Da Da Da

The ohrwurm turns

Qual (Torment) by Walter Gramatté

I woke up the other day with a song stuck in my head. A song so stupid, so maddeningly simple, it makes Milli Vanilli sound like Beethoven’s Ninth.

I hopped out of bed and brushed my teeth. Took a shower and brewed some coffee. The song was still there, burrowed in my brain, its vexing chorus looping ad nauseum.

Focus on something else, I thought. It’ll go away.

Except it didn’t go away.

On the subway. At the market. During a meeting on Slack. Wherever I was, so was the chorus: three pesky syllables nagging at my brain.

“Can I see your travel pass?”
Da da da

“Will that be cash or charge today?”
Da da da

“Think you can hit these deadlines, Sonny?”
Da da da

Lunch came and went but the song stayed put. My reality was as clear as a stripper’s heels. I’d been infected by an earworm.

Aha aha aha

My first order of business was identifying the culprit. If I could find the song, I could play the song. If I could play the song, I could cleanse it from my system.

I typed ‘Da Da Da’ into YouTube. This is what came up:

Look at this freak. This defiler of sound. What the hell was he doing in my subconscious? I can’t remember the name for the thing that drains my damn spaghetti, but Bull’s stand-in from Night Court springs to mind?

Get on with it, I thought. Play the video. Exorcise this unholy tune.

Tinny, electronic drums infiltrated the air. They were accompanied by a horrible plinking. It sounded like Casio was fucking Fisher Price. And not doing a particularly good job of it, either.

At some point I recognized the song from my childhood. I must have heard it on the radio, or maybe at the mall. I looked into the band as the tune droned on, hoping to learn why it was torturing me on an otherwise pleasant day.

This is what you got to know

Da Da Da was recorded by Trio. They formed in Großenkneten in 1979 and were proud members of the Neue Deutsche Welle, which I’m told is German for “our sausages are better than our music”.

Actually, it translates to ‘New German Wave’ – a curséd genre of West German rock, with new wave, post-punk, and electronic influences.

The term was coined by Fritz Ritmeester, a DJ in Holland who used to have a show on Hilversum 3 - a popular radio station among Germans at the time. In other words, Trio weren’t the only ones encouraging this ‘music’. We can also blame the Dutch. 

Whoever you point the finger at, an astonishing fact remains.

Da Da Da – despite its infantile lyrics, and a melody so minimal it barely registers a pulse – was a worldwide hit in 1982. It ranked on the charts in 30 countries and sold a remarkable 13 million copies. If we frame that achievement in terms of the Chinese calendar, 1982 was the Year of the Tone Deaf.

I was just a kid in 1982. And 1982 was a long time ago. So why had Da Da Da appeared all these decades later? Why was it tap-tap-tapping on my nerves, making me insane in the membrane?

The video ended but the earworm didn’t. Da Da Da was still circling in my head: a vulture buying time before it gorged on my remains.

I played the song a second time and continued looking for answers; for a cure that might shut my earworm up.

The ohrwurm turns

I learned that earworms are an involuntary cognition: like when you catch a whiff of perfume, or sink your teeth into a madeleine, and a memory suddenly appears out of nowhere and smacks you in the head.

Studies show that 98% of people experience earworms on a regular basis (the other 2% remain unaffected because they have no soul).

The vast majority of earworms contain lyrics, with instrumental music accounting for a measly 8%. That means all you Yanni fans are more or less safe.

Earworms are triggered when you see a word that reminds you of a song, when you happen to hear a few notes from that song, or when you feel a certain emotion you’ve associated with the song.

The first two reasons were irrelevant in my case. Da Da Da had remained off my radar for nearly forty years. As for any associated emotions, mine were a textbook combination of loathing and disgust.

But why not a tune from Nickelback then? Or Blues Traveler or the Goo Goo Dolls or that hippie dweeb Dave Matthews? They’d all inspired me to deplore humanity far more frequently and more recently. So why Trio? Why Da Da Da?

I played the song a third time. Then once more as the song persisted. It was during this fourth and hellish playthrough when I learned the most disturbing fact of all.

Earworm is a calque (or loan translation) from the German word ohrwurm.

That’s it, I thought. The Germans!

Understand you couldn’t stay

I live in Prague. Prague is the capital of the Czech Republic. The Czech Republic happens to border Poland, Austria, Slovakia and…

If you guessed Germany, das ist wunderbar!

Finally, I had my answer; the solution that would save me from the brink of madness.

Trio is a band from Germany, see. And ‘earworm’ comes from the German language. Obviously my living so close to the country was responsible for the demonic pain I was in. If I wanted to rid myself of the earworm from hell, I would have to move.

Yes, it was impulsive and a touch dramatic. But desperate times call for desperate measures. And I was more desperate than a dinner guest at Jeffrey Dahmer’s house.

Maybe I’ll go to Spain, I thought. Soak up the beaches; the art and the culture. Or maybe a move back home would be nice. Spend some quality time with the family.

I began to feel lighter, buoyed by the allure and promise of change. I was about to start looking for discount flights when I came upon an interview with the great Oliver Sacks. This is what he had to say:

“The brain is very sensitive to music; you don't have to attend to it to record it internally and be affected by it.”

My heart sank faster than Joker 2.

Shit, I thought. That means it doesn’t matter where I am or what I’m doing. If music wants to get me, I’m a goner.

I’d been thinking about moving to Spain or Canada. Now I realized how foolish I’d been. Like I needed to spend the rest of my days haunted by Julio Iglesias. Even worse: Enrique.

As for Canada, you can’t last five minutes in public without coming across Canadian music. Many a citizen stronger than I has had their will to live destroyed by undue exposure to Sarah McLachlan.

It was at this time when I suddenly realized that the room had fallen quiet. Not only that, but my head was quiet as well. Da Da Da had finished playing. The fourth time through had done the trick. I was free from its clutches at last.  

I decided to stay in beautiful Prague. I’d wear my headphones as often as possible; try to control the way the worm turned. Sure, living close to Germany meant I’d be risking painful earworms in the future. Rammstein or Scorpions, for example. Or god forbid, Falco. But I’d managed to survive Da Da Da and I’d survive them too.

I could survive anybody. As long as it wasn’t

---