Japanese Jingles: the Eternal Earworms

Coping with the world’s catchiest jingles

Illustration by author

The other day I was driving home from work and found myself singing along in Japanese to a chirpy little tune that was stuck in my brain: ‘Niku, niku, niku, niku, niku, niku. Niku daisuke,’ which translates into English as ‘Meat, meat, meat, meat, meat, meat. I love meat.’

It sounds like a strange thing to be singing about in any language, and to be honest, while I’m not a vegetarian, I don’t actually eat much meat these days, and I certainly don’t love it. So why was I singing this annoying song about meat over and over and over again?

Well I had made the mistake of briefly popping into a Japanese supermarket chain hours before, and this loud catchy advertising jingle had wormed its way into my brain and embedded itself there. I had been singing the meat song all day and it had been driving me slowly mad. I had caught an earworm — a catchy tune or song running constantly through my mind.

The term , was first coined by the Germans, more than a 100 years ago, to describe the experience of a song stuck in the brain. Scientists may call it “stuck tune syndrome”, or “involuntary musical imagery”, and other people may call them ‘sticky music’ or ‘stuck song syndrome’, but the term earworm is the most popular word for…