See the Top 20 Catchiest Tunes According To Science

What makes a song "Catchy" to us? That usually depends on your personal tastes, but now Science has gotten involved to determine the Top 20 catchiest tunes, at least according to science. A song that I find catchy is one with a great beat, fun music arrangement, and, of course, easy to remember lyrics. I like almost all types of music, and there is always a tune running through my head, especially when I am trying to fall asleep at night.

Now some people have gotten together to use science to create a list of the catchiest songs of all time. They tested this with an experiment, developed by the UK's Museum of Science and Industry, where people played an interactive online game called Hooked on Music, created by computational musicologist John Ashley Burgoyne and a team at the University of Amsterdam and Utrecht. The game contained 1000 clips of best-selling songs spanning seven decades, from the 1940s until the present day. There were four different ways to play, as Cnet describes:

Recognize that Tune, where users had to hum along with the track, continuing when the sound dropped out and gauging whether they were still in time when the sound resumed; What's the Hook, where users had to listen to two different clips from the same song and choose which clip was catchier; Time Trial, where users had to recognize as many songs as possible in three minutes; and In a Row, where users had to recognize as many songs in a row as they could.

From this trial with over 12,000 participants, they determined the catchiest song of all time to be:"Wannabe" by the Spice Girls. Well, this was done in the UK, so that might explain it.

The complete list and the average time it took for people to recognize the song are below:

1. "Wannabe," Spice Girls - 2.29 seconds
2. "Mambo No. 5," Lou Bega - 2.48 seconds
3. "Eye of the Tiger," Survivor - 2.62 seconds
4. "Just Dance," Lady Gaga - 2.66 seconds
5. "SOS," ABBA - 2.73 seconds
6. "Pretty Woman," Roy Orbison - 2.73 seconds
7. "Beat It," Michael Jackson - 2.80 seconds
8. "I Will Always Love You," Whitney Houston - 2.83 seconds
9. "Don't You Want Me," The Human League - 2.83 seconds
10. "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing," Aerosmith - 2.84 seconds
11. "Poker Face," Lady Gaga - 2.88 seconds
12. "MMMbop," Hanson - 2.89 seconds
13. "It's Now or Never," Elvis Presley - 2.91 seconds
14. "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet," Bachman-Turner Overdrive - 2.94 seconds
15. "Billie Jean," Michael Jackson - 2.97 seconds
16. "Karma Chameleon," Culture Club - 2.99 seconds
17. "Baby One More Time," Britney Spears - 2.99 seconds
18. "Devil in Disguise," Elvis Presley - 3.01 seconds
19. "Rivers of Babylon," Boney M - 3.03 seconds
20. "Candle in the Wind," Elton John - 3.04 seconds

The researchers are hoping to figure out how the mind remembers and recognizes things in order to help out people with dementia.

[The Science of Us]