We don’t know about you but at least half of the Her.ie office has had Trouble by Taylor Swift stuck in our heads ever since we saw the hilarious goat remix of it on YouTube. At first it was fun now we start shrieking at each other every time someone starts humming it.
There’s nothing worse than a song that becomes a serious earworm. Not only does it make it hard to concentrate on anything else, it also sort of wrecks the song for you – let’s face it, it may be a deadly song but if you find yourself singing it 50+ times every single day, you’re likely to get sick of it super quick.
So how do you get a song out of your head? Well according to scientists, you turn to words. Yes really.
The Express reports that scientists have found that concentrating on anagrams can take our minds off those irritatingly-catchy songs and help us to get them out of our heads for once and for all.
Pick up a pen and some paper and try doing a few anagrams to get rid of your earworm
“Something we can do automatically like driving or walking means we are not using all of our cognitive resource, so there is plenty of space left for that internal jukebox to start playing,” said psychologists, Dr Ira Hyman who conducted the research.
An anagram is a word, phrase or name that’s formed by rearranging the letters of another. For example, ‘iceman’ is an anagam of ‘cinema.’ Apparently anagrams engage all parts of our brains meaning that there’s no room left for a sneaky earworm to catch you off guard.
The study conducted by Dr Hyman wfound that She Loves You and I Wanna Hold Your Hand by The Beatles were considered to be two of the catchiest songs out there. Waterloo by Abba and Changes by David Bowie followed.
The next time someone in the office starts humming a bit of TaySwizz we’re planning on making them do a few anagrams. We’ll let you know if it works…
