That Gotye earworm

An earworm is a catchy song or tune that gets stuck in our minds and runs continually. Sometimes it seems we can’t get away from it. We may or may not like the song, or we may move from one point of view to the other as the earworm wriggles, but even if we hate a song, we can’t help being sucked it. Such is the power of an earworm.

The viral video above illustrates this. The two guys hate Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know”, but they can’t help singing along. The fact that they don’t know all the words, but are compelled to sing it anyway, makes the video even more fun—and accurate. So, too, is the fact that they actually do like a remix of the song. I’ve had all of that happen to me.

There have been numerous parodies of the original video, some of which have been very funny. None of the parodies would have been made if the song weren’t an earworm.

As an aside, iTunes New Zealand offered the song as a Free Video of the Week exactly a year ago, and I downloaded it. I never actually watched it until it was already a hit. Many of iTunes NZ’s free videos were really interesting, even if the genre wasn’t necessarily something I’d normally be interested in. Sometimes I even found music that I liked, though I’d never have known about it otherwise. So, I was extrememly disappointed when iTunes NZ stopped offering free videos of the week a couple months ago (they still offer a free Song of the Week, and I almost always download those, and sometimes I even like them).

So, this is a viral video about an earworm. Does that make this an eyeworm? Ew.