You won’t be able to get them out of your head: These are the 10 catchiest songs of all time according to a scientific study

Instantly recognizable, some songs have the ability to linger deep in our subconscious - their melodies and choruses embedded in our brains for days, weeks, years, lifetimes.

Sometimes a song will come on the radio and not only is the tune familiar, you know all the lyrics too. So what ingredients are needed to make a catchy song?

Catchy songs: the earworm formula

Bede Williams, Deputy Director of Music at the University of St Andrews in Scotland decided to investigate. He and his team developed a formula to determine the Top 20 most difficult songs to get out of your head and why they get stuck.

Williams believes that several crucial factors are needed to create an authentic earworm:

In mathematical terms, the exact catchiness formula is: Receptiveness + (predictability - surprise) + (melodic potency ) + (rhythmic repetition x 1.5) = earworm.

When it comes to songwriting, seasoned stadium rockers Queen had this formula down to a T - three of their songs feature in the top 10: Bohemian Rhapsody, We are the Champions and We Will Rock You.

Other top earworms in the study included Pharrell Williams’ jaunty, feelgood hit Happy, a Donald Trump rally favorite YMCA by Disco dons, Village People and Europe’s epic, synth rock banger and unauthorized ode to both the mullet and mystic, icy fjords: The Final Countdown.

“And I will walk 500 miles, and I will walk 500 more”

Some, like the Proclaimers’ stomptastic I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) from 1988 were so catchy, anthemic and easy to sing that they were adopted and adapted by football crowds - Hibs fans gleefully belt it out to celebrate when the ball hits the back of the net at Easter Road.

The same fans, scarves aloft, famously broke into a spine-tingling version of the band’s Sunshine on Leith after the 2016 Scottish Cup Final.

Jingle all the way

Nearly all of the songs in Williams’ top 10 are hits from the 1970s to the present day. The odd man out is the timeless Christmas classic Jingle Bells, penned by James Pierpoint during a rush of inspiration in 1857.

Dr. Bede, who studies our listening habits, said: “If you look at the songs which emerged from the research, they all have a distinctive rhythmic fingerprint - if we removed the melody they are recognisable by their rhythm alone. If you think of the opening of ‘We Will Rock You’ or the chorus of ‘Who Let the Dogs Out?’ you’d be able to identify the rhythmic hook that persists throughout each song independent of the melody.

“Our sense of rhythm is fundamental to being human,” he adds. “We all experience the rhythm of our breath and hearts beating and from a very young age we are virtuosic rhythmic inventors as we turn babble into words and words into sentences. A significant aspect of a successful earworm is also down to a catchy lyric, of which we will all remember for different reasons.

“Some of us may be attracted to meaning - ‘is this the real life?‘, the sentiment in Pharrell’s Happy, or simply the sound of the words such as [Culture Club’s] Karma Chameleon. But embedded within all such chorus lyrics which are repeated throughout a song are often syllabic patterns that are known to be easily remembered.

“For example, the titles Jingle Bells, Shake it Off and Gangnam Style would be referred to in poetry as anapaests, as they all have a pattern of two short syllables followed by a longer one,“ Dr. Bede concluded.

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