Number-crunching a formula for Christmas hits

RESEARCHERS have crunched the numbers on Christmas songs to find the perfect formula for a festive hit.

Experts at a UK music label looked at every Christmas number one from the past 50 years to see what they have in common and determined that the Pet Shop Boys’ Always On My Mind came closest to being the quintessential tune for the holidays.

“I think we’re a long way from an algorithmically-generated Christmas number one,” said Howard Murphy, founder of Ostereo, which conducted the research, in a press release accompanying the data.

“But certain characteristics do make a song more likely to resonate with audiences at Christmas,” he added.

For a song to hit the top spot on Christmas Day it needs to be three minutes and 57 seconds, in the key of G major, played at 114 beats per minute and performed by a 27-yearold solo artist, according to the research.

Other key trends among the songs analysed were that the majority were ballads, nearly half were cover versions and nearly all were about something other than Christmas.