My internal jukebox, that part of the brain that plays a random song throughout the day, can often be controlled. It usually places the first song heard in the morning onto constant rotation. So just make sure that first song is one that you like. By the end of a day, you probably won't like it much anymore, and especially if the jukebox, a keen indicator of stress and state of mind, decides to go into overdrive, but you can limit the psychological damage.

Working at a football tournament does not allow such discipline. Early mornings and late finishes, and in my case the loss of the necessary equipment, do not lend themselves to quiet moments of reflection and the piping in of a favourite song to enhance mood. A mere stroll into the breakfast room can wreak havoc.

The Polish, while often a shy bunch, don't much enjoy the sound of silence. Instead, pop radio must be belted out at high decibel levels, even when a bleary-eyed hack is contemplating his continental breakfast of bread, cheese and unidentified processed meat.

Polish pop radio is no place for a pretentious elitist. The very furthest reaches of irony are tested by their playlists. My early days in the country had me first amused and then increasingly horrified by Bucks Fizz's Land Of Make Believe pumping out in taxis and restaurants.

Another forgotten favourite in Kim Wilde's You Came also revealed a country's love for the Kids In America hitmaker. The late 1980s, a time when Poland was struggling to find a new identity after four decades of communist oppression, was a time of cultural awakening. Here was perhaps the first time that music from the West could be heard and cherished.

The cut-price imperialism of Stock, Aitken and Waterman made its way swiftly east. Rick Astley, Jason Donovan, Kylie Minogue and late-period Wilde are thus still cherished by Polish radio DJs. Meanwhile, Rochdale chanteuse Lisa Stansfield and Sade, the seduction choice of many a Sol-supping smoothster in London's wine bars of the 1980s, still have an appreciative audience here.

Europop's classics live on too. Dr Alban and Ace Of Base bring back the spirit of 1993, while Roxette's exhortations to join the Joyride are still responded to. It was only a matter of time until Haddaway totem What Is Love? would be heard and that moment arrived in a cab from Gdansk Airport to the PGE Arena. With a week still to go, Sydney Youngblood must surely be in the offing.

Those of a more rockist bent can be sated by Alannah Myles' Black Velvet, and a selection of Bon Jovi's post-<emSlippery efforts, with Keep The Faith leading the charge. It would seem rude not to, it had to happen and, yes, The Scorpions' Wind Of Change rang out triumphantly as we sped down the Pomeranian coastline to Sopot in the small of hours of a morning. Stockport lads 10cc's Dreadlock Holiday had one wondering whether the Polish either don't like cricket or instead love it.

My three weeks have been a trip down a musical memory lane I would rarely choose to venture down. One central Warsaw hotel I stayed in had the 'advantage' of being near the ever-noisy FanZone. There, a combination of the previously described classics and songs in the latterday Polish hit parade pump out from 8.30am until its closure beyond midnight. Even when I stayed during a supposed 'rest day', I was treated to a school choir performance and later that evening an excruciating cover version of 4 Non Blondes' What's Up?, that summer-of-1994 call to arms to the misfit.

That night, I heard the show eventually shut down with some relief, drifting into a sleep that would soon be disturbed. The greatest of the many thunderstorms I have witnessed here began around 2.30am and raged on. It eventually calmed at 4am, only to be replaced by the ringing sound of feedback from the Fanzone PA, which had clearly either been hit or jolted by the lightning. It was eventually switched off at 5am, to the relief of the inhabitants of my hotel, and a concierge desk clearly bored by repeated questions from guests about when the noise might stop. Sleep was resumed, only to be ended by the testing of the damaged PA at 8am. It fired itself up with the Jarzebina's Koko Euro Spoko, the handiwork of a group of singing nuns.

But if ever there were a place to ravage the internal jukebox then it is a Euro 2012 stadium itself. And there is one song above all others that has polluted and then infested my troubled psyche. As at World Cup 2010, a stadium has a playlist, and this time it's even more limited. I now yearn for Waving Flag by K'naan or even Shakira's Waka Waka. I would prefer the torturer to be the more credible sounds of The xx's Intro or even the prog-rock of The Alan Parsons Project's Sirius. Yet I am denied by a piece of modern Europop that is truly inescapable.

Considering its ubiquity and infectiousness, Oceana's Endless Summer possesses an apt title. It provides the bed music for Polish TV coverage, moments between halves, and while match highlights play on stadia's big screens.

I dare you to listen and not to find its onomatopoeic charms worming their way in, the sound of the "drum, drum, drum" beating its way into heavy rotation on your internal jukebox. Resistance, for me at least, has been useless.

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