The Daily Epic Earworm For November 19, 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 epic story behind it.
Today’s Epic Earworm: Jesus Jones — “Right Here, Right Now”
In February of 1987, Prince released the song “Sign o’ the Times.” It was a worldwide smash and peaked at Number Three on the Billboard Hot 100. The album by the same name went platinum in the United States and the United Kingdom and quadruple platinum in Canada.
The epic earworm talked about all that was going wrong in the world. It touched on subjects like the AIDS epidemic, gang violence, natural disasters, drug addiction, the threat of nuclear war, poverty, and the recent space shuttle explosion. It was, honestly, a depressing snapshot of life in the late ’80s. It made people sit down and think…people like Jesus Jones frontman Mike Edwards. The British alt-rocker heard the 1989 cover of the song by Simple Minds, and he decided he needed to write a response…
The Beginning of a New World
Jesus Jones was touring Europe in 1990 and played a show in Romania shortly after the overthrow of Nicolae Ceaușescu. The Soviet Union was going through Perestroika. The Berlin Wall had fallen, and Edwards had heard the Simple Minds cover of “Sign o’ the Times” playing in the background of the television coverage. It came to him all at once…things were changing for the better.
Edwards set out to write a song that reflected that change. Prince’s dark portrayal of reality was brightening, and the singer wanted the world to see that. Thusly, “Right Here, Right Now” was born. The line in his positive anthem “Watching the world wake up from history” references the feeling of hope he saw as the band toured through a changing Europe. Perestroika, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the overthrow of Ceaușescu–these were the new signs of the times. Edwards points that out at the end of the second verse.
The band’s producer for “Right Here, Right Now” cut out a sample of Prince’s song, and also samples of Jimi Hendrix guitar riffs, but the epic earworm succeeded on its own merits. It was released in September of 1990 as the second single off of Jesus Jones‘ second studio album, Doubt. The song topped the Billboard Modern Rock chart and peaked at Number Two on the Hot 100 Singles chart. The song and the album were both nominated for Grammy Awards in 1991. Edwards saw a positive future for the world…and there was no other place he’d rather be.
