Switched on Pop - Fall Out Boy and the worst earworm ever

Episode Date: October 1, 2024

Marianne Eloise has had the same Fall Out Boy song stuck in her head for over three years. "It’s Hard to Say 'I Do,' When I Don’t," an relatively obscure cut from the band's 2007 album Infinity on High has taken up permanent residence in her brain as the ultimate earworm. Everybody has had a riff or a melody stuck in their head, but not at this . Eloise, a journalist and music writer, decided to turn her malady into a story. Her pursuit of the science behind "stuck songs" led her to our unique bureau of forensic musicology. On this episode of Switched on Pop, Charlie and Nate talk about earworms: what they are, why are they so catchy, and how we might get rid of them. Then, Nate confronts his own stuck song: The Lemon Twigs's "In My Head," and in talking to the two brothers behind the group, finds a novel approach to giving an unwanted musical guest the boot. Songs Discussed Fall Out Boy - It’s Hard to Say “I Do,” When I Don’t The Lemon Twigs - In My Head Kylie Minogue - Can’t Get You Out of My Head Gene Wilder - Pure Imagination Dave Harrington Group - Pure Imagination More Read Marianne Eloise’s Vulture article, “My Quest to Exterminate an Earworm” Catch the Lemon Twigs on Tour (at your own peril) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you're tired of endless scrolling to figure out where to eat, same. I'm Stephanie Wu, editor-in-chief of Eater. We've just launched the new-ish and way better Eater app. It has all the restaurants we love, gives you personalized picks wherever you are, and serves up smarter search results just for you. You can find my list of the best places for martinis and fries in New York City. And save your favorite spots, share lists, follow editors, and book right in the app. Download the eater app at eaterapp.com.

It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switchdown Pop. I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. And I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. Charlie, I think I seem like a generally happy-go-lucky guy. Truly. All sunshine and smiles, rainbows and lollipops. Yeah.

But I've got a darkness. I've got demons. And I want to share one of those with you now. Okay. Because I've been having this issue. I'm listening. It's late at night. I'm tossing and turning.

I can't go back to sleep. And I am plagued by a melody going around and around in my head. My eyes snap open and this is what I hear. That is a maniacal earworm. You want to talk about dark? I have a song called In My Head Stuck in My Head. that is sinister. It's not since Kali Minogue that I feel like that has been an issue.

Does that help? Can an earworm solve another earworm? We're going to find out because I am determined to rid myself of this earworm in my head. This is a song by one of my favorite bands, The Lemon Twigs. It's off of their 23 album, Everything Harmony. Fitting. And Charlie, I've been dealing with this for months. Wait, really? Yes.

Now, having a song stuck in my head for multiple months made me feel sorry for myself. Until I got an email from a journalist named Marion Eloise, who had an even worse problem. I have had the same song stuck in my head every single morning since 2021. So three years now, over three years. A three-year earworm. That is dark. Marion is an experienced music writer and author. So she wasn't content to just live with this problem.

She set out to get to the bottom of it and she wrote an article about that experience that was just published in Vulture. So I want to use Marion's story of trying to get this song out of her head to learn about how these earworms work and maybe figure out how to get rid of mine in the process. To do that, Charlie, first of all, we need to know what this song is that is stuck in Marion's head. Do we need to offer some kind of wording to our listeners? Are we potentially endangering the public by playing this earworm? No, because I want people to listen to this podcast. So there will be no harm to your synaptic pathways caused by this episode any more than would be by listening to your favorite songs. Okay.

Okay. So don't hit pause. Charlie, don't drive people away from our show. What are we going to listen to? It's hard to say I do when I don't by Fallout Boy. Classic, catchy, Fallout Boy and kind of menacing. It's like it's teasing her. The lyric is there's nothing in your head, nothing in your head.

This song is stuck in her head. I feel terrible for her. I do too because Fallout Boy is a very important band for Marion. I'm a big Fallout Boy fan. Like, I've written about them a lot. I've seen them live a lot. I've interviewed them. This song, though, it's hard to say I do when I don't from the 2007 album, Infinity on High, is not Marion's favorite.

She knows it and she likes it. But it's still not a song that I love. Like, it wouldn't be my first choice. Maybe that's the nature of earworms. It's not the songs that you want to hear over and over again. They are a bit taunting, aren't they? They're kind of your bully. Yeah.

