Sing a Different Tune

The songs we most like to play at parties or stream on our phones owe their success to many factors, not least the gifts of their performers. But a new study shows that they may also stand out in a less intuitive way.

Using data from the lyrics of 1,879 tracks that made the Billboard digital download charts between 2014 and 2016, researchers Jonah Berger and Grant Packard determined which themes typified particular genres and compared individual songs to genre norms. They found that rap, rock, R&B, country, and Christian songs with less genre-typical words tended to become more popular on average, independent of factors such as radio airplay or recording artist. As one example, the researchers point to Drake's "Hotline Bling," whose lyrics exhibit more romantic uncertainty and less focus on "street cred" than was usual for rap and R&B. (Songs classed as "pop" and "dance," however, were not more popular if they bucked lyrical norms.)

"We like to have a base of comfort, but beyond that we want something new and interesting," says Packard, a consumer researcher at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario. Songs that meld recognizable and unusual features could strike the balance we desire.