Music and memory Why some tunes have us stuck in a groove

When Bonnie hears the opening bars of the Verve's Bitter Sweet Symphony, she is transported back to 1997. But it isn't a joyful memory that comes to mind - it is the painful recollection of coming home from school and seeing the locks being changed on her house.

- Nicola Davis

Then a teenager, Bonnie and her family were about to be evicted. And the Verve's song, with lyrics "trying to make ends meet, you're a slave to money then you die" was everywhere.

"It seemed like it was a big hit at the time, and it just seemed to be playing all the time, in takeaway shops and shopping centres, on the radio in the car. I just couldn't get away from this song," she says.

To this day Bonnie, now 46 and living in Canberra, Australia, says she will change the radio or leave the location where the song is playing to avoid hearing it.

"The lyrics of Bitter Sweet Symphony too closely described our situation," she says.

Indeed many Guardian readers report they, too, avoid particular tunes because they are attached to the memory of an event that was either upsetting, or was once pleasant but has since become painful to recall.

For Matt, 52, an engineer in the north of England, the entire oeuvre of Neil Diamond is to be avoided after a partner with a love of the singer confessed to having lied about the nature of a relationship with a colleague.

"We used to like Friday night kitchen discos. We used to listen to all kinds, and usually Neil Diamond would be on," Matt says, adding that his former partner had been to several Neil Diamond concerts, including one with her boss before she met Matt.