Dear LPG,

I have a question to ask readers today.  Is there a bit of music that you find yourself thinking about day after day, or have you ever heard a piece of music on the radio that leaves you humming away for ages after it has finished?

Sometimes it is not even a piece that you like but it just gets stuck.  You find yourself still thinking about the tune while you are having breakfast, while you are washing up, when you leave home and are walking down the street.  You escape for a while when you meet someone you know and get chatting, but as soon as you say goodbye to them and go on your way, there it is again.  Either the words from the line of a song or one section of the tune just keeps repeating in your mind.  

I am not even sure that I find it annoying,  but at the end of the day the tune will still be repeating in my head and by then I often don’t even remember what it is called.  Listening to the news, paying at the checkout when I shop and my favourite TV soap may divert my concentration for a bit, but then when I am lying in bed there it will be yet again. 

I thought that this only happened to me but I have learned that the phenomenon even has its own name, and scientists have been researching why it happens.  There appears to be little rhyme or reason as to why the brain chooses a particular piece of music for some, while the fact that you were at a certain place or time in your life can sometimes have a bearing.  It is thought that if this is the case, seeing a word from the lyric or being reminded of an incident that happened when you first heard it might be the trigger that starts your mental replay of the tune.

I hope that LPG will find some information and add the links below because there is so much of it out there, and I have to say that I am relieved that I am not the only person who this happens to. 

JF, Mottingham

LPG did find quite a lot of information on this subject and we feel that we have barely scraped the internet’s surface. 

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