The Three Worst Children's Shows for Earworms

Yes, I let my daughter watch TV. Educational TV. That reinforces numbers, counting, the alphabet. Being kind. Sharing. All the good stuff I try to teach her, but has more weight coming from Elmo.

I always watch with her. Which can be problematic when it comes to the songs. Often I find myself, at my desk at work, humming "Build Me A Building" - a song from Bubble Guppies.

And so I present, the worst three children's shows for earworms. (According to Wikipedia, an earworm is a catchy piece of music that continually repeats through a person's mind after it is no longer playing.) I based my unscientific list more on original songs specific to an episode, versus a song that is in every episode of a show.


3. Bubble Guppies

As mentioned above, "Build Me A Building" often runs through my mind. Each episode of Bubble Guppies has a particular theme and not one but TWO original songs. Sort of like an introduction to the topic song and also a dancing song about the topic. And that's above the regular opening number, lunch number, outside number and shortened repeat of the opening number during the credits. I don't know who writes these things, but I love pop music and I definitely love this. So much that I sing the songs days later.

2. Sid the Science Kid

Oh Sid. I love him. He teaches us science, is kind to his little brother and has an awesome imagination. He raps about his mom being cool on the way to school. And he goes to the best preschool ever - he has one teacher and only three classmates. And teacher Suzy, well she just has a catchy song for everything! The worst (best?) by far is the foods from all over the world, yeah they're delicious song. It might be jam packed with stereotypes, but it's mighty catchy. It also doesn't help that one day I started singing the "Looking for my friends song" for Hannah but sang it with members of our family. When we look for Booyah our cat he's not too impressed and he flat out refuses to dance. Unlike Gerald, Booyah is not a rock star.

1. Sesame Street

I LOVE Sesame Street. Sometimes I play Sesame Street music AFTER I drop my daughter off at daycare and I'm alone in the car. But the songs are too catchy. There are certain episodes on Netflix that Chris and I will skip certain scenes. The worst offender is "Preschool Musical" - even as I typed that I sang it in my head.

Also, nothing in this world can beat Ricky Gervais' Celebrity Lullaby to Elmo. I have never liked the letter N so much:

Except of course for Elmo's Song, Rubber Duckie, C is for Cookie, The Batty Bat...I could go on and on truthfully. I think you can see why Sesame Street is the clear winner here.

Honourable mentions go to Super Why (Hip hip hooray, the Super Readers saved the day), Cat in the Hat (Here we go, go, go, go on an adventure) and Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood (Grown ups come back they do, grown ups come back it's true).

What show gets songs stuck in your head?

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