What Makes a Song a Hit Song

0:57 What's good everybody?Welcome back to Love Music More.I am Scoobert Doobert.So I was watching Ted Lasso,I know I'm late to the party,but in, I think it was like season one,kind of towards the end,they had a gala, like a, you know, a fundraising eventand the musical act that was supposed to be therewas Robbie Williams.And my partner, let's call her Velma,asked me, who's Robbie Williams?And I went, what?

1:27 You don't know who Robbie Williams is?And then I remembered,it's weird that I even know what Robbie Williams is,who Robbie Williams is.Maybe what is more appropriate?Because Robbie Williams is more of a brandthan a person at this pointbecause he ismaybe like one of the biggest artists everthat the United States barely knows of.He's like, he's had 16 UK number one solo albums,more than the Beatles in Britain.

2:01 Like I'm pretty sure that when he released his biopic,the United States version was likean all-time box office failure.But this is such an interesting thingand I've been thinking about it all weeksince we had that and I showed her some YouTube videosand these massive, you know, 100,000 person concerts.And she's like, I don't really get it.Don't really like the music.This is kind of weird.

2:32 And then it made me really think aboutcultural context and popularityand how that can affect the way that you hear a song.Regardless if the song is good, you know, what is good?We can talk about that for a long time.But like the sense of, okay, we have one songand to this group of people, it's amazing.100,000 people want to go in person in the rainto go see this concert and you provide itto a very similar culture.

3:01 You know, we just drink coffee instead of teaand we say Tuesday, right?And all of a sudden it just doesn't hit the same.So popularity measures taste sort of,but it also might create the taste.So I started to get into a book that I really lovedcalled This Is Your Brain on Music.It's written by Daniel Levitinand it's such a cool look at the psychologyof what makes us love a song.

3:37 Talking about familiarity, expectation, memory.There's another book that I was reading.I don't remember the topic, but it just came,the title, but it just came into my headwhere I was talking about the aesthetic ahaand trying to basically say this is what makes a hit,a hit song, is it verges in between,I've heard this before and I've never heardanything like it.If you can do both of those things at once,

4:02 and I think like Gotye is such a good example,somebody that I used to know,where that's part of the reasonwhy I think sampling works so well,or just literally lifting an old songor an old melody, putting it into a new framewith a new singer or rapper or whatever,and inverting it, like that, the disco Beethoven,kind of, the Beethoven's ninth, the disco.I think that there's something there

4:33 because it gives us both of those ingredients.It gives us that thing that's familiar,that's part of the cultural fabric,and then the thing that's new,the thing that feels modern.And so you have a foot in both worlds,it's not as scary, like free jazz,it is rooted in something,but it is just exciting enough to feel like now,to make the hair on the back of your neck stand up.And so it's playing with that expectation,

5:00 that familiarity, that memory,but the real hinge,the real thing that changesis the artificial online music market studythat happened in 2006.So this is about 14,000 people with 48 songs,and they're completely unknown bands.The people in this study could listen to these songsand rate them and download the ones that they want,just like think like a Spotify, but 2006 version,so you're actually downloading the MP3s.

5:32 They had different groups.They had one group that was choosingwithout knowing what anybody else downloaded,completely metric free.So think like monthly listeners on Spotify.Another group could see what songs were already popular,think like the charts.And then other groups were kind of dividedinto these different worlds.So they would have the same sets of songs,but the scientists, not the people.

5:57 This is not democracy, this is the scientists,this is like think payola, like old radiowhere people would actually pay the DJsto play their songs, to make it appear popular,to make it become more familiar.And the audiences could only see their little slice.And this is 14,000 people,so it's a pretty good healthy population.When people were able to see popularity,the successful songs became more successful.

6:25 The unpopular songs were heavily ignoredeven if it was the same song.You could take the same exact song,rank it number one or rank it number,what was it, rank it number 48,and they would stay there.And then the winners could be controlled largely,not perfectly, but largelyby where the researchers would influence their placingacross popularity charts.So you could have a major hit in one world

6:57 and relatively poor in another.And then that makes me think about Robbie Williams, right?Like Robbie Williams comes from this history of boy band.So it's almost like I think Justin Timberlake.He was part of Take That and it was like a familiar thingand he was part of the tabloids.And so he was just, he was always partof this kind of cultural conversation for so long.So then when he came out with solo music,

7:31 people were already primed and ready to listen to it.So interesting, right?And I'm not trying to say that this is everything,but I am saying that the effect size,the amount by which you can manipulatewhat people think is a good song is striking.And I also think that this is a good exampleof how digital ecosystems, how like DSPscan have even more impact on this than the traditional.So like when it was more diffuse,

8:09 you had some things on the radio,some things on TV, some things on the tabloid magazine,some things in, you know, like a bunch of differentmagazines, I think there was a different wayto rank popularity in that the individual subgroups,the sub-genres had their own popularity rankingmechanisms, the critics, the zines,the local clubs and like who gets to playthat the modern system, where if everybody's kind of

8:41 on the same platform, it flattens that.And then it just becomes that one top line number.So I actually would be really curiousif something like Robbie Williams,if that same effect would be as strong todaybecause everybody's more connected now.There was another study that it was focused on adolescentsand it was short clips, relatively unknown artistsand the researchers asked on a, you know,

9:10 one to 10 rating how much you liked the song.When they were exposed to the song more times,they liked it more.And when they were shown, you know,manipulated popularity rankingbefore giving their judgment,they would change the rating,moving more towards the opinion of the group.Like, have you ever noticed that where a song grows on you?It's on the radio, have a lot of exposure to it

9:37 and you're like, okay, I like it now.I wonder that often about how many independent artists,really good independent artiststhat might be a little bit different,have their own sense of style that,that first exposure, that aesthetic ahathat I was talking about,like one foot in the old, one foot in the new,they might have a foot and a half in the new.So it might take a few more times for youto kind of get behind it,

10:01 it might take some social pressure,some popularity to shift your opinion,to being open to something that's that new.And I wonder how many artists like thatend up just not succeeding,not because their music isn't good,but because the social, economic,and contextual conversation around their musicisn't set up in a way for the audienceto be open to their music.And this is also different between I like it

10:31 versus this is good.Like there's a, you know,you probably have songs like thisor like this is kind of a trash songthat I love listening to it.The physical pleasure,I think that that is a bit more honestversus the evaluative,the aesthetic judgment.I think that the aesthetic judgmentis one that blows a bit more with the wind.So Robbie Williams is not an exampleof one of these experimental control studies,

11:07 but it is a natural experiment in a way.What do you get when you have somebody with identical musicconfronted in two different cultural lenses,which there's plenty of like obvious examplesof the United States liking British music.And then you combine it with a differentcelebrity culture, different market timing,maybe some different marketing,even though they spent a lot of moneytrying to break in the United States.

11:36 I'm pretty sure Robbie Williams lives in Los Angelesand yet what makes a song a song?What makes it popular?What makes something good?I don't know, let's keep talking about it.I'll ask some smarter people than I amon our future guest episodes.If you enjoyed this episode,please share it with your friends,rate of five stars,and check out my music at scoobertdoobert.pizza,a lot of great conversations coming up here.

12:01 We're booking some more and yeah,I can't wait to share some of that artistic journeybecause I think it's a fascinating thing.Thank you for listening.