The Daily Epic Earworm For November 4, 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: Snow Patrol — “Chasing Cars”
“Chasing Cars” by Snow Patrol, courtesy of Polydor/Fiction
Today’s epic earworm comes from Scottish alt-rockers Snow Patrol, who spent most of their first ten years as a band traveling in a van to play small shows. The band would ask at the end of their gigs if anyone would let them sleep on their floor for the night. When someone said yes, it meant that they didn’t have to sleep in the van. That all changed for the band in 2004 with the success of their third studio album, Final Straw.
The band soon started working on the follow-up album, Eyes Open. Singer Gary Lightbody and producer Jacknife Lee started hammering out songs over several bottles of wine in Lee’s garage. Lightbody expected to scrap everything when they sobered up the next morning, but was pleasantly surprised to find five songs worth keeping. One of those songs was “Chasing Cars.” The singer’s love songs usually had a darker edge, and Lightbody was again surprised to find that this one actually had a happy ending.
The Finale Is Just The Beginning
In May of 2006, Snow Patrol was approached about using “Chasing Cars” in a television show. The band agreed without really knowing much about the show or how the song would be used. The show turned out to be the Season Two finale of “Grey’s Anatomy,” and the entire song was played in the season-closing montage. “Chasing Cars” had not been released as a single, but within hours of the episode airing, the song rocketed to Number One on iTunes.
“Chasing Cars was released as a single shortly after. It peaked at Number Five on the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S. and was nominated for a Grammy. This epic earworm has had so much staying power in the UK that it charted in the Top 100 there for 160 weeks and became UK radio’s most-played song of the 21st century. The single was not just a success in the UK and the US, where it earned sextuple platinum and quintuple platinum status, respectively. It received 14 platinum certifications in Australia and platinum or double platinum status in six other countries.
No More Chasing
So how did “Chasing Cars” get its name? Lightbody named the song based on something his dad had once told him when he was chasing a girl he had a crush on. He compared the young singer to a dog chasing a car. He told him that he’d never catch what he was chasing, and he wouldn’t know what to do with it when he did. No word on whether Lightbody ever caught the girl, but after ten years of his band chasing cars, they had finally caught up…and it seems that they knew what to do after all. Snow Patrol released their eighth studio album last year, and they are still going strong.
