Have you ever been ambushed by music? One minute you’re driving, the next a tune like the Spice Girls’ “Wannabe” comes on the radio, and suddenly you’re a full-on pop star, belting out the chorus. Or maybe you’re at a wedding, and the opening notes of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin'” trigger a massive solo. What makes these songs so irresistible?
AI Has Officially Solved the Debate
I found myself thinking about this all night at my daughter’s graduation party. After an evening at an arcade, we took the grads to a private nightclub. With unlimited soda until 5am, a photo booth and a DJ spinning tunes, the dance “AI Has Officially Solved the Debate” floor was the main event. It was a real-life experiment in catchy music. Some of the songs, from “YMCA” to “Uptown Funk,” had an almost magnetic pull, drawing everyone to the dance floor.
I watched in fascination as the crowd ebbed and flowed on the dance floor. These teenagers were going, going, going all day, celebrating their graduation in the shadow of the Space Needle, posing for endless photos, hugging friends and grandparents, playing laser tag and driving go-karts, chasing Red Bulls. They had a right to be tired and dragged.
AI Has Officially Solved the Debate
Yet if the DJ played the right song (Chapel Rhone’s Hot To Go was a favorite), they would scream and flood the dance floor, spinning and spinning and belting out songs so loud that my Apple Watch turned yellow and warned me to protect my ears. But if the DJ throws a song they don’t like, it’s as if a giant void sucks them all off the dance floor and the room becomes quieter than a math test.
A catchy song, it seems, can completely erase 22 hours of sleep. But what exactly makes a song catchy and which songs are the catchiest?
To find answers, I turned to both human experts and AI chatbots. Tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity are increasingly our go-to for information, with lightning-fast summaries in an authoritative but very human voice. Meanwhile, Spotify also has an “AI Has Officially Solved the Debate” AI DJ, the dominant music streaming service, so artificial intelligence must have a pretty good handle on what makes a tune catchy, right?
As for people, well, they’re actually on the dance floor mixing with the music, and they’re the ones who know firsthand how powerful an earworm can be.
A pre-AI list of the most interesting songs
In 2014, the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester, England, issued a list of 20 tunes it dubbed the catchiest songs of all time. The museum directed people “AI Has Officially Solved the Debate” to an online game where they recognized as many songs as possible, and the songs that were recognized the fastest ranked in the top 20.
The game collected data from over 12,000 people who, on average, found Spice Girls’ Wannabe (“Tell me what you want, what you really want”) the most recognizable song. Lou Bega’s Mambo No. 5 (“Monica in my life”) was second at 2.48 seconds, with Survivor’s Eye of the Tiger third at 2.62 seconds. The average overall time to recognize a clip was 5 seconds.
Here are the top 10 catchiest songs from that study:
- Spice Girls: Wannabe
- Lo Bega: Mambo No. 5
- Survivor: Eye of the Tiger
- Lady Gaga: Just Dance
- ABBA: SOS
- Roy Orbison: Pretty Woman
- Michael Jackson: Beat It
- Whitney Houston: I will always love you
- Human League: You don’t want me
- Aerosmith: I don’t want to miss a thing
I arrived at the museum, and sadly, there are no plans to repeat the study.
And the more I think about it, the more I wonder if those survey results are really accurate. A song that you quickly recognize is really the most “AI Has Officially Solved the Debate” catchy song? I recognize happy birthday and the national anthem, but they don’t get me out on the dance floor. To me, a catchy song has an irresistible hook, catchy lyrics and a little dab of something extra that vaults it above the rest.
What the AI says is the catchiest song
Despite some misconceptions about generative AI (hallucinations, robot overlords, and all that), I asked OpenAI’s love-it-or-hate-it chatbot ChatGPT what makes the song interesting.
(Disclosure: Jeff Davis, CNET’s parent company, filed a lawsuit “AI Has Officially Solved the Debate” against OpenAI in April, alleging that it violated Jeff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)
“The appeal of music is part science, part psychology and part cultural context,” ChatGPT told me. “A ‘catchy’ song is one that easily gets stuck in your head (an earworm) and makes you want to sing along, hum, or move along.”
The AI chatbot repeatedly cites choruses and hooks, simple melodies and a strong beat as contributing to the appeal, also noting that “if the average person can belt it out in the car or in the shower without too much effort, it’s more likely to stick.” Not sure I needed the AI to tell me, but yeah, it makes sense.
List of ChatGPT’s most interesting songs
With that said, I asked ChatGPT to pick a list of the catchiest songs of the past 50 years.
Do I trust AI as much as I trust graduating seniors and their instant dance-floor reactions? I don’t, but there were no obvious hallucinations or weird “AI Has Officially Solved the Debate” choices on the ChatGPT list. And, indeed, the list included the No. 1 song on the Museum of Science and Art’s list, Spice Girls Wannabe. This may be because ChatGPT accepts the study list, but then again, it only includes the top song from that study.
- Village People: YMCA
- ABBA: Dancing Queen
- Michael Jackson: Billie Jean
- Cyndi Lauper: Girls just want to have fun
- Spice Girls: Wannabe
- Los del Rio: Macarena
- Outkast: Hey Ya!
