By Mark Kinver
BBC News
The Spice Girls’ debut hit, Wannabe, is the catchiest single in British history, an online experiment suggests.
Participants recognised the song in 2.3 seconds, compared with an average of five seconds for other popular hits.
Researchers developed the interactive game, called Hooked on Music, as part of a scientific study to unlock the secrets of what makes music memorable.
The initial results from the study will be unveiled at the Manchester Science Festival on Saturday evening.
Data from more than 12,000 participants was collected from the online experiment, which was developed by the Museum of Science and Industry (Mosi).
People who played the game were asked if they recognised a song, which was randomly selected from more than 1,000 clips of best-selling songs, dating from the 1940s until the present day.
The Spice Girls’ debut single, which spent seven weeks at number one during 1996, was the most quickly recognised song by participants, taking an average of 2.29 seconds.
Second was Lou Bega’s Mambo No 5, which was identified in an average of 2.48 seconds.
Survivor’s Eye of the Tiger was third, with an average time of 2.62 seconds.
Just Dance by Lady Gaga was the fourth most catchy song
Overall, it took people an average of five seconds to recognise a clip from one of the UK’s best-selling records.
The Hooked on Music concept was designed by Ashley Burgoyne, a computational musicologist from the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands, and colleagues.
“I work within a group that studies music cognition in general – any way in which the …read more
Source:: BBC Entertainment