I mean, if I could pick the songs. that gets stuck in my head, I wouldn't have, you know, Hakuna Matata and the rest of the Lion King soundtrack that my three-year-old listens to every night. I would probably pick something else. Oh, so you're suffering for multiple earworms, it sounds like. Yeah, I've got more. I do have multiple earwigs. But in my head by the lemon twigs is the key culprit. For Marianne, there's this one part of the song that keeps going through her head. It's those 16 seconds or so that keeps going around. from red carpet blues to we're going to shoot you.

I feel like that's one of those strange things about your worms that they are relatively short. It's like it's not the whole song. And in this case, it's not even the entire chorus. It's just a fragment of the chorus that keeps repeating. And there's actually a name for this in cognitive science, Charlie. It's called a phonological loop. Oh, yes, of course. Of course.

You're familiar with the phonological loop. That makes sense. phono sound sound and logical brain sound brain I've got a case of sound brain the phonological loop is

a very handy thing that your brain does it's a way of storing small bits of audio information in these tiny little packages like your phone number social security number you know important things that you probably have forgotten

an earworm like what Marianne's experiencing with this 15 second fallout boy clip is like a phonological loop gone wrong it's information that you're not really needing to be storing and accessing on a daily basis but your brain keeps feeding it to you uh we are feeble animals marian wasn't totally concerned when this song was lingering in her head for days then weeks then months but Then she went on a trip to Greece with her partner and they got engaged. So romantic, right? Awful.

But there was an unwanted visitor on their trip. And it was Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boy singing, I've got the red carpet blues. I think I expected that when there was like, you know, a change in environment or like, you know, I had more exciting things going on, that it would kind of go away. It was just every single morning the second I woke up. And then, yeah, we went to Athens. We got engaged, very nice. Like, you know, had a lovely evening, everything. And I went to bed.

And then the morning after we got engaged, I woke up and it was still there. And I think that's when I was like, okay, we've got a problem. Fall up boy, travels to the ancient world. Oh, she can't escape it. Fast forward three years. And Marion is still hearing this in her head pretty much every morning. And so when I told her about my earworm issue, she was like, that's child's play. I think whenever anyone says they've had a song and they've heard for days or hours or, you know, I'm like, okay, must be nice.

Must be nice, Nate. You've just had a couple months. She's going on years. So Marion tried to figure out why she couldn't get this song out of her head. She spoke to experts in the field of music cognition, and she learned that it might actually be partly her own neurology. Marion has autism, and she's dealt with OCD, which might make her more predisposed to have a song stuck in her head for a lengthy amount of time. And then the fact that she's a music writer might have something to do with it. Too much exposure. Basically, if you're into music, if you spend a lot of time, listening to music and engaging music and interviewing musicians and reading about music and whatever like I do, you're more likely to be quite sensitive, I guess, to picking those things up.

No one tells you when you pick up the guitar that there are side effects. I know, I'm listening to this Charlie and I'm like, oh no, she's describing us. This is what we do. We listen to music, we interview musicians, we read about music. I mean, no wonder I'm suffering from Euromitis. I'm sorry this is going on. I feel like it's all our fault for starting a podcast. Is there a solution?

Marion talked to some experts in this field. I mean, there's no field of earworm studies, Charlie, but there is the field of acoustics and audiology and music cognition. And she got some suggestions for how one might rid themselves of an earworm. I spoke to Dr. Kelly Jakobowski at Durham University, And her suggestions were, there were some funny ones as well, like chewing gum a lot. They've found helps. I'm not sure why.

Something about getting in a physical loop. A lot of it was stuff that you kind of try, you know, like listening to the song in full or like avoiding it. I did try all those. It didn't work. Expert advice from scientists. It's a bust. Marion tried all this, right? listening to the song in full, trying to close that phonological loop, essentially, avoiding the song completely, you know, abstaining from Fallout Boy.

Chewing gum and walking backwards. And even chewing gum, apparently. And nothing took. And so what did she do next, Charlie? Well, she emailed us. Oh, wow. That's desperate. Now, we're not scientists, but I thought, we do have.

have a certain skill set of deep listening, music analysis. Maybe Charlie, we can dig in a little bit to this song and try and figure out why it's so catchy. You are a doctor after all. I am. I mean, I've had my degree rescinded many times on the show, but I still somehow am in possession of it. So let's put it to use. Let's listen to, it's hard to say I do when I don't and see if we can detect what might make this song so ear-wormy.

