Earworm Rx Rescue

The worst earworm I ever had disrupted my life in the 80’s when Hall and Oates were saturating the airwaves — and record stores still existed at shopping malls. The song that kept playing in my head was one of their hits but not one of my favorites. Or should I say I couldn’t “go for that, nooo, no can do.”

Yeah, it was “I Can’t Go for That(No Can Do).”

Somehow this weird little cha-cha-cha of a hit song had gotten trapped in my brain, unable to escape. I wanted it to stop playing, but it wouldn’t stop. It was as though it had gotten embedded in my brain cells and didn’t want to leave. Oh, there would be a few lulls of silence here and there. It would seem like it was going to stop…then it would start up again.

What was far worse, though, was that every time I turned on the radio — no matter when, no matter where I was — “I Can’t Go for That” was playing.

So I stopped listening to the radio.

Then I’d go inside a store, and that song would be playing. No matter where I went — to a friend’s house, to a restaurant, even on an elevator — that song was playing.

And yet, even when I avoided listening to it on the outside, it kept playing on the inside of my head. Now I’ve heard overplayed songs before(especially around Christmastime), but they’d never gotten stuck in my head before the way this one did. It wasn’t on my playlist, I didn’t want it on my playlist, but it wouldn’t go away. Nothing I did could get rid of that tune.

Of course, I tried everything: prayer, meditation, nature sounds, nature walks, white noise. I also stretched my neck, yawned a lot, tried to sleep it away. When I finally did fall asleep, it seemed to be gone and not playing in my dreams. Great! Then I’d wake up in a cold sweat as the tune would begin again.

I even started popping my ears in hopes that some waxy build-up had been trapping this relentless music, and if the wax went away so would “I Can’t Go for That”… WRONG.

So how did I finally get rid of it?

I gave up trying to silence it. I embraced the worm. I welcomed the worm.

I figured if this song kept playing in my head, then maybe there was some psychic or spiritual reason that it came and wouldn’t go away. So I stopped fighting it. No more stress. No more opposition. Just a resigned life-changing decision to really start listening to the music.

I actually went to a Musicland Store and bought the Hall and Oates LP that featured “I Can’t Go for That.” Then I played it and played it. Over and over. I began dancing to it — and singing along to it.

Because I’d heard it so much I knew some of the lyrics, especially the repetitive chorus. But after I learned all of the lyrics by heart, I was able to sing the entire song. It didn’t feel like I was singing along with Hall and Oates, either. It felt like I was performing with my own earworm karaoke.

Hey, I sounded pretty good, too, for an amateur. Then, just as I was beginning to really like this song, it stopped. No more earworm.

What happened?

Was it some glitch in the wiring between different regions of the brain? Did my neurons malfunction, then correct themselves? Could there have been a disconnect between my conscious and subconscious mind?

Who knows?

But as soon as I stopped hearing the song and started listening to it, the earworm left for good. As soon as I recognized it a part of me that needed attention, I took it seriously. What the lyrics told me was that I needed to set my own boundaries and stand up for what I wanted and needed. As the song goes, you could have my body but not my soul, nooo, no can do.

For me, that was worth remembering. Maybe embracing the earworm enabled it to finally leave… and it left when this lesson had finally been learned.