Popularity of a Song is Connected with its Structure

A song becomes favorite of someone because it might remind a person about a memorable event or it may move that person in a way that makes him/her feel sad or happy. A new study has been published on this in the open access journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. The study has uncovered a very simple with measurable explanation that can tell preference for one song over another one.

The study has successfully linked the harmonic structure of pop songs to their ranking in the charts. Norberto Grzywacz is a Professor of Neuroscience and Physics and conducted this research at Georgetown University, Washington, USA. Norberto told that relatively rare chords are there in the most popular songs which typically have high harmonic surprise. Choruses are also there in these songs with relatively low harmonic surprise which is preceded by sections with many rare chords.

Harmonic surprise is defined as the time where music deviates from the expectations of a listener. Scientists found that such deviations in structure of a song could elicit a happy reward response in the brain.

By: Bhavna Sharma

Content: phys.org