Let's rewind beyond Marion's phonological loop and go to the opening verse of the song. This is some cool music. It's pretty sophisticated for the, you know, the angsty, pop-punk-y thing. There's a lot of syncopation going on, like a lot of sort of feeling of three over four, three over two.

It's rhythmically sort of more complex than I can get in my ear on the first listen. It's also hyper melodic is how I might describe this. Hyper melodic. Perhaps I'm not sure if that's a term, but I'm going to coin it here. Okay. It is so chock full of melody. Even a simple passing word like myself gets this melodic treatment that's almost like operatic

in how eloquent and grandiose it is. I speak fast and I'm not going to repeat myself. No. So, no. We're nicely ornamented. It's very theatrical. Yeah. Let's move into the pre-course.

He sings like a drummer who's constantly doing drum fills. There's no consistent, easily repeatable phrasing at any moment. He anticipates the bar, and then he extends something, and then he syncopates something, and then he does something new. I love that description. It's a way of singing that really keeps you on your toes and maybe makes it prone to getting stuck in your head because there are all these kind of unique embellishments and turns of melody that you haven't quite heard before. And they just kind of implant themselves within your brain. Okay, so we have hyper melody, theatrical singing.

Yes. high syncopation and singing like a drummer, creating all these very unique rhythmic moments that are lodging yourself into your mindworm. And then we get to Marianne's Death Loop. It's this great moment where the lead melody in the rhythm section kind of finally unite and play on the exact same rhythms.

So it really grabs you. That's right. the whole band matches Patrick Stump's lyrics for the first time. Right at this moment of transition as we're moving into the chorus. And it's a very clever line, probably written by Pete Wentz, I've got the red carpet blues baby. What is the red carpet blues? I mean, I like the sort of color mixture that's going on here.

I don't know that it has a specific meaning, which is maybe also another way it gets stuck in your head. If it was more specific, it might not have. have as much mystery. I don't know. Maybe it's simply like I'm getting tired of being in the limelight. Like, I don't want to go to any more red carpet events. That's probably what he's saying. So then my wince whisperer, Charlie, what about put your hands in the air and don't make a sound, but don't get the wrong idea we're going to shoot you? Uh, audiences can sometimes be underwhelmed. And despite that, the band is still going to put on their best effort to attack you with their aggressive

guitars. I don't know where you got that, but sounds like it could be a convincing interpretation of these lyrics. In my songwriting classes right now, students were asking like, do I have to name my song after the title? I was like, unless you're making like really obscure indie music or pop punk where you're supposed to obfuscate and write lyrics that are intentionally obtuse, then, yeah, like, make things make sense. But I feel like this genre allows you to be a little bit more, more flowery with your metaphors. Well, it's funny you say that because I think your suspicion is correct. We never hear the title words of this song in the actual lyrics.

There's never a point where they say, it's hard to say I do when I don't. That's so annoying. Like, what songs do that successfully? Like, smells like teen spirit. Oh. Someone pointed out in my class that blinding lights by the weekend is actually not in the song. The lyric is blinded by the lights. but that's another song

so maybe in order to make something that is more unique they change the title but typically yeah you expect to hear the title word in the chorus so which is all like making me think how did they make a song

which in some ways feels like it's not trying to market itself for being the most memorable thing and yet here we are dealing with this earworm problem I know it's interesting it's like kind of obscure and yet the

more we listen to it and the more we talk about it, the more plausible it seems that this particular section could become inescapable for someone. That line, I've got the red carpet blues, baby. Yeah, I mean, we might be suffering from it already. I feel like we're currently causing some kind of great public health nuisance by what we're doing. Please keep listening, listeners. So I shared our insights about the song's potential earworminess with Marianne thinking maybe this will help you work through this strange issue you're having. And I'm sorry to report it didn't do anything. You are a failed doctor once again. Another, man, another mark on my record. I'm just holding onto this doctor by a thread at this point. Yeah, yeah. Despite our failure,

Marianne did find some peace, and all it took was a trip halfway around the world to Japan. I went to Tokyo for the first time of my life, and I was just so busy. I don't think, and also everything's so different. I think everything about your life is just completely different, like what you eat, how you sleep, you know, some nights I was sleeping on, like a tatami mat on the floor. Like, it's literally, it's a completely different planet, really. And you're also just, you don't have to have been to know that it's like the most stimulating place on Earth as well. It's just like, it's just like, lights and sounds and just constantly from morning to the night. And I don't know.

