This article was taken from the June 2012 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
Is there a formula for creating a smash-hit single? Using music-intelligence company Echonest, the ScoreAHit team at the University of Bristol monitored 50 years of hits to see what factors led to a song's success.
Don't worry about harmony
"Until the late 80s, hits tended to be harmonically simpler than non-hits," says ScoreAHit group leader Tijl De Bie. "Then it flipped -- the most popular songs were more harmonically complex." But the last 18 months has brought a return to non-harmonicity, with distortion more common than pure tones.
Set a simple rhythm
Simplicity is key. "Simple binary rhythms became more popular from the 90s onwards," says De Bie. "Complex rhythms are not very common these days, perhaps because music has to be more danceable [to be successful]." A tempo of between 90bpm and 110bpm will give you a better guarantee of success.
Turn it up
Mastering technicians have been making songs louder for years: the louder the song, the bigger the hit. Volume started rising in the 80s, and again at the turn of the century. Levels have dropped recently, however. "But these are very recent signals," says De Bie. "I wouldn't draw any conclusions from that yet."
Throw a curveball
Sometimes songs will buck trends. The harmonic simplicity of Trashmen's "Surfin' Bird" stood out in 2010;
Michael Jackson's quiet and slow "Man In The Mirror" was similarly out of kilter the previous year. This can be due to an external factor, in these cases a Facebook campaign and Jackson's death respectively.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
