A Spoonful of Earworms? The Music in My Brain
Many public agencies have messaging goals. They need, for instance, to tell people about pandemic rules and how we can protect each other. For most of us these messages are hard to hear because they restrict our personal freedoms. In addition, all this technical stuff quickly gets boring.
So how can responsible leaders get
these important messages across in a palatable form? One way is by using music.
Music and the
Message
I am indebted to friends for many
things. And one of them is passing along the links to interesting videos. Have
you seen any of those pandemic message creative parodies? They are attracting a
lot of attention these days. Here is just one of many...
A friend sent that one; then I found
some more and sent links to friends. Then another friend sent another link. I
watched it and found many more. These captivating musical productions all take a
light-hearted approach. But they are transmitting a deadly serious message. We
have to do unpleasant things like staying at home and wearing masks. But we do
it to avoid even more unpleasant things like sickness and death by pandemic.
I recently watched about six of these
clever Covid-19 performances featuring the musically talented Marsh family.
Delightful! One of my favorites is "Have The New Jab" based on
Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah.' Another is "The Buy-in Eats Tonight"
based on Solomon Linda's 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight.’ They even have a video
parody of 'Do-Re-Mi' from 'The Sound of Music' promoting Covid-fighting
practices. And that gave rise to a thought.
Musical Pleasures
It was fascinating to discover that a
familiar melody makes the most clinical and boring message more acceptable. Not
surprising if that melody stimulates the brain's pleasure centres, and produces
what has been termed the pleasure response. This is exactly what Daniel Levitin
discovered in his studies on the topic of 'your brain on music.'
The brain scan work done in Levitin's
lab clearly demonstrated that melodies stimulate activity in certain portions
of the brain. These areas, the nucleus accumbens and the amygdala, are associated
with the brain's pleasure response. This is apparently effected by controlling
the production of dopamine, the so-called 'feel good' hormone.
So first a familiar melody elicits the
pleasure response. Then the boring, clinical message of pandemic control is
married to those pleasurable feelings. The well-intentioned advice begins to
feel like fun. And what if we also associate that familiar piece of music with
pleasurable past experiences? Why then the musician gets twice the bang for the
buck.
A Spoonful of
Sugar
Creative people discovered the value
of associating pleasure with otherwise indigestible realities long before
science explained it. One example only is the work of two brothers, Richard M.
and Robert B. Sherman.
Who were the Sherman brothers you
wonder? Here's what Wikipedia has to say: 'Julie Andrews was not yet committed
for the part of Mary Poppins [circa 1961]. She did not like the song that was
written for her, believing it did not have enough snap to it. The original song
was called "The Eyes of Love". Walt Disney instructed the Sherman
Brothers to come up with something more catchy. Robert Sherman, the primary
lyricist of the duo, arrived home from work one evening, having worked all day
trying to come up with a song idea. As he walked in the door, his wife, Joyce,
informed him that the children had gotten their polio vaccine that day. Robert
asked his son, Jeffrey, if it hurt (thinking the child had received a shot).
The child responded that the medicine was put on a cube of sugar and that he
swallowed it. Realizing what he had, Robert Sherman arrived at work early the
next morning with the title of the song "A Spoonful of Sugar Helps the
Medicine Go Down". Sherman suggested the lyric to his brother, Richard,
who was at first dismissive but slowly came around. At his brother's behest,
Richard put melody to the lyric, and with that, the song was born.'
Familiar melody, without doubt, is the
spoonful of sugar that makes so many 'medicines' more palatable.
And Now For a
Commercial Message
And not only indigestible realities.
What about dull, boring, tedious or otherwise uninteresting things that we
would normally ignore? No salesperson wants their product ignored. Many have
learned to bring music to their aid in gaining the attention of potential
customers. I notice this approach used in radio and TV commercials every day.
They purchase the rights to one well known melody or another and then create
lyrics to promote their product or service. The product becomes more desirable
because of its association with the pleasure response. I used to think it was
just because they couldn't compose their own melody. Instead they grabbed one
already available to carry their marketing message.
What I didn't know is that there is a
well-developed science of the use of music in advertising. Our perceptions of
music are tightly integrated with memory and emotion. Both memory and emotion
are qualities that merchandisers fervently desire to have associated with their
products.
Something we remember and associate
with positive emotions is something we are likely to buy. Professor David
Huron, a specialist in the psychology of music at Ohio State University, has
proposed six major ways in which music can help to promote products. Notably,
two of these are emotion and memorability. Huron claims that adding melody is
"the most common musical technique for aiding memorability and hence
product recall."
Melodic Memories
Honor Whiteman in an article written
for Medical News Today describes some interesting research on music and memory.
One study found that singing new information aids memory and improves learning.
The authors recommend a 'listen-and-sing' learning method. Could this be why
learning the words to songs we sing is so much easier than memorizing poetry?
No wonder replacing "Rocket
Man," syllable-for-syllable with "Rakuten" in the famous Elton
John melody creates an association that lingers in the mind. Product recall is
almost impossible to avoid.
These insights raise more questions.
Why does a given melody stimulate the pleasure response? Is it something
inherent in its tonal or structural qualities? Or is it just familiarity born
of simple repetition?
Could it be the feeling of
'recognition' alone that promotes the pleasure response? I suspect that may be
so. I experience a similar feeling when recognizing the face and voice of a
well-known actor in some film where I hadn't expected to find him or her. And
of all the Marsh family videos my two favorites feature the two melodies I
already knew best.
Musical Imagery
And what of the earworm? Wikipedia
says an earworm is also called a brainworm, sticky music or stuck song
syndrome. More formally, an "Involuntary Musical Imagery (INMI), is a
catchy and/or memorable piece of music or saying that continuously occupies a
person's mind even after it is no longer being played.”
Musical imagery! What an engaging
thought. Does this suggest that when we play back a melody to ourselves in the
brain it is actually the same as re-seeing a familiar image like the Mona Lisa,
in our mind? Or is it just applying terminology from a phenomenon we think we
understand to something we don't really understand very well at all?
Hey. Doesn’t an earworm melody
eventually generate pain rather than a pleasure response? Recent research
suggests the two may be more closely related than we might imagine. Dopamine it
seems may be implicated in our perceptions of pain as well as of pleasure.
Some Follow-up
Reading/Listening
Daniel Levitin - Your Brain On Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyt8EmsJIBA
Nessun Dorma...alla Corona - Daniel
Emmet (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL52AuF4QzY).
The power of music: how it can benefit
health: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/302903#Music-and-memory
Wikipedia on - A Spoonful of Sugar:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Spoonful_of_Sugar
Wikipedia on - Earworm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earworm
Wikipedia - Music in advertising:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_in_advertising
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