How To: Get That Damned Tune Out Of Your Head

The absolute worst pet peeve of mine is when I get some goddamned awful pop tune stuck in my head. It’s hard to avoid, you basically have to stay home and not watch television or listen to the radio. In our day to day lives we are inundated constantly by the same bad music. While shopping for shoes or shaving cream, it’s piped at us from above; it throbs at us from passing vehicles; it imbeds itself into our brains, unwelcome, while dining out at T.G.I.F.’s and the like. Bad music is inescapable.

Thank God for MP3 players. I’m rarely without mine and it goes a long way toward baffling the sonic assault of the environments I expose myself to regularly. Nevertheless, it still happens that I’ll be cooking or cleaning or puttering about, maybe riding my bike, whatever, and for perhaps no reason whatsoever, I’ll get some horrible song on repeat in my noggin. The worst is when it’s jut the same refrain over and over, like some snippet from a Bryan Adams number, or some chorus to a lamentable latter-day Elton John hit from a bad movie you were dragged to see. God help you if it’s the theme from Titanic.

Being my biggest pet peeve, others have heard me complain about it quite often. I’m occasionally rude in actually sharing the tune with others, which is tantamount to yawning at someone on purpose. Misery loves company and it invariably works, but that’s a jerky thing to do. However, one time I was kvetching on the matter, a kindly fellow passed on a remarkable cure, which I’ve found it terribly useful. Thus, like grandma’s sure-fire hiccup remedy, I pass this on to you…

The next time “Sister Christian” is on an endless cycle in your brain, start humming Antonio Carlos Jobim’s timeless classic, “Girl From Ipanema”. Trust me. All you need to go is get all the way through it once, should take about a minute or two. It’s a soothing tune, cool and clean, like a Tom Collins. But this song also has the magical property of not only eradicating any song that was previously stuck in your head but it also leaves without a trace. It evaporates from the surface, it’s musical Windex. Give it a shot.