“Walk Right Back”: Everlys Earworm

The most persistent earworm I’ve ever experienced is the Everly Brothers song “Walk Right Back.” Many of the endlessly repeating tunes I’ve been plagued by over the years emerged as I was learning them for shows. I’d go over the song until it was stuck in my head, perform it in the show, and then welcome the blessed relief of the song’s retreat back into the jukebox cloud.

It was for a performance of a set of Everly Brothers numbers that I learned their 1961 hit “Walk Right Back.” I’d done all of the other selections before at some time, “Bye Bye Love,” “All I Have to Do Is Dream,” “Wake Up, Little Susie.” But for some reason I had never spent any time with “Walk Right Back.” So, I learned the music and went over and over the lyrics, and they moved in. At any idle moment driving through town, during every meal, at every occasion that I got up in the night to pee, “Walk Right Back” was right there, on an endless loop. I’m sure it was playing along in my dreams, but I’ve never been able to remember my dreams.

We did the Everlys set, and the songs, including “Walk Right Back,” went well. I expected that, with that mission accomplished, the song would—poof—disappear. But no, it haunted me like the telltale heart through that night after the show, and first thing when I awoke the next morning, and thereafter through every day and night that followed.

It is indeed a catchy song, and it was actually very easy to learn. In fact, it was a simpler song than its writer, Sonny Curtis, had intended it to be. Sonny, who was one of Buddy Holly’s Crickets in the fifties (and later wrote and sang “Love Is All Around,” the theme of The Mary Tyler Moore Show), had written one verse and the chorus of the song when he got the opportunity to visit former Cricket Jerry Allison, who was at that time drumming for Phil and Don Everly. They heard the song, loved it, and promptly recorded it, just singing the one verse and chorus and then repeating them. They issued it as a single, and, voila, had a #7 Billboard hit, all before Sonny Curtis got the chance to send them the second verse he’d written.

It seems crazy, but the Everlys’ recording really does just start over halfway through, repeating the verse and chorus exactly as they’d just done it. They could’ve at least modulated up a step, I’m thinking, but they stayed in the same key. There were no strings or horns added the second time through, no change-ups of any kind. You could say that Phil and Don were unimaginative or you could say that they were bold. Or, as I prefer to think of it, they were boldly unimaginative. They just gave the little ditty the Everly treatment, like they gave it to so many others, and that brotherly harmony got it over, just like they knew it would. Who needs a second verse? Who needs an arranger? Not Phil! Not Don!

I did not want to forever hate “Walk Right Back,” and somehow I had faith that it would join all the other earworms that had tormented me and then released me over the years. But it was tenacious; it just would not let me go, and I began to get annoyed with it, and after a couple of weeks, I started to loathe the song. I would try listening to Devo, Charlie Pride, Donna Summer—anything to rid myself of this seemingly innocuous little tune—but as soon as “She Works Hard for the Money” ended, “Walk Right Back” would walk right back, displacing Donna Summer as if she’d never sung a note. I could play an entire album, even an entire album of earworms, like Beatles ’65, and not be relieved of the ever-present Everlys.

It did eventually go away, as all earworms do, much to my relief. As I said, I really didn’t want to hate “Walk Right Back” (the way I’d come to eternally despise earworms like “Baby Shark” and “Hotel California”). There are quite a few seventies mega-hits like the latter, songs that millions loved back then and somehow still love after hearing them over and over for five decades. I call them my “quota songs”: those I reached my limit on long ago and can happily do without ever hearing again. That list includes some songs I really loved way back when: “Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road,” “Fire and Rain,” “Stairway to Heaven.” (And “Stairway to Heaven” and “Hotel California” have the added torture factor of being overlong—seemingly interminable now.)

I’m fine with “Walk Right Back” again, no longer plagued night and day by the song, and at this remove I can say that I truly appreciate its simplicity. It’s short ‘n’ sweet, no tricks, no wordplay or insights. There’s a place for the exacting productions of Steely Dan, the brilliant lyricism of Joni Mitchell, the raw vitality of James Brown—and also for a catchy unassuming little ditty from the Everly Brothers.