# Hit songs rely on increasing “harmonic surprise” to hook listeners, study finds



## fbjim (Mar 8, 2021)

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021...monic-surprise-to-hook-listeners-study-finds/

I am undecided on the scientific merits of this (I tend to instinctively distrust like, for lack of a better word, "dopamine-based" music analysis), but the idea of pop music going chromatic and later atonal is enthralling. Who will be the Webern of pop?



> The researchers found that the most popular songs had a high level of harmonic surprise, including the use of relatively rare chords in verses, for example, instead of just sticking with, say, a standard C major chord progression (C, G, F). The best songs follow up that harmonic surprise with a catchy common chorus.
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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

Another contributor to expanding pop harmony's scope was sampling. I remember working with short samples of sometimes complicated and fully scored compound harmony that could be played on one note of a keyboard. The fun came when you would repeat the same sample on another keyboard note which transposed the samples pitch (but kept the same structural harmony of course). Dicking around like this on a keyboard yielded a parallelism that Debussy would've appreciated and introduced the kids to more complicated harmony and progressions.


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## fbjim (Mar 8, 2021)

oh the sampler is probably as staggeringly important a development in popular music as the synthesizer, or the record player. 

in many ways, it's the post-modern composer's dream, being able to use actual recorded music as a musical element in another piece. not just in the "mash-up" sense but in the sense of taking music, manipulating it, and using it in the same way as you might use horn and string timbres. 

come to think of it- do any post-modern composers use the sampler?


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

*"Hit songs"* rely on a many, many, many different elements, and _"harmonic surprise"_ is one of those elements that a Hit Song may have.

I just don't think that including harmonic surprise will insure that a song will be a hit, just as including fudge in a dessert. There's plenty of songs that have harmonic surprises in them that AREN'T hit songs.

That's like saying that the best desserts include fudge. Many may, but putting fudge on carrot cake might not be "a hit".

Nor do I think it's true that people listen to an entire song. Let's take *James Brown's I Feel Good*: I think people hear that repeating rhythm pattern, that ascending horn hook that bops up to a D9 chord, and when he sings "I Feel Good", and the rest is just a placemat for this dish. Oh, and that primal scream at the beginning. Furthermore, there's very little in the way of "harmonic surprise" in the song; It's all I, V, and IV (well, maybe a I7 - V7 - IV7) in *D*. Without queuing it up you probably can't even remember the 8-measure bridge (IV - I - IV - V) sprinkled in a 2 or 3 times.






Chances are it might have slipped by you that *I FEEL GOOD* isn't even the name of the song: It's actually *"I Got You (I Feel Good)"*



But anyway, I understand your skepticism when some self-proclaimed "expert" explains to all us cretins that HIT SONGS have been developing increasing HARMONIC SURPRISE over the last 60 years.

Let's test that.

The *#1* song on the *Billboard Top 100* today is *STAY*, by *The Kid LAROI & Justin Bieber*

Let's have a listen, shall we? (this is my first listen . . . so my comments will be much like one of those _*"first listen reaction videos"*_:






So . . . first off, I'm not sure if the first 19 seconds is actually part of the song, but I'll bet it is. We've got a repeating *bVI - bVII - i - V* pattern in *Abm* running in a tinny sound palette, followed by what sounds like a reverse gong, with a non-harmonic frequency.

Then the song starts, and it's actually that same repeating *bVI - bVII - i - V* pattern, but now it's full frequency, faster, and in *Bbm*. Occasionally there's a stop time hook (the Beatles were the kings of this on their first couple albums).

The melody is a rhythmic two note pattern on the 2nd and 3rd notes of the scale, with a flatted 7th thrown into the middles of the phrases. Then he uses a "surprise" octave higher 2nd note (or a 9th). It SOUNDS surprising, but he's basically just framing the song as though it's in the key of *Bbm7add9*.

The Chorus is pretty much similar to the verse . . . although now we're riffing a melody a third higher, that is, favoring the 5th and 4th notes of the scale, but again, it's the same rhythmic thing, and it's just this Bbm7add9 or the simpler Bbm7 tonality. There's a short section where The Kid sings some "woahs" over the rhythm section patter, on a minor triad.

Another verse and chorus, and boom, another stop time break, and here's Justin Beiber singing the chorus, although as a more experienced and better singer, he's singing with some flourishes. Then there's that minor triad "woah" thing again, but this time with Beiber singing a counter-melody "woah" thing.

This is followed by another verse (I think it's the 1st verse again), but the backing track goes with a ragtime stomp rhythm for 8 bars.

It plays out on another verse with both of them singing, then a short coda with the synth riff with which the song started, and some vocalizations from The Kid. The only difference is that the song ends abruptly on a downbeat while The Kid finished the melody on the root note, Bb.

The little pre-song bit seems like an afterthought . . . just the riff of the backing track slowed down and in a lower key.

. . . and the backing riff is constant, never changing in harmonic structure, except when there's the stop time thing at the end of the verses, and the ragtime stomp near the end (but that is a formulaic arrangement thing, and doesn't really change the song itself).

*Overall*, it's a great groove, and I love the theoretical key of Bbm7add9. The subject matter is very teen angst girl/boy getting dumped, which is a predictable subject for the last 70 years at least. The harmonic structure of the entire song is static: the repeating melodic riff that happens in the backing track over the repeated four bar harmonic progression. The vocal melodies never stray from that Bbm7add9 scale.

Formulaic.

Hit Song.

I'd be hard pressed to say it has any "harmonic surprise" in it.


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## Jay (Jul 21, 2014)

Somehow, I don't think the harmonic surprise of this "hit" would have "hooked listeners":


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

Jay said:


> Somehow, I don't think the harmonic surprise of this "hit" would have "hooked listeners":


That's a rather creative re-working of the song. A bit unsettling, perhaps.


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