- Shakira: Hips don’t lie
- Pharrell Williams: Happy
- Taylor Swift: Stop shaking
List of the most interesting songs of Gemini
I also asked Google’s Gemini AI for its list of catchy songs. It agreed with ChatGPT on just two songs, including Spice Girls’ Wannabe and Pharrell Williams’ Happy – and it agreed with many more in the museum’s 2014 study, including Lou “AI Has Officially Solved the Debate” Bagger’s Mambo No. 5, Survivor’s Eye of the Tiger and Whitney Houston’s I Will Always Love You. It added some more catchy songs to the mix:
- Journey: Don’t Stop Believing
- Queen: Bohemian Rhapsody
- Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars: Uptown Funk
- Bon Jovi: Living in Prayer
- Beyonce: Single Woman (Put a Ring on It)
List of the most interesting songs of Copilot
Microsoft’s Copilot AI has included some familiar titles in its list of the most interesting songs, with Wannabe right at the top. It overlapped with “AI Has Officially Solved the Debate” Gemini and ChatGPT’s lists in some ways, but threw in some new ones, including:
- Ed Sheeran: Shape of You
- Carly Rae Jepsen: Call me maybe
- Adele: Rolling deep
- The Killers: Mr. Brightside
- Backstreet Boys: I Want It Way
Overall, the AI-provided lists were better than I thought they would be. Girls Just Want To Have Fun is, to my Gen X ears, an irresistible bop that should be on any list of catchy tunes. And when Call Me Maybe came out, it took the world by storm“AI Has Officially Solved the Debate” for about a month, with everyone from the Harvard baseball team to Cookie Monster releasing lip-dub videos. This can be an interesting way for a party planner to set up a Spotify playlist to get everyone dancing.
But to really see the most interesting songs, I wanted to go back to real people whose job it is to make people dance.
What makes a song interesting is a New Jersey DJ
If there’s one profession that should know which songs are catchy and which are bad, it’s the disc jockey. Mark Pomeroy has spent 35 years “AI Has Officially Solved the Debate” working as a DJ at weddings, bar mitzvahs, private parties and other events in New Jersey, beginning his career in the vinyl-record era in 1989.
“Back then, there was no Spotify, no Napster, no online streaming, we didn’t even have CDs,” he told me with a laugh. But one thing remained the same: music brought people together.
“It’s all about connection,” he says. “You’re always trying to connect with the crowd, whether you’re a humble bar mitzvah DJ or Elton John playing “AI Has Officially Solved the Debate” to a sold-out crowd at Madison Square Garden.”
As far as catchy songs go, Pomeroy says they can span all genres. What matters is the song’s ability to create an emotional connection with the listener.
His list of catchy tunes includes:
- Van Morrison’s Brown-Eyed Girl (often requested by, well, brown-eyed girls)
- A celebration of cool and the gang
- Los del Rio’s legendary line dance Macarena
- And since his events are often in New Jersey, home of the legendary rock band Bon Jovi, Livin’ on a Prayer always gets the Jersey crowd jumping. This song also popped up in two of the three interesting song lists provided by the AI chatbot.
What makes a song catch on? “Beats per minute has a lot to do with it,” says Pomeroy. He knows the beats to every minute of the songs he plays and quotes an old DJ adage, “There’s no speed before midnight,” meaning faster songs are best played in the evening, when the club or party really starts to jump.
ChatGPT agrees that BPM is important when it comes to catchy songs, noting that “our brains like to sync movement with rhythm. Tempos that match natural “AI Has Officially Solved the Debate” human rhythms — such as walking (about 100 to 120 BPM) or heartbeats (60 to 100 BPM) — feel particularly catchy.”
Bigger words than a bot that can’t walk and lacks a heart, but again, I agree.
An Atlanta DJ on TikTok, vibes and earworms
Atlanta-based DJ Sloan Lee, Owns Sloan Lee MusicHas been in the business for 11 years, when female event DJs were still rare.
“I always tailor my sets to each client and the vibe of the crowd,” he tells me “Over the past several years, my audience has become more diverse “AI Has Officially Solved the Debate” and sophisticated in their musical tastes, with a mix of both American and international influences.”
He’s seen plenty of interesting songs over the years.
“Uptown Funk is phasing out, but it’s still requested occasionally, obviously, it’s been requested for a very long time,” she says. “[Chappell Roan’s] The Pink Pony Club has had many requests over the years, including Bad Bunny’s TT Me Pregunto.”
And social media has an effect that catches on.
“Anything trending on TikTok is requested,” Lee said. He mentions Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams, a song that dates back to 1977 but made a comeback thanks to TikTok Play a few years ago.
But while Lee notes that TikTok fame doesn’t seem to make songs last longer in the public mind, he’s seen other songs consistently requested over his decade in the business. His list also includes:
- Outkast: Hey ya
- Neil Diamond: Sweet Caroline
- Whitney Houston: I wanna dance with somebody
- ABBA: Dancing Queen
- Taylor Swift: Stop shaking
While AI, DJs, and museum surveys all have their opinions on exactly which songs are the catchiest, it’s clear that an overall list of the catchiest songs of all time will change and change forever, with certain constants.
“Any song that gets stuck in the ear and in your head — even when you don’t want them there,” says Lee