For anyone that loves to listen to chart music, you may have realised that there are a fair few songs that sound oddly similar.
No, you’re not just getting old, these songs in the charts all have something in common, and we’re here to tell you what it is.
The thing is, these songs are actually designed to get stuck in your head.
So the next time you find yourself humming ‘I Kissed A Girl’ by Katy Perry, or ‘So What’ by Pink, you’ll now know why (or maybe you’re just a secret superfan?)
YouTuber Boyinaband did some serious research, and found that Max Martin, Swedish record producer, songwriter and retired singer has written or co-written 24 Billboard Hot 100 number-one hit songs.
He’s worth about £150m, and it’s no wonder, because he’s written and produced some big tunes.
Here’s a few that you may recognise:
- Shake It Off - Taylor Swift
- Roar - Katy Perry
- Blinding Lights - The Weeknd
- Baby One More Time - Brittney Spears
- Can’t Stop The Feeling! - Justin Timberlake
- It’s Gonna Be Me - NSYNC
Granted, these are only a few songs that he’s written, but the common theme is that they are all incredibly catchy.
This is where it gets interesting though, the Infinite Jukebox generates plots of songs which have the most similar beats.
Blogger Paul Lamere calls these ‘cantograms’, and long story short, Tik Tok by Ke$ha, Paparazzi by Lady Gaga and Baby by Justin Bieber are just a few of the songs that literally all have identical ‘cantograms’.
On the flip side, you’ve got songs like Stairway To Heaven by Led Zeppelin that are pretty much off the scale completely, showing that of course, not all songs stick to the same plot. But where do the numbers come into this?
Well, the research team at The University of Bristol claim that their ‘hit potential equation’ can predict a Top Five hit with a whopping 60 per cent accuracy. They analyse things like tempo, volume and harmonic complexity.
Scientists ran songs from the last 50 years of the Official UK Singles charts to come up with the formula that distinguishes a hit and something that doesn’t climb the charts.
The so-called ‘hit potential equation’ looks a little something like this:
(w1 x f1) + (w2 x f2) + (w3 x f3) + (w4 x f4)
Confused? In a nutshell, the ‘w’ stands for ‘weights’ or musical features like tempo, time signature, song duration, how energetic it is etc. Of course, these ‘weights’ have changed throughout different eras, like in the 80s, low tempo ballads were more likely to be a hit.
Once the algorithm figures out the weights, you just need to test out your proposed song with these exact features and work out whether they match to the current trends. Then, you’ll get a hit prediction score.
Currently, the equation suggests that a good song should be harmonically simple, slightly over 3 minutes long, upbeat/danceable and loud. So for all the aspiring musicians and songwriters out there - take note.
