--- title: 'Daily Morning Earworms 2021' url: 'http://simon.com.mt/blog/daily-morning-earworms-2021' markdown: 'http://simon.com.mt/blog/daily-morning-earworms-2021.md' date: '2022-01-01' description: "I frequently have earworms stuck in my head, short pieces of music that I've listened to before that won't go away. In 2021, I decided to keep track of every earworm I wake up to each morning. Image" --- # Daily Morning Earworms 2021 ## [Daily Morning Earworms 2021](http://simon.com.mt/blog/daily-morning-earworms-2021) 1st Jan 2022 I frequently have earworms stuck in my head, short pieces of music that I've listened to before that won't go away. In 2021, I decided to keep track of every earworm I wake up to each morning. ![](http://simon.com.mt/images/a/1/b/6/c/a1b6c16f770bf0fb8fdf33773fd60559c47d67f2-headphones-music.jpg "Image by user Darekm135, taken from Wikimedia Commons")Image by user Darekm135, taken from Wikimedia Commons I frequently wake up with earworms every morning and was always amused at what my inner radio decided to play in the morning. After hearing about [Dr. Zalka Csenge Virág](https://multicoloreddiary.blogspot.com/2021/12/312-earworms.html)'s project where she kept track of the her morning earworms, I decided to embark on a similar project myself. Throughout 2021, I wrote down the first earworm I encountered as I was waking up. For the purposes of this project, other earworms encountered during the day were discarded. Out of the 365 days in 2021, only 9 days did not contain earworms. This meant that the vast majority of the time (97.5%, to be exact), I woke up with a song stuck in my head. Of the times where I didn't wake up with an earworm, I normally either didn't sleep very well the previous night or did not get a full night's sleep. The vast majority of the earworms (297 out of 356) contained lyrics in *English*, while 39 of the earworms contained no lyrics at all. The rest of the earworms featured a variety of different languages, in order of frequency: *Spanish* (5), *Maltese* (3), *Finnish* (3), *Turkish* (2), *Swedish* (2), *Gibberish* (or not really a language at all) (2), *Old Norse* (1), *Italian* (1), and *Hebrew* (1). In total, 23 different subgenres of music were represented. The top 5 represented music genres were *power metal* (63, 17.7%), *rock* (54, 15.2%), *pop* (29, 8%), *electronic* (17, 4.8%), and *video game music* (14, 3.9%). Other interesting genres that showed up included *jazz*, *folk*, *soul*, *ska*, *reggae*, [ *makkjetta*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C4%A7ana_(folk_music)#Formal_G%C4%A7ana), *ambient*, *drone metal*, [ *guajira*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guajira_(music)), *nursery rhyme*, and *funk*. 188 different artists were responsible for 2021's earworms, with the top 5 artists being Finnish power metal band [Sonata Arctica](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonata_Arctica), Canadian electrofunk band [Chromeo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromeo), American rock band [Toto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toto_(band)), British heavy metal band [Rainbow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_(rock_band)), and Canadian progressive heavy metal band [Devin Townsend Project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devin_Townsend). 8 songs from the Eurovision Song Contest also made an appearance as earworms in 2021. Iceland's 2020 entry [ *Think About Things*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_About_Things) by Daði Freyr og Gagnamagnið appeared 4 times, while Finland's 2006 entry [ *Hard Rock Hallelujah*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_Rock_Hallelujah) by Lordi appeared twice. The final two songs were both Maltese entries; the 1992 entry [ *Little Child*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Child_(song)) by Mary Spiteri, and the 1998 entry [ *The One That I Love*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_One_That_I_Love) by Chiara. Some of the earworms came from video game, film, or TV soundtracks (not all of which I've actually played or watched!). - The represented video game music included tracks from [Super Mario World](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario_World), the [Final Fantasy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy) series (in particular, 8, 9, X and X-2), [King's Quest 6](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King's_Quest_VI), [Guild of Dungeoneering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guild_of_Dungeoneering), [The Curse of Monkey Island](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curse_of_Monkey_Island), [Planescape: Torment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planescape:_Torment), and a game jam game I had made in 2012. - Film music included tracks from [Pacific Rim](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Rim_(film)), [Dirty Dancing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_Dancing), [Mulan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulan_(1998_film)), [Pocahontas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocahontas_(1995_film)), [101 Dalmatians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/101_Dalmatians_(1996_film)), [Aladdin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aladdin_(1992_Disney_film)), [The Little Mermaid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Mermaid_(1989_film)), [1492: Conquest of Paradise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1492:_Conquest_of_Paradise), and [Chariots of Fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chariots_of_Fire). - TV music included tracks from the [Fresh Prince of Bel Air](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fresh_Prince_of_Bel-Air), [Band of Brothers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Band_of_Brothers_(miniseries)), [the Sopranos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sopranos), and [the Magic Schoolbus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magic_School_Bus_(TV_series)). Finally, here are the 5 songs that appeared the most times! - Italian eurodance track *The Rhythm of the Night*, by Corona - - Iceland's 2020 Eurovision entry *Think About Things* by Daði Freyr og Gagnamagnið - - Finnish power metal track *Storm the Armada* by Sonata Arctica - - Danish progressive metal track *Not My Kind* by Royal Hunt - - French electronic track *Flying Totems*, by Jean-Michel Jarre - It's been really interesting keeping track of my morning earworms, and I'm very much looking forward to repeating this project in 2022! [Next Post ](http://simon.com.mt/blog/gdc-2023) #### Syndicate [ Atom 1.0](http://simon.com.mt/blog.atom) [ RSS](http://simon.com.mt/blog.rss) --- ## Navigation - Parent: [Blog](http://simon.com.mt/blog.md) - Previous: [GDC 2023](http://simon.com.mt/blog/gdc-2023.md)