290 earworms

This is the fifth year that I wrote down what music was stuck in my ear every morning when I woke up. It is becoming really fun to follow the statistics year after year.

2018: I woke up with an earworm 306 mornings, featuring 150 different songs (post here)

2019: 316 mornings, 137 songs (post here)

2020: 346 mornings, 149 songs (post here)

2021: 312 mornings, 124 songs (post here)

2022: 313 mornings, 129 songs (post here)

This year I also got to examine how parenting affects earworms :) Luckily, I ended up with fewer annoying kids' songs than expected. On the other hand, there were fewer mornings when I 1) woke up and had time to pay attention to earworms and 2) I remembered to write them down before I forgot. Thus, this year's numbers are not quite accurate, but oh well. I can say I woke up with music in my head at least 290 times, and the list contains 140 songs.

Since I had a lot less time to listen to music this year, the list contains a lot more random songs that I have not heard in years, never liked, or simply "caught" in a mall or something. There is still no correlation between what I like to listen to, and what sticks. Neither is any between whan sticks during the day, and what I wake up with.

Without further ado, here's the Top 5 of this year:

First place with 20 (!!!) mornings: 

The kid listened to this on an endless loop, and since it really is catchy (see last year), obviously it shot to the top, way ahead of all other songs. This is the highest individual number of mornings I have had so far (the previous record was 16).

Second place with 13 mornings:

Spirited is a dumb fun movie, and the soundtrack is quite catchy. This was not my favorite song from it, but for some reason this is the one that stuck the most. 

Third place with 7 mornings:

This was a four-way tie between two Disney songs - Surface pressure from Encanto, and Let it go from Frozen - courtesy of the kid, and a Monster High song (No apologies), which I don't have an excuse for :) My favorite however was the song below, from the Matilda musical. For both lyrics and choreography. 

Fourth place with 6 mornings:

Another tie - between Do a little good (Spirited again), and this song from another new favorite musical, Six. I also found myself humming the latter a lot when I was awake.

Fifth place with 5 mornings:

Another multiple tie: a Spirited song (The view from here), Ed Sheeran (Shape of you), and two more Monster High songs (Here I am, and the one below). I have to admit, Monster High is a very dumb movie series, but it is also strangely adorable.

I even made a chart this year! The majority of songs came from 7 albums I like, while 40% was completely random. The two largest slices were Disney, and the soundtrack of the & Juliet musical. Since the latter contains pop hits from the 90s and 00s, it obviously is very catchy (but since it has a lot of songs, none rose to the top list individually). I also have to note that, next to In the Heights, Lin-Manuel Miranda was responsible for most of the Disney slice too.

And finally, this year's WTF pick, for obvious reasons (luckily, I only woke up with this once):

How was your year, in terms of music? Do you tend to wake up with earworms too?