Music earworms may be keeping you up at night

If you haven’t been getting enough shut-eye lately, it could be because you’re listening to music in bed, according to a new study from Baylor University.

“Almost everyone thought music improves their sleep, but we found those who listened to more music slept worse,” the authors said. “What was really surprising was that instrumental music led to worse sleep quality — instrumental music leads to about twice as many earworms.”

The findings revolve around a phenomenon called Involuntary Musical Imagery (INMI) or earworms, in layman’s terms.

Earworm describes a piece of music that’s so memorable that you hear it in your head even when it’s no longer being played. Of the 209 subjects in the study, those who experienced them at least once a week were six times more likely to sleep badly. Instrumental music caused more earworms than lyrical music.

“The more you listen to music, the more likely you are to catch an earworm that won’t go away at bedtime, said Michael Scullin, a sleep researcher at Baylor University and lead author of the paper. “When that happens, chances are your sleep is going to suffer.”

The report was published in the journal of Psychological Science.

Music overexcites our brains

The study started with a questionnaire about music and sleeping habits. Consistently, participants who listened to music the most experienced more earworms and suffered more nights of disrupted sleep.

The researchers then followed up by having the subjects come into the lab and then intentionally induced earworms.

“Before bedtime, we played three popular and catchy songs — Taylor Swift’s ‘Shake It Off,’ Carly Rae Jepsen’s ‘Call Me Maybe,’ and Journey’s ‘Don’t Stop Believin’,” the report said.

Participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups. The first listened to instrumental versions of the same songs. Each had brain-wave activity measured.

The instrumental group was twice as likely to suffer earworms as the lyrics group. The earworm participants had a harder time falling asleep, woke up more frequently during the night, and spent more time in light stages of sleep.

Brain readings found that light sleepers were experiencing memory consolidation processes that prevented them from achieving deep sleep.

How to kill earworms before bed

The researchers offered a few methods for potentially reducing the likelihood of earworms.

Enforcing a nightly cut-off time for listening to music could help those who regularly experience earworms. Some might even need to limit their music time during the day if they hear earworms nightly.

Before bed, others might try engaging in activities requiring cognitive function, like puzzles or games. Or they could dedicate time each night to making to-do lists for the following day or writing in a journal. The idea is to break any mental connection you may have trained in yourself between being in bed and hearing earworms.

“If you commonly pair listening to music while being in bed, then you’ll have that association where being in that context might trigger an earworm even when you’re not listening to music, such as when you’re trying to fall asleep,” the authors said.