Music

The 15 catchiest songs of all time as determined by science

by Mark Teo

Love ’em or hate ’em, some songs have a habit of rattling around your brain for days. If you managed to catch Pretty Woman on TV, for example, you’ll surely be humming its titular song for days. If “Just Dance” is playing at the grocery store, you’ll be spending hours wondering why it’s stuck in your head. Even if you haven’t thought about it for years, you can surely recall the chorus of “Mmmbop” immediately. For better or for worse.

Surprisingly, though, science has done little to quantify what makes a song catchy. That’s why scientists at Manchester’s Museum of Science and Industry commissioned a study trying to determine what makes songs stick—and over the course of a year, they administered a test to 12,000 people featuring more than 1,000 best-selling songs. From it, they’ve determined which songs are the catchiest, and the results are surprising: The catchiest song of all time, they found, could be identified in 2.3 seconds. One Canadian band made the list. Michael Jackson, unsurprisingly, made the list twice. Ditto for Lady Gaga. Check the list above for the 15 catchiest songs, and even if you disagree with the results, it’s undeniable: You know all of ’em. You can hum all of ’em. And that’s because they’re damn catchy.