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Artist News
We Are The Champions the catchiest song ever
By CMU Editorial | Published on Monday 3 October 2011
Queen’s ‘We Are The Champions’ is the catchiest song ever written, and that’s according to science, which took a day off from finding a cure for cancer to assess pop song catchiness.
Actually, although the Press Association says that “scientists” at Goldsmiths College made this discovery, Goldsmiths doesn’t actually have a science department – being the University Of London’s arts institution – so I’m assuming this came out of the college’s department of psychology, who took a day off from finding better methods for dealing with depression, anxiety or psychosis for a good old sing song. Still, sing songs cheer people up right? Apart from me. I hate sing songs.
Anyway, researchers observed how volunteers reacted when asked to sing along to different songs, and found out that long and detailed musical phrases, multiple pitch changes in the main hook, a male vocalist, and preferably a high pitched male vocalist, all helped make songs catchy.
Goldsmiths music psychologist Dr Daniel Mullensiefen told reporters: “Every musical hit is reliant on maths, science, engineering and technology; from the physics and frequencies of sound that determine pitch and harmony, to the hi-tech digital processors and synthesizers which can add effects to make a song more catchy”.
Village People’s ‘YMCA’, Sum 41’s ‘Fat Lip’, Europe’s ‘The Final Countdown’ and The Automatic’s ‘Monster’ were all found to be very catchy by the researchers. Though they didn’t make any comment on how depressing it can be when you get any of those songs stuck in your head.