I've never been before and I always wanted to go. So I was ending up staying up for like, you know, many hours of the day, just doing stupid shit and hanging out with Hello Kitty and whatever. Perhaps we're dealing with an incredibly specific kind of earworm, which is that if you happen to travel to Greece and get fallaway stuck in your head, the solution is to go to Tokyo, which I think is, I'm glad that we know that. Like, that is not a non-zero issue. This can happen to people.

And now we have some kind of solution, which is probably more generalizable to get outside of your context, experience new things, distract yourself and be busy. Right. So in addition to chewing gum, avoiding the song, listening to it in its totality, we have going to Tokyo and staying up all night. Yes. So this is good news, right? During this over-stimulated trip, the song vanished.

But then, oh, no. the relief was short-lived. No. I think I got home because I just didn't think. I didn't have like a second to think and I got home. And then after a few days, I woke up and it was in my head and I was like, oh shit. Like, hi. A familiar friend.

Oh, what a bummer. So at the time of this recording, Marion's earworm is still there. That's terrible. Now, there's one rip cord that she. wasn't able to pull. Huh. And that was, in some ways, the most radical solution, which was going straight to Fall Out Boy and saying, why are you doing this to me?

Despite the fact that she's interviewed the band in the past, she was not able to get them on the horn for this particular dilemma. Fall Out Boy, call her up, please. But Charlie, maybe we can still explore this avenue with my earworm. Oh. In My Head by the Lemon Twigs. So you're saying there's a potential solution for probably your earworm and your earworm only through your unique access as a music journalist? I mean, perhaps.

Now you're making me sound mean. We tried to help Marianne. I adore her. I sympathize with her. But now I'm going to take everything she taught me and apply it to myself. Let's see what we can do. Attention, Spotify. has arrived the new Good Girl Jasmine Absolute of Caroline Herrera,

a fragrance intense with character gourmet and addictive. Imagine a jasmine-en-envolventy, tofu caramelized and tonka-tosted. A combination that seduce from the first instant and she'll awaya. Good Girl Jasmine Absolute, hypnotic, irresistible. Discover it today and let you involve it for its essence.

Convierce your passion in a business with Shopify and bathe records of ventas with the form of pay with a better conversion of the world. Has heard of it? The best conversion of the world. The incredible system of Pago of Shopify facilitates the market

in your site web, in the reds and in whatever place. That is music for your ears. No, you'll be more your business

will be a super-exit with Shopify. Empezae. You know, a period of month, in Shopify. orgs. Immigration may be

Donald Trump's signature issue. President Trump is now targeting predominantly Democratic cities for ICE raids and deportations.

Dozens of protesters clashing with immigration and customs enforcement agents in Minneapolis Tuesday. We will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came. But what we want to do in this space is talk about America and politics beyond the current president. So what do most Americans think about deportation and border security, period? I think that Americans are definitely against the kind of violent displays that we've seen in the street from Iowa. When it comes to the question of deportation, the answer is more complicated. My sense is that people want order at the border. They don't like the idea of having no idea who's coming into the United States at any given time.

The view on immigration from the bottom up instead of the top down. That's this week on America Actually. Every Saturday in your audio and video feeds. Charlie, as a refresher, I've got in my head, in my head. Should we dare listen to it again? And I don't want to end up like Marianne. Yeah. So what can I do?

First, let's do the same treatment to Fall Out Boy. Let's try and listen deeply to this song and see what are the musical properties that might result in it having burrowed into my brain for the last six months. One thing I immediately recognize is that it has high levels of sycopation just like Fallout. ball boy. Ah. One. In my head. In my head.

It's like dancing around the beat. And like Fallout Boy, it's got that hyper melody. Oh. It's got these big intervalic leaps. Yadda. It's like really, it's very grandiose again, just like some of those fallout boy motives were. That's the pure imagination little motif I also recognize. Come with me.

And you'll be in a world of pure imagination. So maybe it's like a super earworm because the melody shares something in common with something you have heard in your childhood? Not only something I've heard in my childhood, a song that plays a very important role in my life. Our friend, Dave Harrington, played this song when Whitney and I were walking down the aisle

at our wedding. Gosh, that's right. And he has a recorded version of that song. Yeah, I mean, for him, that song is an even deeper earworm. So for me, it's a slightly lower level of intensity. But yeah, I think that's a good point. It's still there lurking in the background. Let's leave pure imagination to the side for a moment.

