How do you get a song un-stuck from your brain?

“You’ll be swell, you’ll be great
Gonna have the whole world on a plate
Starting here, starting now
Honey, everything’s coming up roses…”

Arghhhhh!!!!! I can’t take it anymore! :-)

Play something else loud. Blow it out.

With another song. Or something bigger and better. Last Sunday it took a whole live opera performance to rid me of a tune from the drugstore’s PA system that had been tormenting me for three days.

Oh Gawd! This happens to me all the time! Especially catchy pop songs that invade my dreams and become the soundtrack to every chapter of the dream and I wake up singing it… and I hate it so much I need a bullet to excise it from my brain!!

I have to replace it with an even more annoying and catchy tune (thanks for You’ll be Swell, btw) to rid myself.

you put the lime in the coconut you drink it all up…

@Jeruba The sublime joys of Muzak!

I just have to listen to the whole damn thing once, either in my head or in real life, and it will unlodge itself. My problem is that I get loops stuck in my head.

@Blueroses Try out this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s62MrU8mHx4

Ethel Merman never had a pretty voice, but she could certainly belt ‘em. In this clip, she isn’t wearing a microphone. She was old school; she knew how to turn on the power and fill an entire theatre with her sound. During these days of miked stage performances, that’s an amazing thing to revisit.

Play another song you love, and count backwards from 50 ;)

I’m surprised nobody mentioned the common informal term for this phenomenon: earworm, coined originally in German.

I seem to be more susceptible than most people. I’m a musician but I don’t know if that’s related. As I type these words, your tune is playing in my head, lol ! The only hope I ever have of turning off the music is to let the song (or the repeating portion of it) play out to its finale, then to imagine a long period of silence following the performance, which I try to parlay into a permanently off condition. I know it sounds nuts but this whole condition is nuts to begin with.

I instantly thought earworm, but I thought that was generally understood.
@gasman

I’ve tried playing it out to the finale but it doesn’t work if you only know some of the lyrics/phrases. That’s where it becomes insanely hypnotic

Ear worm! Never heard the expression. Love it. Last week some tune wormed its way into my head for almost a full day, but then I forgot it and now I can’t even remember what the song was, which is good because I’m sure it would come back to haunt me. It just a matter of forcing your mind to focus on other things.

I actually wrote a little tune that I sing to myself to rid myself of ear worms. It has a complicated rhythm, and does a good job of clearing that shit out.

Find another song and make yourself concentrate on it until you’re doing something that takes even more concentration and both songs stop bothering you. Works for me.

I find if I successfully pass them to someone else I am fine. XD

There is one song or another playing in my head 24/7. It’ll be Coming Up Roses now, thanks! The only thing that ever works for me is to sing a different (and simple) song very loudly in my head. Repeatedly, with absolutely no pauses. If I pause at all, I’ll have both the original earworm and the simple song taking turns playing in there. Talk about crazy making! I usually sing the alphabet song or Red River Valley, and I only ever do this if I really need to sleep and can’t shut up an annoying song in my head. I can fall asleep to either of those songs, and they don’t tend to stick. I wake up with a whole new song the next day.

PS: I love that you belted this out for your mom. :)

Whenever I get a song stuck in my head I listen to this one Coin Operated Boy by the Dresden Dolls.

Hey, if I have to have a song stuck in my head, it may as well be something I want to hear.