October 3, 2025 was a special day for Swifty as Taylor Swift released one of his most anticipated albums: The life of a dancer. This was the first new album since Eras Tourtour, which established the singer as a mass idol. So it’s no surprise that even those who wouldn’t normally listen to her started listening to the new album in search of what makes Taylor so compelling. Many confirmed this, because in just a couple of listens they already had Ophelia’s fate stuck in his head. Like many other songs of this singer, this earworm, a topic that stays in the brain and pops up repeatedly and without warning when no one expects it.
Other earworms include the famous Baby Shark, that you will be singing in your head for the rest of the day after reading this article. Please.
Earworms may vary depending on each person’s tastes, but it’s true that there are songs that are almost deliberately made to take up residence in our brains. So what is causing this?
In principle, there is melodies, rhythms and even lyrics who turn to certain parts of our brainso that with a simple stimulus they will appear in our consciousness again and again, even if we thought they had been forgotten. This happens with many songs by Taylor Swift and many other composers. After all, they know what to do so that the audience stays with their tunes. If that’s your intention, of course. That’s the beauty of music: every song is written for a specific purpose. Some don’t want to burrow into your brain, but that doesn’t make them any less awesome.
What are earworms?
Earworms are songs that we repeat in our brains over and over again, usually followed by some kind of stimulus. For example, if it is a song that we usually listen to when we go to a certain store, perhaps while visiting that establishment, even though the background music has changed, it suddenly appears in our mind and remains there for the rest of the day.
They got attention scientists and musicians for many years. The first wanted to know which parts of the brain were activated by earworms. The latter, logically, hoped to understand how they are formed in order to be able to create them with their own compositions.
Today both questions were answered. For starters, earworms activate the auditory cortexso even if there is no music, our brain forces us to “listen” to it. Moreover, as explained in the article for Talk Professor of Musicology at the University of Sydney Emery Schubert, network in default mode. It is a set of brain regions that are activated when the mind is at rest, not focusing on any task. They inhibit conscious attention and allow it to wander. This is useful because helps us dream and promotes creativityalthough this also favors the arrival intrusive thoughts. They can be of different types, some of them are very unpleasant, but earworms are also among them.
What songs provoke you?
The songs that most often cause worms are those that have short and repetitive sequences. These don’t have to be repeating letters though doo-doo doo-doo doo-doo from baby shark may indicate otherwise. These could simply be repeating melodic fragments.
Be that as it may, this is because, in general, our brain distributes information in small fragments to remember this. When we memorize something very long, such as a speech, we associate the end of each of these fragments with the beginning of the next one. On the other hand, if we don’t know the beginning of the next one, our brain tends to start over from the beginning of what just ended. Therefore, if we only know a fragment of a song that is often repeated, our brain will repeat this in a circle.
The fast pace also encourages the formation of earworms. And, logically, the same thing happens with Repetitive and simple melodies. Besides, acquaintance Melody influences many things. If we listen to him often, it will be easier for him to become an earworm.
What does all this have to do with Taylor Swift?
There are plenty of Taylor Swift songs that have all the ingredients to be earworms. Returning to Ophelia’s fateAlthough it is not very fast, it has a fast pace and, above all, quite repetitive. The sentences are short, with some chorus at the end of many of themwhich generates an easy to remember template. Moreover, as explained Huffington Post professor of composition at Berklee College of Music Scarlet Keysthe lyrics also use earworm-promoting resources. This is, for example, the case asyndeton, a rhetorical figure in which enumerations are made without the use of conjunctions: “Keep one hundred on the land (Earth), on the sea (Sea), in the sky.”
Finally, it’s worth remembering that Taylor Swift’s songs They are constantly on the radio and, above all, on social networks.so they are very familiar to us. Ophelia’s fate This has already become the topic of many Instagram stories since it was posted. There’s nothing like being a musical subject to become an earworm. We’ve also seen this on topics like GoldKPop Demon Huntres, or TropicocheteKarol G.
They are all earworms, and some of them are probably already repeating themselves in your memory. Do you want to get rid of this? There are even themes designed to shut down the earworms and get them out of your head. Here we leave you with one.
Now all you have to do is check if it worked for you.
Source: Hiper Textual