Get back to In My Head. Because when we get to the bridge of this song, the lemon twigs kind of raise the stakes. Love the harmonies. That moment at the end when one of the brothers is holding out the end of the phrase, and then the other brother sings this counter melody, Strangers Passing, and then the drums start billing, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot.

That is one of the many earworms from this song that I get stuck in my head. Like, that's one of the phonological loops that I am plagued by. I have memories of earworms like this where it's not just one phonological loop. I feel like we know this intuitively. It's like, well, if I keep going through the song and get to the next set of melodies, maybe that first melody will be gone. But oftentimes with an earworm, it's like the one earworm plays. You forget the rest of the song, and then somehow you're in the bridge and you're in the next earworm,

and it keeps repeating. And you're in these like metal loops where these two different earworms keep competing with each other. And you're like... Oh, wow, yeah. Or like getting carried down a river and then getting stuck in a whirlpool, and then that whirlpool spits you out. You go further down the river, then you get caught in another whirlpool.

Yeah. If you're moved by this analogy, then I'll say that there's another whirlpool lying in wait when we get to this interlude section about three quarters of the way through the song. I'm not sure a whirlpool lies in weight, but I'll hear it. Charlie, did you notice something that happened there?

Bueller? Oh, God, I wish you had a doctorate that I could rescind right now. I didn't hear it. And I don't have a doctorate. And so I'm just a random guy. All right, what's the deal? Charlie, there was a modulation. Oh, there was a modulation.

A key change. No, no, I actually don't fault you at all because it's surprisingly subtle the way they set it up. So first you're going to neg me and say, oh, you don't have an advanced degree. But now you're saying, but it's okay. It's okay because it was very subtle. Like plebees like you would never hear it. You make me sound like toxic and manipulative. I'm not.

I just have this darkness from this earworm. Okay. Okay. It's not me. All right. What do we got? So the song modulates from the key of A to the key of D in this subtle, very clever and almost imperceptible way. Right here, we modulate new key.

But I feel like as a listener, this is another. ear-wormy moment. Because now when we get to the very end of the song, the final chorus, we're in an even higher register than when we began. So it's already kind of like exciting and heightened. Right. And then they do the most ear-wormy thing imaginable

to close this song out. They stop singing words and they just start singing la-la. Sing a long bait. La La La La La La That's and that la la la la section is your earworm That is the ultimate earworm Yeah, that's like the final boss of all the earworms of the song That is the Bowser

That is like I cannot get past that final earworm I'm beguiled by this song And chewing gum doesn't seem to help Have you tried booking a trip to Tokyo? I don't quite have the miles So I'm out of options and there was only one place to turn to. Oh, you're pulling the nuclear option.

I'm Brian Diderio. I'm Michael Diderio. The Diderio brothers, the lemon twigs. Brian and Michael Diderio are the brothers who write and perform as the lemon twigs. And I called them at their studio in Los Angeles, where they took a break from practice to talk to me. Which is why you might hear a lot of background noise in our conversation. but this was my chance to understand the song, how it was written,

and maybe in the process finally get it out of my brain, I needed to know why the lemon twigs were doing this to me. So I started by asking Michael about that diabolical key change. Well, I wrote that on piano originally, and with the melody in the piano, like... And then I think I'm just pretty limited. piano so I could play it in that key and I could play it in D also so I just wanted to use them both and then Brian came up with the bridge the that part and then it just set it up really nicely to go into

the other key yeah how anticlimactic that such an evil earworm would just be you know just twiddling around the piano it's like how dangerous like learning musical instruments is truly a great danger. I had a similar reaction, Charlie, because I was certain, okay, they are deliberately trying to ruin my life with this key change. And then I learned, oh, it was just kind of a product of circumstance and intuition. But what about those law, law, laws? Right. They had to know what they were doing with that. I knew when I was writing that melody, too, that it sang nicely with the laws, you know, like, like it, la la, la, la. It just worked

that way as well as, as with words. Yeah, because that must have been how you started the song. Yeah, I started it with just laws and then, I just like a lot of songs that have breaks where they do laws and stuff. That's it. The laws

were just the way they started writing the song as like melodic placeholders. And then they brought him back at the very end because it felt right. It's like an earworm is a great Satan that just happens to burrow itself into the most mundane moments in life. Is this what we're learning? Apparently.

