With labels both major and independent alike faced with ever-thinning profit margins, industry wonks are looking towards data, the true currency of the 21st Century, as a way to drive sales and increase revenue. This new study from the University of Southern California is definitely one they should pay attention to.

As The Telegraph reports, researchers may have discovered the key to a pop song’s success on the charts, and the answer lies with how many times the chorus is repeated. The consumer psychology study found that the more often a tune’s chorus is repeated, the more likely it is to be a hit.

And this isn’t some outlier variable, either. For each repetition, a song’s likelihood of making it to number one increases significantly. In fact, researchers found that each additional repeat increases a song’s chances of becoming a number one by 14.5 percent.

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Researchers even discovered that the more repetitive a song was, the more rapidly it rose up the charts. The chance of a song going straight into the top 40 increased by 17 percent for each repetition of the chorus and neither the gender of the singer nor the tempo made any difference.

However, researchers did find that the chances of a number one decreased by 6.1 per cent with each additional year in the age of the main performer. While it’s unclear why this is so, it could explain why new pop groups and solo singers seem to be getting younger every year.

To come up with their findings, researchers analysed more than 2,400 songs released over the past half century. The tracks stretched back to the 1950s, including 1,029 songs that reached number one and 1,451 that never climbed above 90. The chorus was repeated between one and 16 times in each of the songs.

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According to Professor Andrea Ordanini, of Bocconi University, Milan, who authored the study, chorus repetition proves to be such a winning formula because repetitive songs are processed by the brain more quickly, though he said relatively little is known about why people buy certain songs and why some become hits and others do not.

“We established for the first time that more repetitive or fluent pop songs are more successful in terms of popularity,” said Prof Ordanini. “Despite the many factors that go into creating a hit song, we identify repetition of the chorus as one that has important real-world implications.”

“There appears to be a long history of humans’ affinity for the repetition of words in music, from earliest childhood with for example, ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat,’” said the researchers. “For many of us, the songs that stand out in our minds are those in which we can easily hear the same words repeating themselves over and over again in our heads.”

Most Repetitive Number One Songs Per Decade

60s

Marty Robbins – ‘El Paso’
Zager and Evans – ‘In The Year 2525 (Exordium and Terminus)’

70s

Ringo Starr – ‘Photograph’
Bee Gees – ‘Jive Talkin’’

80s

USA For Africa – ‘We Are The World’
Tears for Fears – ‘Shout’

90s

Amy Grant – ‘Baby, Baby’
The Notorious B.I.G. – ‘Hypnotize’

00s

Usher – ‘U Remind Me’
Jennifer Lopez – ‘I’m Real’

10s

Rihanna – ‘S&M’
Adele – ‘Set Fire To The Rain’

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