The Daily Epic Earworm For December 18, 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: Bob Marley & the Wailers — “No Woman, No Cry”

Bob Marley‘s epic earworm “No Woman, No Cry” is a reggae classic. The live version of the song was ranked #37 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time in 2004 and was also inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2005. It was especially big in the UK, where it was certified platinum and peaked at Number 22 in 1975 and then again at Number Eight in 1981. A later Fugees cover of the song would crack the Top 40 in more than 17 countries and reach Number One in New Zealand and the UK.

Singing for His Supper

Marley wrote the song, but it was credited to both him and a man named Vincent Ford. Marley did this on purpose. Ford was a friend of Marley’s who ran a soup kitchen in the Trenchtown neighborhood of Kingston, Jamaica, where the reggae legend grew up. You can hear Trenchtown mentioned in the song. Giving Ford a writer credit on the song entitled him to royalty money that helped to fund his soup kitchen.