So it's even more malicious in that respect. Because it'd be one thing if these, if the Dodario brothers were sitting there, you know, with their fingers pushed together in a sort of Mr. Burns-esque evil plotting motion being like, oh, we're going to create the most devastating earworm. But that wasn't the case. It just kind of emerges. And then I'm left bereft as a result. Perhaps all of the satanic panic of the 80s and 90s was correct. Perhaps that popular music has just been embedded with evil hooks. It's not all doom and gloom, though, Charlie.

Okay. Because as we were talking about the song, the Dadario brothers may have inadvertently given me the key to getting this earworm out of my brain once and for all. Once you learn a song and you figure out how it's, how it really goes, you don't ever really get it stuck in your head again. That happens with us with covers, I think, too. It's just the enjoyment of the song is not...

sucked out. Well, it's maybe not completely sucked out, but the mystery of it is sort of diminished. Ah, okay. So, you're telling me, first of all, picking up an instrument could be extremely dangerous. You might end up writing earworms for other people, and they might be plagued by them. if those other folks decide to also pick up an instrument and learn the song in and out, make their own cover version, all of the powers that it sinks into your brain. Yes. It's all, it lets go.

It's like that expression, if you can't beat them, join them. I feel like that is how you need to approach an earworm. We've been trying to get rid of this earworm. We've been trying to evict it from our mental space. And maybe that's not the answer. Maybe you need to sit down with that earworm and have a jam session. And only then maybe will the earworm say, okay, I've gotten what I wanted and now it's time to go. So, Charlie, I put this theory from the lemon twigs to the test.

I sat down at the piano and I started playing in my head. And as I worked through these Willy Wonka-esque intervals, these hyper melodies, these syncopated lines, and these transformative key changes, I discovered something that I've been waiting for for a long time. This song, which has burrowed into my brain for the past six months, seemed to slowly, let go of my cerebral matter and start to evaporate out into the ether once again. Wow. That morning, I woke up and in my head was no longer in my head. You have given us all a great gift, but also spread a deep evil.

Because now that you are free of this earworm, I fear you may have infected many, many, many people with this song and given them the gift of now they have to pick up an instrument. You better go learn to play piano if you don't play yet. The first thing I did was I went back

to Marianne. I was like, hey, here's a method for getting rid of your fallout boy earworm. Yeah. And she was like, well, that's great, but I don't know how to play any instruments. What about singing? I feel like we should all sing. You know, like even if we don't have a great voice like yours truly,

You just got to sing. I like that idea, but I wonder if it's as effective. I feel like singing might just reinforce the earworm. Playing it on another instrument, like the Dadario brothers were saying, kind of diffuses some of the mystery of the song in a certain way. It brings it down to earth. You get to know it so well, the chords, the voicing's that, yeah, it just lets go. So I'm taking away from this conversation that this is,

not the only solution. I feel like this is an extreme situation. Okay. This is an extreme earworm. Right. And we already heard some useful tools. Like, just listen to the song, listen to another song, perhaps chew gum, maybe just sort of busy yourself and put yourself in some new situations, go for a walk where you haven't gone before. Like, those all feel like completely reasonable things to do. Then you offered up a solution, which I think is unwise, which is hound an artist until they tell you, specifically why they're bothering you, which I think we have figured out is probably not the either ethical thing to do, nor will it probably work out. And not everyone is Nate Sloan and gets to talk to the favorite band. But you could sit down and pick at it on the piano. That feels like the, you know, that's the solution for these really extreme earworms. You make me think we should set up a side business that's like earworm exterminators. and you bring your earworm to us

and we will use every means at our disposal from hounding the artist themselves to creating a live jam session with you, whatever we need to do to get rid of your earworm. That's a great, highly specific kind of music education that I don't think enough people are pursuing. I think we can market that very effectively. The music exterminating brothers.

Switched on Pop is produced by Ranah Cruz. edited by Art Chung, engineered by Brandon McFarland, illustrations by Arras Gottlieb. Remember the Vox Media Podcast Network and production of Vulture, which is part of New York Magazine. You can subscribe at nymag.com slash pod. Reach out to us on social media at Switchdown Pop

and tell us what is your earworm, what song is stuck in your head and you can't get out. Also, we're going to post a link to Marianne Eloise's wonderful Vulture story in our show notes and we'll have a link to listen to more music from The Lemon Twigs as well. We'll be back again next Tuesday. We're going to explore some more music that is hounding us, some music that we're going to have to learn how to love.

And until then, thanks for listening. Thanks for listening.