The Daily Epic Earworm For November 20, 2025

Everyone gets songs stuck in their heads that just won’t go away. They sneak into your subconscious. They are epic earworms that you find yourself humming uncontrollably, singing in the shower, or tapping the beat to with your foot or ballpoint pen when you should be working. Sometimes they even keep you awake at night. Whether they are current hits, one-hit wonders, movie soundtrack gems, holiday favorites, or songs from your youth, their catchy vocals, riffs, hooks, and choruses seem to linger for days.

Here, those songs find a home, no matter the genre. Here, those epic earworms are revisited, explained, and celebrated. Here, you may find the song that haunts you tomorrow. Here is today’s unescapable song of the day…and the story behind it.

Today’s Epic Earworm: Johnny Cash — “A Boy Named Sue”

While most would not consider the 1969 Johnny Cash song “A Boy Named Sue” catchy, its story is certainly one that will stick in your head. A man runs out on his wife and son, leaving behind nothing but a guitar and an empty bottle of booze. The boy grows up resentful of the abandonment, but even more resentful of the name his deadbeat dad gave him: Sue.

The boy had a rough childhood growing up with a girl’s name, always getting ridiculed, and getting into fights because of it. Sue’s hatred of his name and his father fuels him to seek revenge. He tracks the man down playing poker in a bar, and the two tangle. The fight spills out into the street, and they both go for their guns, but the boy is quicker than the grizzled old man.

Before the boy can take his revenge, the old man tells his son that he named him Sue because he knew that he would not be there for him. The name was intended to toughen him up to get through the rough life he would face. The boy’s hardened heart softened as he began to understand that the name he had hated his whole life had actually been an unforeseen gift. The two parted ways amicably, and the boy left with a new point of view.

The unusual song turned into one of Cash’s biggest chart successes, spending three weeks at Number Two on the Billboard Hot 100 and topping the Country and Easy Listening charts. The song won two Grammy Awards in 1970, one for “Best Country Vocal Performance, Male” and one for “Best Country Song.”

A Boy Named Shel

What a lot of people may not realize is that “A Boy Named Sue” was not written by Cash. The song was given to Cash by none other than acclaimed children’s author and poet Shel Silverstein. Silverstein was best known for books like “A Light in the Attic,” “The Giving Tree,” “Where the Sidewalk Ends,” and “Falling Up,” but he was also a songwriter and musician. Cash met Silverstein at a “guitar pull” where musicians would pass around a guitar and take turns playing their songs.

Cash’s wife, June Carter Cash, encouraged the singer to play the song at his famous February 24, 1969, concert at San Quentin State Prison. “The Man in Black” had not informed his band that he intended to play the song, and he, himself, had not really practiced it much. So, Cash sang straight from the lyric sheets for much of the song, and the band improvised behind him. The song was recorded and ended up making the cut for the country legend’s live album Johnny Cash at San Quentin.