better than without. And music helps athletes - athletes all the time report that they can run a little farther or work out a little harder if they've got music helping push them along.