How do you solve a problem like an earworm?

Other strategies for eradicating earworms include what British music psychologist Victoria Williamson of the University of Sheffield describes as “distract and engage.” The most effective distractions, she explains, are verbal or musical: chanting a mantra, reciting a poem, listening to a different song, even playing an instrument. They work by activating the component of working memory involved in earworms, a storage and rehearsal cycle called the phonological loop. “If you fill it up with something else that occupies the same circuitry, there's not enough left to make the earworm,” Williamson says.