The Daily Epic Earworm For November 22, 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: Rosé and Bruno Mars — “APT.”

“Apt.” is one of the hardest songs to keep out of your head once you have heard it. This epic earworm by K-pop artist Rosé (of Blackpink) and Bruno Mars topped the charts in more than 50 countries. For more than a year, it seemed unavoidable. It was playing everywhere—the radio, the elevator, the grocery store, restaurants, the doctor’s office…

The global megahit was nominated for 33 awards worldwide and has already won 11. It has set five Guinness World Records. It has been streamed more than a billion times, and it has achieved platinum, multi-platinum, or diamond status in at least 15 countries. That is huge, considering Rosé actually made everyone who had heard the original demo delete it.

The Drinking Game That Wouldn’t Die

So, how did this epic earworm come about? Rosé was hanging out at the studio and got everyone to try a Korean drinking game called, you guessed it, apateu (short for apartment 아파트 in Korean). Everyone loved the game, and the next day, she decided that they were going to record a song centered on it.

Rosé got home after recording that night and found herself wondering what she had just done. Worried that “APT.” was silly, and that a song based on a drinking game would not be taken seriously, she panicked. She got up the next day and called everyone, and told them to delete the song from their phones and forget about it.

The singer was poised to move on, but those around her would not let it go. They were obsessed with the drinking game. As time passed, Rosé became convinced that the song would work. She called the label and said that she wanted to move forward with the song. To her surprise, they did not know what she was talking about…at first. Then she remembered that she had made the other writers and producers delete the song.

Needless to say, Rosé successfully revived the song, and they finished it. Now, more than a year after its release, it is still played everywhere, and still bouncing around in all our heads…