Surprise secret of a catchy song

YOU might think the key ingredients for a catchy song are repetition, repetition and, er, repetition.

But it seems that what really stimulates the pleasure centres in the brain, is – surprisingly – the element of surprise.

The finding is based on an analysis of 80,000 chords from 745 catchy songs. Those analysed included Knowing Me, Knowing You, by Abba, Red Red Wine by UB40, Obla-di, Ob-la-da by the Beatles and Country Road by James Taylor.

The study found that when listeners were relatively certain about what sound to expect next, they got a buzz when they were instead surprised. This was described as having their ‘expectations violated’.

Scientists took the 745 songs from the US Billboard Hot 100 chart between 1958 and 1991 and stripped them down to their basic chord progressions. They were then played to 79 volunteers who were scanned to see what parts of their brains were activated by listening to music.

They found that the nucleus accumbens – the part of the brain activated by uncertainty and surprise – lit up at the same points that listeners indicated that they were most enjoying the music.

Vincent Cheung, a PhD student at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Germany and lead author of the study in the journal Current Biology, said: ‘Understanding how music activates our pleasure system in the brain could explain why listening to music might help us feel better when we feel blue.’