Christmas Earworms
Christmas Eve is one week from today, and Christmas music is ramping up everywhere.
And while some of it is beautiful, let’s be honest…some of it is awful. Sadly, the awful songs are the ones that stick in our minds, impossible to get rid of—earworms, they call them, because they figuratively crawl into your ear and stay there.
While most are merely annoying, research shows they can interfere with sleep quality, work productivity—and can even make your anxiety over the holidays worse.
SeatPick analyzed 90 of the most popular festive songs…measuring repetition, lyric fillers, shrillness (their term) and harmonic dullness (also their term).
Number 1 on the top 10 list of Christmas songs most likely to become earworms…Jose Feliciano’s “Feliz Navidad”…hard to argue with that.
As I went through the list, I realized that probably due to my age, I have very little idea about most of the songs on the list…that may help me overcome being saddled with earworms.
Number 2 was a Kelly Clarkson song, “Underneath the Tree”—no idea what that is. Same for number 3, a Welsh singer-songwriter named Shakin’ Stevens with “Merry Christmas Everyone”—I saw a bit of a You Tube clip on it, and clicked away in less than six seconds.
I have heard of Ariana Grande and Sia…but have no idea of their songs “Santa Tell Me” at number 4, and “Snowman” at number 5 respectively. Justin Bieber apparently has an annoying song called “Mistletoe” coming in at number 6 on the list—but I’m blissfully ignorant of it.
Then my luck ran out, as I am painfully familiar with Wham’s “Last Christmas” at number 7…Pentatonix and “Hallelujah” at number 8… “Wonderful Christmastime” by Paul McCartney at 9, and the classic “Run Run Rudolph” by Chuck Berry in the tenth spot.
Luckily, the list caused me to instead think of great Christmas songs…which have, so far, drowned out the painful earworms on the list. So far, anyway.
