http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgre8dqZYa8
But what always gets me the most, it seems, are doomsday-calibre earworms like We Built This City or It's a Small World Afterall.
Regardless of the individual variance in the complexity of the "earworm", one of the very interesting things is this interplay between short-term auditory memory and the loop being replayed. It will be even more interesting to see if their are ways to exploit this to effectively keep more things in working memory.
Argh, no! I suddenly find myself transported back to 1986 watching the Disney Channel for the first time.
Which is another interesting phenomenon in itself, that hearing a piece of music can bring back a surprisingly wide range of in-depth memories related to previous times hearing the music. I've often wondered if this could somehow be harnassed on purpose, to help people, say, prepare for exams.
I wonder if this is more or less common with songs designed to appeal to small children? "Bravestarr," for instance, is one of those late-80s toy commercial programs a la "Transformers." In my experience, the other easily stuck songs are mostly pop or classic rock, and almost never classical. Perhaps Knuth's "The Complexity of Songs" ought to be recommended reading for these researchers.
Edit: of course, if one of you has Rachmaninoff or Bach stuck right now, my point isn't so valid.