Earworms- A Spooky Movie Song

Whenever I put together a new edition of our Earworms Special Feature, I start by trying to figure out why the song suddenly popped into my head. I think today’s candidate started bouncing around between my ears when I read that someone is considering making an updated version of the original Ghostbusters movie.

But even though the 1984 film’s theme song began running through my head, it didn’t seem quite right somehow – earworm wise. I thought about it, then listened to the #1 hit record of the song generated by Ray Parker, Jr., watched the movie trailer (below) but nothing seemed quite right.

Finally I figured it out. We had an Atari computer back in the early 1980s, and we also had the Ghostbusters computer game. As near as I can recall, the theme song played during the game but even after the game was over the music would continue to play endlessly — or at least until you stopped it. That’s my earworm.

Atari Ghostbusters (Excerpt)

Ray Parker, Jr. – “Ghostbusters”