Songs that stick

I have this habit of listening to a song over and over again until it bores me out. There are times when some songs just linger on in the inner corridors of my brain. They make me sing voluntarily, involuntarily and repetitively to the point of embarrassment. There are several songs that got stuck in my head some that I passed the fever to someone else to my own detriment.

It was probably 1996 and I was in my second year of my bachelors degree. I managed to gain access to a computer lab as part of the research project I enrolled under a professor. As I started spending more time at the lab, I got friendly with the lab maintenance guy who would lend me his collection of music CDs. The CDs were ofcourse donated by the users of the lab. The lab manager was one smart guy. He would let the new users listen to the cds that he had collected over time. After a few months he would induce the users, who are old now, to buy new CDs and donate to the lab for common use. Nothing wrong with that, but he was dealing with a new beast here. So I would borrow the CDs from him and play the music in the computer I was using. I liked the music of Kishore Kumar and one song stuck on me. The song was 'Oh Mere Dil ke Chain'(can't translate to english without making it look funny, so I will refrain) from the movie Mere Jeevan Saathi.

Mere Jeevan Saathi (1972) - O Mere Dil Ke Chain by Kishore Kumar.

I didn't know much Hindi then, nor do I do now but I think I am better. I still get mixed with the gender of objects. I think it was the easy lyrics and repetitive nature of the title verse that made it sticky. I would repeat the song over and over again. It appears that song went viral and everyone who was coming to the lab was either playing the song on CD or were humming it when coming to and going out of the lab. Virus effects the person most likely to be exposed. In the case of the 'Dil Ke Chain' virus our poor lab manager was most exposed to it. He got bit by the Dil Ke Chain bug and he would listen to the song on his way home until one day disaster struck. He met with an accident while going home from work. Apparently he was trying to repeat the song on his CD player and got distracted fell off his bike. He broke his arm and had it in a sling. After a week of absence he returned to the lab taking rides from my fellow students as he was unable to ride his two wheeler scooter anymore. He forbade me from playing songs in the lab from that time onwards.

Having been forbidden from playing songs at school, I tuned myself to listening music at home. There used to be a small music store(more of a shack) at the end of the street. They would record songs of your choice onto to 60mins tape cassette. I made myself a list of 12 songs onto an old cassette we had at home. Of all the 12 songs the most I played was this song 'Chappa Chappa' (no idea what that means) from the movie Maachis by Gulzar.

Maachis (1996) - Chappa Chappa, Sung by Hariharan and Suresh Wadkar, Composed by Vishal Bharadwaj, Lyrics by Gulzar

Again I hardly understood half of the lyrics(I dont even now) as most of the verses are in language I don't understand. I don't know if it is Punjabi or Kashmiri, because I know that only few lines of the song are in Hindi. But the catchy Chappa Chappa caught with me and I repeated that song for a long time. It was only time before I irritated someone and it was my Mom this time. One day she took the cassette out and said 'Chappa Chappa ani enni sarlu ra Chetta pata' or something like that. From there it was a slippery slope for my chappa song and it slipped out of my brain.

During the third year of my engineering, I went to Bangalore with a bunch of my friends for an exam. One of my classmates was into English movies a lot. It was the time when Pierce Brosnon was being introduced as the new James Bond and the movie was Golden Eye. On the day after the exam, I borrowed the cassette from my friend and was listening to the soundtrack from Golden Eye. I was most impressed with the title track.
James Bond - Goldeneye Opening Theme

I couldn't get the lyrics of most English songs those days. But this song was different. I could get the verses very well and repeated that song to death. Imagine me singing 'See the reflections in the water' doing the husky female voice over. Apparently I had hummed the song aloud and awoke my classmate who was also sharing the room then. He lamented to me as to why I would sing the same song and not change it. I did not get the golden eye but my classmate did get a red eye. He slept all along the return journey in the train.

Fast forward couple more years to the year 1999. It was the first semester of my graduate studies at WVU. Internet was growing fast and all sorts of services were being provided for free but the search engines were pathetic. Anyone remember askjeeves.com or altavista.com? Google did not make it big yet. So finding stuff on the internet was not as easy as it is today. During those days, I don't know why but I could not recollect a song from the movie Antham(translation - the end). I had asked that to a friend who was also a new graduate student at WVU and was my neighbor then. He could not recollect the song immediately. Few weeks later my friend came to me and told me that he had been looking for that song for several weeks on the internet and that he had found a site where I could listen to the song. That site is Raaga and I visit the site whenever I look for Indian music. The song is titled 'Nee navvu cheppindi naku'(translation - Your smile told) - a slow romantic melody.
Antham(1990) - Nee Navvu Cheppindi Naatho by S.P.Balasubramayam, Lyrics: Siri Vennela Sitarama Sastry and Composed by R.D.Burman

I thanked my friend and that song stuck on me for a long time that semester. My friend though switched to LSU a semester later. I didn't expect the distraction that I passed on to him would have such impact on my friend. Well it might not have been the reason, but it makes for a good story and I am sticking to it. At least he went to a better football team.

After many such haunting songs and a decade later we reach to the end of 2009 where I am stuck with my current sticky song. It is an old song from the movie Tezaab in which Madhuri Dixit rose to stardom with the song Ek Do Teen. The song I got stuck with is a different one. It is a slow crooner by Nitin Mukesh titled 'So gaya yeh jahan'(Transaltion - the world is asleep).
Tezaab(1988) - So gaya yeh jahan by Nitin Mukesh and Lyrics by Javed Akhtar

I dont know how and why I looked up this song but I had listened to it for a day or so. I managed to pass it on to my wife. It has been about a month since I played the song online and it still hasn't left my home. I am thinking, yes the world is asleep and so should this song, but it hasn't yet.

While Nitin Mukesh soul is doing rounds in my home, I decided to look up on what makes these songs stick. Almost everyone goes through this song stickiness. It is as if some songs get stuck in the haunted chambers of our brains. Not surprisingly research has been done on such songs. They call such song an earworm - a very creepy name. They say that some songs on repeatedly listening to them creates, what these researchers call, a 'cognitive itch'. It is like a regular itch and one way to sooth yourself is to 'scratch the itch' by listening again to the song or humming it. This creates a feedback loop - repetition creates the itch, scratching by humming or listening the song soothes the itch and on and one again. Here are some links for more information on it.

Why do songs get stuck in my head?
Songs That Cause The Brain To 'Itch': UC Professor Investigating Why Certain Tunes Get Stuck In Our Heads
Songs Stick in Everyone's Head
Researcher confirms existence of 'earworms' / 98% of people have had songs stuck in their head

The more simple the song and easy to repeat the more is the likelyhood of the song being stuck. So even mediocre songs can get stuck like Billy Ray Cryus' only known hit Achy Breaky Heart. He is now known as a father of a famous teenage star Miley Cyrus than for his musical career.
Billie ray cyrus & miley cyrus - achy breaky heart , get ready , get set , Don't go


But so much for the research, nobody knows how to get rid of them. But luckily it is not a serious affliction. Most of us get out of them one way or the other. So I end this post with a tribute to all such songs and to their makers - 'Can't get you out of my head' by Kylie Minogue.

Kylie Minogue - Can't Get You Out Of My Head