What Makes a Song a Hit?

Famed German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once said, “…I could never have survived my youth without Wagnerian music.” Indeed, Nietzsche was alive during the 19th century and few young people now could credit Richard Wagner as being their savior, but the sentiment is still true. With music being such a strong force in our lives, who wouldn’t want to learn about it? As a pitifully amateur music producer myself, I’m always trying to analyze the music I listen to to gain a greater understanding of how it is all put together. Of course different genres evoke different techniques from the producer and the performer, but why not shoot for the stars right off the bat? Today I ask: What makes a song a hit?

One possible clue involves the Mere Exposure Effect. This is basically the reason why a song can “grow on you” with repeated listens. Humans tend to act more favorably towards people or experiences they have encountered before, and the same goes for music. This phenomenon might explain why I slowly started to enjoy the Katy Perry song “Dark Horse” when I originally hated it, but only big-name artists like Katy Perry will be able to utilize the Mere Exposure Effect to manufacture a hit. Other, lesser known artists do not have the ability to saturate the airwaves with their music, so how can some nobody like Carly Rae Jepson shake up the world with the best-selling digital single of all-time “Call Me Maybe?”

The song received a little help when Justin Bieber tweeted about it, but its real strength comes from the lyrics. Pop songwriter Eve Nelson said about the hit, “The hook of the song is talking about something that every young girl can relate to. It talks about that crush that we all have when we’re 13 and 14.” Professor of Music Composition here at Penn State Paul Barsom says that “A cultural connection between music and listener can make a tune more memorable,” so the fact that teens can relate to the lyrics is vital. The song’s focus on the teenage audience was huge for sales, because, according to Nielsen, teens are more likely than any other age group to buy recent music. In addition, “Call Me Maybe” also appeals to older folk through nostalgia. If this song were entirely modern, it would be called “Text Me Maybe” due to texting being the predominate communication method of the youth and actual phone calls losing popularity. Jepson, or her writers, most likely made the conscious choice to say “Call” instead of “Text” not just because it sounded better with the song, but because they wanted the song to resonate with the older generation as well. The thoughts of pleasant memories gives the consumer nostalgia, and this manufactured nostalgia makes people buy the song. Utilizing yet another great pop music technique, this song succeeds by avoiding anything too risque or vulgar so that no audience member is offended or alienated. The innocent themes of “Call Me Maybe” make the song accessible to pretty much anyone, and that makes the money in those wallets more accessible to Ms. Jepson.

The importance behind relatable lyrics cannot be overstated, but they are not the only thing that makes a hit. Scientists like Musicologist Dr. Alison Pawley and psychologist Dr. Daniel Mullensiefen of the University of London have tried to pin-point what makes a song “catchy.” The two Doctors studied the greatest hits of the United Kingdom and came up with a highly controversial list of traits that all the largest and most popular songs have that make people want to sing along. These traits are: longer vocal phrases, larger number of pitches, male vocals, and passionate vocal effort. Some of these traits seem valid, but considering their “research” happened primarily by observing what people would sing along with in United Kingdom bars and clubs, we should take these findings with a grain of salt. Most of these traits don’t apply to “Call Me Maybe.” Other than the infectious vocal effort, “Call Me Maybe” doesn’t include long vocal phrases, complex pitching or male vocals and yet it is still a smash hit that people love to sing along with. Might this disconnect be to the difference in culture between the UK and the USA? Or maybe “Call Me Maybe” is an exception to the rule?

Making pop music isn’t as simple as a lot of pop music’s haters would like you to believe. I know this because I just wrote a full blog post on the topic without talking about any of the music theory or instrumentation involved in making a hit and there are still many questions to be asked. I hope reading this post will help you to look at pop music with a more scientific lens. Instead of hating on Fetty Wap, for example, why don’t you analyze him and figure out why people shell out money to him? This kind of analysis helps us to better understand the world, and with that understanding we can possibly get some of that money for ourselves.

5 thoughts on “What Makes a Song a Hit?

  1. Samantha Marie Grillo

    This was a really cool topic to read about! It’s interesting to think about what makes a song a hit, and it’s definitely true that having lyrics that people can relate to contributes a lot to making a song successful. I also think that the artists themselves can contribute to the success of a song because often times people will support any song by their favorite artists, especially some of the bigger names that are played on the radio.

    Here is the link to Billboard’s top 100 songs of the week: http://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100

  2. Katie Ann Farnan

    This was a very interesting post! Usually we don’t think about all that goes into a song to make it big. It kind of makes us appreciate all of the hard work that artists have to go through to make a hit song. It also shows how difficult it must be for aspiring musicians to make it big in the industry. Great work!

  3. Nicholas Andrew Goussetis

    Very fascinating! After doing some research, I am also under the impression that the beats per minute (BPM) of a song can not only influence the popularity, but the willingness to purchase more things as a consumer. This study says that customers at restaurants were more likely to both stay longer and purchase more food simply because of a specific sort of music being played. It’s crazy to think that little things like that can impact us as consumers!

  4. Samantha Jo Whitney

    After reading your post, I was pleasantly surprised at what goes in to being a big hit song. All aspects that you touched on relates to almost all major hit songs, besides a few exceptions. When I looked into this subject, almost every big hit has a catchy Hook . These hooks really define a song, and is usually the main reason why the song sells so well. Hooks like “baby,baby,baby ohh” or “you’re gonna hear me roar” are often phrases that stick in your head over and over again. The hooks in major hits can also be non verbal hooks, like in the song “clocks” by Coldplay or Hotel California by The Eagles. Hooks that are catchy stick in your mind and won’t go away, and even if sometimes you don’t want to listen to it, usually the song is too catchy to ignore. So i think another major part of why a certain song is popular, is definitely because of the hook.

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