Lady Gaga is the queen of earworms, according to the scientists' findings.
Lady Gaga’s percussive “Poker Face” (“P-p-p poker face, p-p-p poker face”) has the staying power to echo in your brain hours after you’ve heard it, and scientists know why. There are two reasons, actually.
Gaga’s music often incorporates two major musical elements, write the scientists behind a study in the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts, published Wednesday.
“These musically sticky songs seem to have quite a fast tempo along with a common melodic shape and unusual intervals or repetitions like we can hear in the opening riff of ‘Smoke On The Water’ by Deep Purple or in the chorus of ‘Bad Romance,’” says Kelly Jakubowski, Ph.D., of Durham University, who’s the lead author of the study, “Dissecting an Earworm: Melodic Features and Song Popularity Predict Involuntary Musical Imagery.”
1. A Common Melodic Shape
The first crucial element of an especially catchy track, the team of European scientists reported after analyzing the earworms of 3,000 participants, is an emphasis on common melodic shapes. In particular, there’s something special about musical phrases that rise and fall. Think about the chorus on Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance”: On the “Oh-oh-oh-oh-ohs,” the melody soars upward into higher notes, falling back downward with “Caught in a bad romance.” On a musical staff, the notes would form a little hill; in our ears, they add up to a predictable tune that’s easy to digest. A similar melodic shape, the authors write, is heard in the opening riff to Maroon 5’s annoyingly catchy “Moves Like Jagger,” suggesting that Adam Levine is an earworm lord himself — perhaps a joker in Lady Gaga’s court.
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